Dream Mechanic
A downloadable game for Windows
In this game you are a Dream Mechanic and your job is fixing broken dreams. You have been called to a tiny secluded town in the mountains where people's dreams have gone so far out of control that they started affecting real life. Each dream is a puzzle and that's where you can show of your skills and help some people.
After approximately two million years the game is complete. The game contains you, the Dream Mechanic:
21 strange characters to interact with, solve their dreams and maybe even find out what is happening in this town:
Together with the characters come 21 dream puzzles ranging from ultra easy to nightmarish:
The town contains 5 areas, 4 of which you will unlock by solving the dream puzzles. Almost everything in the town is interactable and there might even be some secrets to discover:
Also there is a dream gallery for you to ponder about the meaning of the dreams after they are fixed:
To give some context: I am a professional illustrator in real life and this is a little game I made for fun in my free time largely as an outlet for some of my weirder ideas. By this point I like to think that I know what I'm doing in terms or art quite well, but a lot of the game development is very much a learning process. I welcome all feedback, it helps to make this game and future projects better.
Download
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Development log
- Version 1.0125 days ago
- Fashion of the Future ( artwork )Jun 11, 2021
- False Vacuum ( puzzle artwork )May 29, 2021
- Dream Mechanic Is Complete!May 07, 2021
- Robot Fair ( puzzle artwork )Mar 05, 2021
- In every Shadow ( puzzle artwork )Jan 22, 2021
- Nightmare ( character artwork )Jan 02, 2021
- House of Flesh ( environmental artwork )Dec 06, 2020
Comments
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It looks absolutely stunning! Can't wait to discover more about it (as I speak). Say, would you be open for a collaboration to localise the game to French?
Thanks, I'm really glad to hear you're enjoying it so far!
Theoretically yes, another language option would be a really cool thing to have I think, but it would only make sense to try to implement if quite a bit more people played my little game. In the past two weeks I got a surprising new influx of downloads, but we are still talking about a comparatively tiny number of people. Implementing a language option would be a decent chunk of work most likely, but mostly there is a bigger chunk of my ramblings to translate then you might expect at first. The game contains around 19000 words of dialog. I had forgotten it was that much actually, I just checked my files.
That's quite the amount indeed! Although that is not something I would personally shy away from, I understand that it might not be worth the time investment if the audience does not follow. Especially given that I can't help you as much as I would like with the codebase (although there is always room and time to learn!)
Perhaps it's something you would find more interesting with your newer projects like Human Upgrade Labs? But in any case, I find your work very interesting to look at, and I hope more people come to discover it!
Thanks for the offer, I will definitely keep this in mind for the future. Human Upgrade Labs is essentially the same situation, but maybe later on after I publish the game I'm working on now, if it gets more attention.
I can handle coding for something like this, I'm pretty sure, it just requires a decent amount of time to test and check everything, not to leave any dumb mistakes and such. Most of the work would be the translation itself, I'm sure.
I hope more people discover these projects too, thanks!
Wow. What an experience! I'm pleased by the amount of creativity and effort you put in.
It's a little bit annoying that both the arrow keys and mouse movement can be used to move around the "overworld". When I click on objects, the camera tends to move a little bit too.
I'm really glad you like it!
I know what you mean, I kinda noticed that later on after I learned a bit more about game design, hopefully it's not too big an issue for you. I might make another update some time if more people mention things like this, but it's kinda difficult to get into the code I wrote years ago while I could be working on my current more ambitious project, if that makes sense.
I did notice a sudden and fairly large increase in downloads for this game in the past couple weeks, so that does give me motivation. Not sure why though, earlier updates I made haven't had such a sudden change...
Great game!
Thanks man!
l love everything about this game. The character designs, the challenges but being able to click on the stuff of the map is my favourite!! Very destressing after you've completed a very challenging puzzle! Unfortunately for me when I'm trying to complete Leon Kecksburg's puzzle I always end up with 48/49. Ive tried about 7 times and I always end up with the same number, I even counted each one that I did for the in the "parts fixed" section and I found out that it doesn't register one part of the puzzle (always a random one). Idk if anyone else is having this problem or am I the only one??
Thanks, I'm really glad you liked my little game.
Strange, I'm not sure why that particular puzzle could be not working properly for you, I did code this years ago at this point so it is possible I goofed something up there. I would like to hear if more people encountered this as well. I don't think anyone mentioned it so far.
Hey, this is a veeeeeery late response, but I just made a small game update to fix the issue you mentioned in your original comment. It should all be fixed now.
