Dreams of Another is like nothing I’ve played before

Domagoj Belancic

5.10.2025

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Dreams of Another has you do a lot of shooting. Not to destroy, however, but to create. I’ve never played such a strange game before.

Some games are difficult to describe – Dreams of Another is one such title. It’s like nothing I’ve ever played before, making comparisons with similar games or other genre representatives difficult. Any attempt to summarise the story coherently would fail just as much.

Dreams of Another is unique. A playable dream that looks like artwork. And an experience I’ll remember for a long time to come.

But more on that later.

What is Dreams of Another about?

The game’s protagonist sleeps comfortably in his bed. You, the player, are transported inside his mind and have to solve tasks there. These dreams sequences change relatively quickly. One minute you’re in a picturesque village, the next in a run-down amusement park, then again at the bottom of the sea.

But are these even his dreams? Or are you experiencing other people’s minds here? If so, why does our protagonist appear in these dreams?

Between its various dreams, the game keeps throwing you back to the main menu. At first I thought this was a bug. But no, waking up in the main menu is also part of the narrative. As the game progresses, the menu keeps changing – I won’t reveal exactly how. Spoilers, you know? Still, I adore gimmicks like these.

As soon as you press Start, you’re thrown back into a new world dreamt by our sleeping hero. And there’s plenty of shooting to do there.

Shoot to create

Your character walks through dream worlds armed with an assault rifle. Not to kill as many enemies as possible or to sow destruction – on the contrary.

Levels are initially in a chaotic state, all empty spaces with coloured pixels (or are they little clouds?) floating around. But as soon as you shoot around with that machine gun, objects, animals and people form from these pixels. By shooting, you bring order to chaos.

A strange feeling. After all, countless other games have accustomed us to weapons that bring death and destruction to the world and its NPCs.

Over time, you’ll get used to this creative superpower. There’s something therapeutic about savagely blasting through the chaotic void and seeing how game worlds slowly emerge. If I had to compare this gameplay feeling to anything, I’d most likely choose Powerwash Simulator. In it, you clean dirty objects and environments with a pressure washer. There, too, you get that satisfying feeling of achieving something in small steps and with plenty of hard work.

Most of the time, there’s an NPC waiting behind the pixel chaos to give you a task. These conversations with characters are quite literally dreamlike. Often they don’t really make sense, but you still implicitly understand what they want. I feel reminded of the surreal dream sequences from works like Twin Peaks.

Neither the normal levels nor boss battles are challenging in any way. That isn’t the purpose of the game either. It’s about the dreamlike experience, about that familiar feeling of superficial meaninglessness in dreams. The question of «why» and searching for meaning or purpose in chaos.

Tough stuff

I’ll put a trigger warning here: Dreams of Another deals with tough themes such as the fleeting nature of life, mental health and trauma in its dreams. It poses questions about the meaning – or meaninglessness– of life. Through the dream context in which the game takes place, however, these themes are presented in a digestible, entertaining and ultimately positive and life-affirming way.

I particularly love how the game tells various dream sequences and stories at the same time. You’ll only stay in one dream world for a few minutes at a time before being transported to the next. Individual stories develop in parallel, but very slowly. It’ll take a while before you recognise any sense behind a dream world with this fragmented storytelling.

Some worlds are thematically linked and merge ever closer as the game progresses. My favourite surrounds a family of moles who live underground and maintain a tradition. The eldest son has to dig to the surface and try to ring a church bell in order to «gain his freedom». You watch how the sons in this family gradually fail and die. But then, by opening the entrance to the bell tower in another dream, you help the youngest son succeed.

I swear, this really happened! I’m not drunk or high either.

Your anchor in all this chaos is a soldier you’ll meet in every dream world. He gives tips and tricks, provides you with ammunition and even new items. Although I don’t know much about him, I was always happy to meet him.

In worlds where nothing is as it seems, it’s good to see a familiar pixelated face.

Nearly a masterpiece

I’d have loved to give my review of Dreams of Another a snappy title like, «A dreamlike masterpiece». However, this playable dream lacks variety, insufficient for the masterpiece title.

The sound design also prevents a perfect score. Some background songs add a cosy, surreal atmosphere with diffuse and strange sounds. Other tracks, on the other hand, get on my nerves after just a few minutes. I even had to turn the music volume way down in the settings after a while.

Dreams of Another will be released on 10 October for PS5 and PC. The game was provided to me by Q-Games for testing purposes on PC. The PS5 version supports PlayStation VR2 – I didn’t test this feature for my review.

Domagoj Belancic

Senior Editor

Domagoj.Belancic@digitecgalaxus.ch

My love of video games was unleashed at the tender age of five by the original Gameboy. Over the years, it's grown in leaps and bounds.

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