Art's Dream
Review

Art's Dream (2020) is an adventure game featuring different game styles, including running and jumping, combat and puzzle solving. It's particularly unusual as it has music threading through it like a musical. You play as Art, a depressed double bass player, who discovers himself through a surreal world where memories and nightmares come alive.

Play involves controlling Art or his toys in different scenarios. You flit between different challenges in a dream-like set of levels. Sometimes you are clambering over instruments, or manipulating the world to help Art escape from them. In other levels you are playing instruments, or using his two childhood toys to complete platforming tasks.

This was built by Media Molecule as a showcase of possibilities for creators in Dreams. It was launched with the main game on launch day. As a showcase, each section of the game has a different game style and artistic look, so you may be playing a point and click adventure one minute, and jumping across disappearing platforms the next.

This results in an unusual eclectic mix of different game styles. But more than a mere novelty, each level features its own songs so that if you play it in one go it offers the experience of a full length musical.

Our examiner, Andrea Walney, first checked Art's Dream (Dreams) 2 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 17 months ago.