The Dream Mechanic looks a lot like Baron Munchausen, a public domain fictional character who is known for being incredibly imaginative (or for having genuinely led an unbelievable life, depending on who you ask). In one of his stories, he even uses a rope to dangle from the crescent moon (on another occasion, he visits it when it's more full). I like to imagine that the Dream Mechanic is his direct descendant. I decided this before I reached the end of the story, and when I reached it, it made my theory even better, because it makes the Dream Mechanic's attitude in that part of the story hilariously ironic.
Hey. That's a cool theory and I'm glad it made things more interesting for you, but unfortunately any similarities to Baron Munchausen are a coincidence. I have heard the name and I believe I remember something about him pulling himself out of a swamp or such by his own beard, but that's all I know about that story.
Nice, chill game packed with gorgeous artwork down to the last detail. Reassembling paintings from scrambled parts feels quite nice.
I'm curious, though: does the game end after you treat the priestess, or is there more to it that I'm missing?
Hi. Thanks, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the game and I'm glad you seem to have finished it.
So to answer your question: yes, if you finished all the dreams then the only thing left is to explore the town and such. I added a couple hidden things there you may or may not have found, but it's just little extra pieces, no extra puzzles or such.
Originally I was thinking of maybe adding extra puzzles, but I decided to work on my next game instead which has more variety and allows me to flex my art and game design muscles even more. If you want to try it, it's fully playable and has over 20 levels already( one of the levels even works in the same way as the puzzles in Dream Mechanic): Human Upgrade Labs
Very good game, man words can't describe how beautiful the experience was: 9/10.
Why nine?
Cause i couldn't understand the handwriting lol.
Thanks, I'm really glad you enjoyed it.
My handwriting is sometimes hard to understand for myself, haha, but I didn't include that much of it in the game. Did you mean the handwriting in one of the dream images?
First of all I have to say that I love the art (but I also love YOUR art), and it is indeed the thing that made me install and play the game. The map looks great and coherent, I love all the little details, but I was also a bit disappointed that there is no purpose on the interactivity of the map, maybe also including a "hidden items" game like Hidden Folks would be nice? The puzzles on the other hand are not very challenging, ( I didn't go very far to be honest ) and I didn't like the ones with the stripes instead of circles, they feel kinda counter-intuitive. I liked though the one that the outer circles would also move the inner circles, and I feel that this kind of mechanic should be explored a bit more to make puzzles also mind challenging and not only visually challenging, like for example pieces that would move together or in opposite directions, I also found this kind of puzzle that seems to fit in.
In overall, the game feels very nice and of course the art is of professional quality - that you already know I suppose.
Good job!
Thanks. I like to think I'm fairly competent on the artwork side of things by this point, but I am learning about everything else as I go. Multiple people suggested including some purpose for the interactability in the town and I agree. I'm working on that.
Getting the difficulty curve right is a bit of a challenge as not everyone will see it the same. Further puzzles get quite a bit more difficult, so I don't want to make the first ones much harder, not yet at least. The puzzles with the rectangular parts are my least favorite as well, they didn't end up working how I thought they would. I have been messing around with them, but I might end up changing them entirely, not sure yet.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback.
about the difficulty
its fair, but it spikes very weirdly, the progress is very slow in the beggining, and around the book part starts getting gradually harder till it slows down again on the end
Got to play quite a bit and I did have trouble finishing one puzzle but other than that things were good. The artwork is incredible and the interactivity with the world is really enticing, I just wish there were more consequences to that. Cause it's great to discover what you can click on, and make paint appear, or light/extinguish candles, it just feels like they're supposed to be a puzzle element on their own...
Also, this town must be built on top of some leaking tanks of nuclear waste, those mutations are crazy. :)
Hey. Glad you liked the parts you did like and it's awesome to see a gameplay video.
You're right about all the background interactivity not doing much in terms of gameplay. Originally I just wanted to add it to make the town seem more alive, but I do agree it would be more interesting if it meant more. I started adding some of that in the third area of the town and I'm thinking about the ways to add more of it. We'll see how much of that there will be in the end, I'm still not entirely sure myself, but I'm working on it.
Oh, I have to unlocked the third area then and see... I don't think everything you can interact with needs to lead to something, but having extras like that would encourage exploration and of course admiring the art you've made. :)
Agreed. Anyway, thanks for the feedback. Seeing someone else play it is very useful , more than having just text as feedback as well. For example, the puzzle with the monster you had some trouble with was supposed to be fixed a while ago, but I somehow managed to forget to do that, haha. I know where everything goes, so it's different from my side of things, but it had some small pieces in it that can be borderline unfair, or at least annoying. That went right to the top of my list of things to fix and it should work better when I get around to uploading an update.
Wish I had more time and patience to work on the game. As you can probably guess, majority of my time goes to the art side of things.
The art is why I tried DM. It's really amazing and the variety of style in the puzzles especially is motivating to continue playing. :)