Dreams looks absolutely astonishing in this new footage from E3
Dreams is a wild concept for a game, and judging by this footage from E3 it's quietly one of the most exciting games on the horizon.
This E3 demo comes direct from PlayStation's E3 stream, and my word is it impressive. Dreams had only the most minor or presences during Sony's E3 presentation, alluded to but never directly shown, so it's nice to have a good chunk of video to embed here.
It's been a while since we last saw Dreams, and by the look of things Media Molecule are really stretching their creative muscles on this one.
During this video, the team goes 'dream surfing', cycling between a random assortment of different dreams that have been created and uploaded. They all look very different. The first game, 'Please Hug Me' by Dan Castro, is a short little mood piece about a critter being denied hugs; that immediately transitions into a little horror experience by one of their art designs, Emily. It looks like a 3D version of Limbo.
Next is 'Comic Sands', a quirkly 2D platformer with a unique art style that eventually transitions into a 3D platformer. All three are distinctly unique experiences, and apparently you can make a game of any genre you want - there are also space shooters and even a text adventure shown off in the video, and none of them look like they're working in spite of the tools provided.
Several of the games in this video could, at a glance, pass as their own separate indie games. Dreams just seems to be an extremely robust creation tool. You can also make machinima films, or even record and edit together music tracks with button presses. An in-game band performance was put together for attendees at a Sony E3 party, by the sound of it.
This is a lot of game, basically.
The majority of the creative team at Media Molecule came from or was a part of the LittleBigPlanet community, which is cool. They hope that Dreams will inspire other potential game makers, too.
A beta for Dreams will hit at some point this year. No release date has been set, although last year we were told it would hit in 2018. We'll see.