Never before in my gaming experience have I found a game quite like Edge of Dreams. It takes inspiration from a plethora of different genres and games and somehow manages to make something challenging and engaging. Edge of Dreams is a first person shooter (FPS) rougelike game from Tlylaxu. The game has you fighting your way through rooms, picking up items, buying power-ups, and hoping not to die as you’ll start right back at the beginning.
Edge of Dreams takes inspiration from many popular sci-fi shooter games. You don’t have to reload, but your weapon will run out of energy, similar to DOOM. You have three abilities unique to each class, similar to Overwatch. Even the overall aesthetic of the game feels like it was pulled out of the Halo universe so much as to have “skull-like” difficulty modifiers, such as one hit death. Edge of Dreams takes all of these aspects and combines them with the challenge of a rougelike game.
There are a few things that really stood out to me in my time with Edge of Dreams. Firstly, the difficulty. Good lord this game is hard. I generally try to play games on the medium setting to give myself some challenge, while still being able to absorb the story. Edge of Dreams does difficulty a little differently. There are the standard three difficulty settings (Easy, Medium, and Hard) but what makes Edge of Dreams unique is that with every room you enter the difficulty gauge will increase (as seen in the top left of the screenshot above). This made playing on medium extremely difficult and I had to opt to play on easy. However, don’t be fooled, easy is no cake-walk either. The difficulty still climbs every room you enter, and by the time I was finishing up a run the difficulty level would be at impossible.
Another thing that I find astounding about this game is that there is a ton of replayability. There are seven different weapon classes (with what appears to be more on the way in future updates), each with three unique class abilities. This is accompanied by a large selection of power-ups that can be unlocked. After you either win or lose (complete all three stages or die) you will be given points for the run, and you can use these points to unlock new power-ups in the modules shop. This gives players the incentive to try new weapons, and play over and over to try to collect all of the modules.
A smaller detail that I find endearing is that the game seems to not take itself too seriously, placing Easter Eggs throughout. For one, if you examine some of the in-game soda machines you can spot an option for carrot soda. This tickled me in just the right way. There also may be a small nod to the film, The Matrix, as I found two healing items labeled B-Pill and R-Pill. I did find an S-Pill as well, but I like to think the B and R-Pills are a reference to the red and blue pills in the film. Lastly, there is an optional room you can enter before you start your climb through the sectors. It is a lounge with restaurants and NPCs just hanging about. You can see in the screenshot below how they gather around someone in full military armor playing a guitar.
This game really was a pleasure to play, but it isn’t without its faults. One of the biggest frustrations for me is that sometimes it was hard to see the enemies against the color of the backdrop. There are enemies in the upper two sections that actively work against that, but I found it frustrating that I often would be surprised I was being shot by an enemy I couldn’t see. There is also a frustration that some items are a lot more useful than others. Through my time in Edge of Dreams, I would groan when my freebie item at the beginning of the game was a scope for my weapon. Let me be clear, I like the idea of being able to aim down sights (ADS) especially in a shooter game. However, I did not feel any notable increase in accuracy when I would ADS, and it feels really bad to get the scope instead of the item that makes your rounds explode.
The game has some extremely impressive graphics and I was honestly surprised how clean almost everything seemed to be. ‘Almost’ being the key word. The death animations of the enemies look poor in comparison to the work that the developers have done on the environments and the NPCs. The same can be said about the sound design. The music is wonderful and really helps build the stress and intensity of a run through the sectors, but the sound design when you fire a weapon, or encounter enemies, feels hollow. These are minor nit-picks, but with polishing I think they could make the game an even better experience.
I do want to say one thing before I wrap up, though, and while it may be due to my own density, I had a hard time telling what the story of Edge of Dreams was. This is not a deal breaker, and by all means did not hinder my enjoyment of the game. Rogue-like games do generally have a small driving narrative, though. I think of games like The Binding of Isaac (one of my favorite rogue-likes), which presented you with background as to why you were spelunking through the basement, avoiding Mom. Edge of Dreams almost has that context, but it is never quite clear why you are fighting through this space station, why there are aliens there, and who you are as a person. Again, this really does not take away from the experience, but I found myself wanting a little bit more of this world.
Edge of Dreams is wonderful and it was great to play through a different take on the rogue-like genre. I said it before and I will say it again, Edge of Dreams is novel. I haven’t ever had the pleasure of playing a rogue-like from an FPS perspective. Edge of Dreams is extremely playable, and rewards you for the time that you put in with better power-ups, different weapons, and a new layout of the sectors every time you start a run. So pick up yer rifle, go shoot some baddies, and try to stay alive.
Check Out the Edge of Dreams Steam Early Access Trailer:
Edge Of Dreams is available for $14.99 for Windows PC via Steam Early Access.
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I am a writer from Portland,Oregon who has loved gaming since early childhood. Writing and sharing about the best in visual arts is one of my favorite things. Some of my all time favorite games are: The Last of Us, God Of War (2019), Journey, Persona 5, Borderlands 2, and Shadow of the Colossus.
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