The Dreamcatcher review: banish nightmares in this fun and fast-paced game

The Dreamcatcher is an interesting gesture-based action game from Malaysia-based Sunnyside Interactive, a game company funded by Malaysia’s Ministry of Finance-funded l337 accelerator. Players are dropped into a fantasy world where they must protect sleeping dreams from nightmares. At first glance, the cutesy art and the bright colour palette of the game might give you the impression that The Dreamcatcher is a simple children’s game.

As you play on, though, you’ll find that it’s anything but.

Gameplay

In Dreamcatcher, you destroy encroaching nightmares by drawing a circle around them. The game is playable only on the iPad, since the iPhone screen is definitely too small for such endeavors. Circles can be chained for greater damage, and attacks are given greater strength with weapons and abilities.

A comprehensive tutorial takes you through the basics of the game, after which you are unleashed into the world to protect sleeping dreams. As you progress, you unlock useful abilities such as a basic stun, or a shield against enemy projectiles. Weapons are also made available, and once equipped, can be combined with equipped abilities for some devastating combos. There are also different ways to deal with certain enemy attacks—and different enemies, it’s not all drawing circles.

Yet drawing circles is pretty much 90 percent of the game, since The Dreamcatcher belongs firmly in the action/arcade genre. This doesn’t mean that it gets repetitive or boring, though.

Factoring in the fun

In spite of The Dreamcatcher’s simple premise, Sunnyside Interactive has managed to flesh it out into a real adventure. The characters’ personalities are likeable even though you see little of them, and while dialogue is not particular witty, it is at least sincere.

There are five worlds in The Dreamcatcher, each with five sub-worlds hosting eleven stages each. Stages scale in difficulty, but they never last so long as to tire you out from drawing all those circles. In the first world, each stage averaged just about a minute’s worth of gameplay.

Boss fights are noticeably longer and more difficult than ordinar levels. Bosses also have an arsenal of attacks, and require you to combine your different defenses, or gestures, to properly defend yourself. Special note must be given to the boss and monster designs; they are menacing yet cute, and are pretty impressive.