Late last month, a friend of mine pointed out that I always placed an emphasis on the weapon feedback of a shooter. While our conversation didn’t stray from the topic of shooters, I have a similar mindset towards action games or action-heavy games of any kind.

If you’re going to feature combat heavily in your game, you better make the act of hitting an enemy satisfying. Hitting an enemy in Dreamscaper is anything but. Well, it is if you’re using your fists, which provide delicious smacking sounds. Your starting weapon is random in this roguelite RPG though, so I often found myself using blades that sounded slightly less impressive than the sound of scissors snipping.

However, the visual effects fare better. With a heavy sword, my heavy attacks send enemies flying backwards. When they fall, I can see small waves of impact.

You can find new weapons and abilities throughout the procedurally-generated level, which is split into connected tiles. All this comes together to provide you with the usual normal attack and heavy attack with dodging combination, with blocking and the occasional ranged attack or ability use thrown in. Successive attacks from normal enemies can take out a chunk of your health if you’re not careful, but while the resulting combat loop is functional, I didn’t find it terribly compelling.

I found myself thinking of Raji: An Ancient Epic‘s demo; that game’s weapon feedback was even more underwhelming, but the interesting environment-based attacks, as well as a healthy dose of platforming, made up for it to an extent. Dreamscaper has some optional puzzles, but the combat is the meat of the game. As such, it’s harder to ignore the lack of punchy combat audio outside of actually using punches.

Dream A Little Dream…

Fighting the first boss feels better, at least. It’s a giant fish, and its array of attack patterns that range from lasers, summoning tornadoes, and gobbling you up (which takes a big chunk of your health in the process) manage to distract from the combat feedback. On the flipside, whacking it emphasizes that same feedback; even when I’m unleashing damaging special abilities, which do sound notably better than the blades at least, my main source of catharsis is the sight of the health bar being depleted than the act of attacking itself.

While I tended to forget about my special abilities when facing normal enemies, battling the boss practically demands that you use them (and/or a stronger weapon). The first time I fought it, I was stunned by how small the window of attack is when you temporarily knock it out by triggering bombs; I could only get two hits in at most before it retreated into the water. Using my damage-dealing scream ability, and a time-stopping power I found on a later run, made a massive difference in how much damage I could deal in that time.

I should confess that while I came close to beating the fish boss on a couple of occasions, I never actually succeeded (and thus missed out on the second city-themed level in the demo; dying in that second level would mean starting from the first one again). At times it felt as if it was because the game required a bit of trial-and-error -  how do I avoid being gobbled up, for instance? – but much of it stemmed from my carelessness and my faulty controller, which stopped me from successfully employing my abilities when I needed them the most. I was tempted to test the game with keyboard and mouse, but a quick glance at the controls reveals that the controller boasts a much more intuitive control scheme, although the former is not impossible to use.

I gave the boss a few tries, especially after seeing a couple of YouTubers beat it (though one of them had a noticeably powerful weapon, while the other was close to death) and feeling the need to prove myself, but the lacklustre combat feedback eventually made it difficult to continue.

Lucid Dream

It’s a shame, because the world is quite lovely. The tutorial takes place in an old-ish, pixelated game-within-a-game, but the actual game features a humble but pretty mix of real-world elements and the fantastical.

The premise is that all this takes place within a girl’s lucid dream. Why she dreams of giant, laser-shooting fish, line-matching puzzles, and strange humanoids specifically is not really explained. When I fail a run, I get a brief paragraph that implies that the girl is facing inner demons, but the demo doesn’t have much in the way of story details apart from that.

When you’re not dreaming, you can visit locations like cafes, bookstores, and bars. Unlocking new weapon types in the dream world is tied to befriending the strangers in those places. I was expecting conversations that would provide more insight into the main character, Cassidy, but there isn’t even any dialogue when you speak to these strangers, only tiny summaries of what the conversation was about.

A Colourful Dream

I really like how Dreamscaper looks; not just the scenery, but the visual effect when it transitions between tiles or between the real world and the dream world. The music, particularly when there’s no combat going on, sounds soothing and thoughtful.

Unfortunately, the weak combat feedback and seemingly barely-there story prevent me from feeling any enthusiasm for it. Perhaps the full release will have the story experience and dialogue I’m looking for (the trailer seems to suggest so), but I have doubts that the combat feedback will improve significantly, if at all. Given that combat is the main meat of the game, and given that I have to go through it all over again when I die, that’s a deal-breaker for me.

Dreamscaper is set for a Summer release on Steam, while the Switch version is due to launch in early 2020. You can download the demo here.