To break the proverbial third wall here, I’m a huge fan of storytelling. If the action in movies or games is poor, but you have a good story, I’m hooked! Thankfully, the team at Afterburner Studio are in agreement with my fandom (plus the gameplay action is just as awesome!)
With that, let’s jump into the action RPG known as Dreamscaper: Prologue!

STORY
The initial start of Dreamscaper: Prologue lands you in downtown Backhill. You’re introduced to your protagonist of this gaming adventure, Cassidy. With aspirations of making it in the marketing world, Cassidy sets off on travelling to the big city: Redhaven. Though possibly jumping the gun too soon and feeling extremely overwhelmed by her new location, the hustle and bustle of the city life ends up sending our beloved hero into an emotional sea of sadness and strange dreams (or referred to in-game as ‘Dreamscapes’). It is here that we begin our gameplay endeavours with Dreamscaper: Prologue.

GAMEPLAY
Considering the fact that you’re fighting in a dream/scape, one would assume you’d be preparing to attack evil dream-like creatures and that the controls for conquering this portion of the game would be a rapid hitting, button bashing flurry! However, you’d be mistaken! Dreamscaper: Prologue controls are relatively simple, but in no way take away from the overall gameplay value. There’s the standard Normal/Heavy option to attacks, with a slew of various RPGs traits to boot! E.g. Block, dodge, combos, range attacks etc.

Navigation is well presented during these sequences. Dreamscaper: Prologue has learnt from its predecessors (to which other RPGs sometimes favour in-game battles over map direction and progression) and has made traversing the alternate world simple by using portals. Upon stepping into said portal, you’ll be teleported to a new location within the dream. But, on my initial playthrough I was surprised to find that, upon dying and reloading my latest save, the area to which I was originally teleported to via the portal had changed! I died and tried this option many times to discover that those clever workers at Afterburner Studios have made each run different!

After travelling through the portals and slashing all obstacles in your way, you arrive at the end of stage Boss, who seems to either be or a representative of the current emotional state our protagonist finds herself in (anxious, depressed etc). Crafting is another strong utility of Dreamscaper: Prologue, where items that are dropped via defeated baddies or found via travelling through in-game worlds all add up to creating in-game real world gifts, which you can then reward to various NPCs to form relationships with.

GRAPHICS + SOUND
Arguably, the strong weapon this game creates is that for its visuals / art style. For an RPG title alone, this game is unmatched in uniqueness and quality. In game models are faceless, which normally would be a bit of a gaming distraction, but given the context that this game holds, its perfectly suited.

The almost ‘Alice in Wonderland’ vibe to loading the dreamscapes is just so creative that you’ll almost feel somewhat saddened that the loading has finished and you’re in-game play time can continue!

The soundtrack has been perfectly tailored and structured accordingly to not only represent the hero during her conflicting emotional states, but also perfectly sets the scene for whichever situation you’re about to face. Which sounds about normal for a video game soundtrack, but Dreamscaper: Prologue does it in a way that isn’t distracting nor overpowers any of the on-screen action!

CONCLUSION
If you’ve ever struggled with your mental state of mind, have taken the leap into travelling to a new city, or maybe just a casual fan of the RPG genre, then seriously consider playing this game!

Written by: Brutaleo