Dream Cycle Review for Steam

“Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.”

― H.P. Lovecraft

Check Out the Dream Cycle Review Video:

Dream Cycle, developed by Cathuria Games and published by Raw Fury, is an independent procedural action-adventure spearheaded by Toby Gard (of Lara Croft fame) that takes gamers into the worlds of H.P. Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle.

Gameplay

This game is huge, I mean, enormous. As such, it falls victim to some of those kooky glitches that all massive games deal with. My personal favorite is enemy weapons hanging in the air after I’ve defeated them. Morgan sometimes plays like Geralt in The Witcher 3; she can be oddly clunky when trying to navigate through levels. And ledges seem to work like in Skyrim when you’re riding a horse (i.e., I can stand on an edge the size of a fingernail.)

That being said….

This game is dope. I absolutely love Morgan’s capabilities. I’m obsessed with her levitation spell and the multiple ways it can be combined with Shadow Sliding, Telekinesis, and Sword Attacks.

Morgan’s front kick would make Anderson Silva proud.

The magic system is beautiful. I love the mixture of spells to throw and spells I can place as traps for enemies to walk into.

The only downside I can see to Morgan’s abilities is that I can’t use Telekinesis if I also have a bow equipped. I found myself dropping the bow so I could smash with rocks. Eventually, I started ignoring the bow altogether in favor of Telekinesis.

The game provides plenty of health and mana in the form of food and water, so there is room to casually use spells while dungeon crawling. (Though I recommend stockpiling potions for use during boss battles).

As I became more familiar with Morgan, I realized that this game supports any type of play style: stealth, mage, or brawler. And the game wants to reward different play styles, encouraging players to break out of old habits. The current trophies reward sneaking through levels, speedrunning, and smashing enemies with telekinesis.

All in all, whatever your yum, this game wants you to play your way.

Exploration Forward

No matter how you like to play, all gamers will wander away from the mission objective at some point to have a look around.

In interviews, Toby Gard has said he envisioned a game where exploration was as important as the action. He wanted to make a game that players could get lost in while exploring the world.

Dream Cycle comes close to achieving that goal.

I repeatedly ignored looking for clues to free trapped souls in favor of finding the best view of the level.

In Ygiroth, I couldn’t ignore the towering rocks with ruins clinging to them. I just had to spend thirty minutes climbing to the top of the monoliths, only to find nothing but a spectacular snowy view.

Kiran is a labyrinth of caves that expand vertically and horizontally. I was delighted to get lost for a while. Thanks to Morgan’s Astral Projection abilities, I knew I would always be able to find my way to the level boss eventually.

Each map I accessed opened a world completely different from the others. Whereas recasting a level keeps the same flora and fauna but changes the quest objective, changes the level map, and provides variations of structures and loot.

Mysterious Mysteries

Within each level, there are objects that don’t belong.

A solar system floating in a cave. An armchair surrounded by books, under a flickering light.

When approached, these mysterious items cause the world to darken while brightening the night sky to reveal a gorgeous galaxy.

I haven’t made it far enough into the game to understand the purpose of these objects. All I know is I can’t destroy them with my sword, magic, or Telekinesis, but they show up as glowing white clouds when I’m in Astral Projection.

Procedural-Action-Adventure

When I heard Dream Cycle was a procedural action-adventure that emphasized exploration, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. PTSD from No Man’s Sky rose like bile in my throat, and I took all the grains of salt with me into my first play.

Thankfully, none of my darkest fears were realized. The developers used procedural elements to vary each recast level enough that each play-through of a level, like The Broken Fort, would offer novelty in the form of the map, traysure, and enemies. And it seems like a recast causes the game to level up with the player, so as I got stronger, levels got harder, unlocking new enemies for me to deal with.

Overall, I’m impressed with Dream Cycle’s procedural elements. Still, I think there is a long way to go before a narrative-driven procedural action-adventure reaches the levels that game developers have been promising.

Story Stall

The biggest issue with Dream Cycle at this time is the repetitive nature of the game’s narrative, specifically with level quests.

While each map can be recast 10,000 times (for a price, of course), that doesn’t mean that the story changes much. After a few recasts for the Enchanted Wood/Broken Fort level in the Beta version, I saw the same quest description with different NPC names.

Back in March 2022, developers wrote in an update on Steam that they were shifting focus from working on bugs to developing the storylines.

Since then, there has been a noticeable difference between the beta and Early Access versions. The work developers put in just since March has made a huge difference in the action and the adventure. That being said, more work needs to be done.

Gard has said that Dream Cycle was made with only two main developers and a handful of talented contractors working on it. With that in mind, everything they have accomplished is phenomenal. I just hope they keep building out the narrative aspect.

How Many Hours Is This Game?

Anywhere between 5 – 10,000.

Once you play the first world, the game can begin to feel repetitive. Work still needs to be done to develop a sense of variety with the different recasts of the same levels. Gard claims that Dream Cycle will contain multitudes, 10,000 to the power of 10,000 possible levels to explore.

The problem is, now the game needs 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible stories and quests.

You can do it!

Overall

8/10

This was a hard score, and I really wanted to give it another point, but right now, the narrative aspect doesn’t match the needs of the game.

Playing as Morgan is a blast, and I haven’t had this much fun exploring a game since Skyrim was released in 2011.

That being said….

I reserve the right to change my score as more updates are released.

This game has so much going for it, and if the narrative could match the world-building, it could be the hottest game of the year, the kind of game that players just cannot walk away from.

“For I have always been a seeker, a dreamer, and a ponderer on seeking and dreaming…”

–H.P.Lovecraft

Dream Cycle is available for PC via Steam.

Related: Reviews by Michelle Jones

Michelle Jones

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I'm a completionist gamer who just needs to find that one last object and clear that final dungeon. I love all video games, from open world sandboxes on a console to a mindless match three on my phone. In addition to gaming and writing, I am a graduate student working on a thesis about the ancient Icelandic Sagas. Feel free to ask me anything about Vikings.