Dreams is an incredible, unique game that you should check out for numerous reasons, but I'm going to specifically review Tren here.

Tren, a game built within another game (by the devs of the game themselves), is one of the best games of 2023. I easily sunk something like 10 hours into it and completed the full game, 100%ing too. It's the most impressive creation I've ever encountered in Dreams, and could easily be a standalone release.

It took minutes for the question of "how could a game that forces you to stay on tracks be that fun?" to be answered, and answered again, and again and again. The gameplay is straight up joyous. It brought back memories of playing with the wooden train tracks I had as a kid. I had a constant smile on my face and was stoked to see the little train do any sort of trick, and broke out laughing whenever the physics worked in some unexpected way, flinging pieces across the scenery.

The scenery, by the way, is SO meticulously detailed that you could spend the whole game in free cam mode and still have a great time. It's akin to an "I Spy" book, where little scenes built from models and household objects played out across the landscape. I had to slow down and start playing through the time trial levels without watching the timer because I just wanted to check out everything across the ~100 levels.

Because there are like 100 levels! And new, interesting mechanics showed up again and again. Even by the time you are at the last few levels, Tren has still more wonderful surprises built with so much care, just to be featured in one or two levels. The same goes for the music, there are dozens of tracks and you will be hearing new ones right till the end. The music perfectly suits the fun-loving mood of the game. I've started listening to it outside of playing the game, because it's honestly just that good.

If you have Dreams, I can't recommend you play Tren enough. If you don't have Dreams, Tren is a great reason why you should pick it up. What a blast!

I think if I was a kid I just wouldn't need other video games. I love to just boot this up and search something random and see what comes up. One time I played a Call of Duty: Zombies-style horde FPS where all the enemies were Sonic.exe. The very first time I got to the homepage the first thing I saw was a Captain Toad fangame. My only complaint is that even though there's a lot of creativity and effort on display in a lot of the games made in Dreams, I don't think I've played a single one that actually felt good to control.

A neat creation suite game that still feels very pandemic-era. It's not my type of thing, but it's a cool concept that beats a lot of failed attempts at doing a Roblox-like style game on consoles. Dreams is currently in its waning days, but even if it were still hot, I'm not quite sure I would have stuck around for even another couple of days, it loses my interest quickly, but I also recognize there's an audience for it, and it adopts a lot of the best creation parts of the Little Big Planet series.

The first impressions I had for Dreams were that the toolset was impressive but that kind of thing wasn't for me, and the Media Molecule content at the time was fine but severely lacking. Things have changed massively in my three years away and if you're not into creation, I'd recommend looking at the games that MM have created and highlighted as there are some really interesting looking experiences there. One of these was Tren, which launched last week, a delightful little puzzler where you need to make your way across various wooden train-set levels to the goal.

A lot of concepts are crammed in here and while some are occasionally overused of not hugely fun (sorry Cren), the majority are well designed and your movement as the train is simple while feeling natural. You have a free moving camera for 95% of levels which is fine but it can occasionally have a mind of its own, zooming in when you don't want it to, preventing you from seeing up ahead. A minor frustration normally but when you're up against a time limit it can lead to situations where it's hard to adjust and you miss hazards, necessitating a restart or reset to track. That said, it's a rare problem and the overall challenge ramps up quite nicely throughout, with some intricate and almost thrilling levels coming your way towards the very end of the game.

The set dressing is wonderfully cozy and all the paraphernalia strewn across the levels and hub world (three rooms in a house) really hit those nostalgia buttons. I also really liked the music - chill in hubs and more dedicated puzzle levels, but playfully intense where attempting to beat the clock is involved. Alongside a couple more specific MM throwbacks, it really made me miss what that studio can do in their own dedicated games.

And this last point really got me thinking about how the MM (and some user-generated) games that have been made in Dreams should be classified. These creations are made in Dreams and for sure I spent the hours in this software to play them, but they can also be fully fledged experiences (I spent 9 hours with Tren) with Dreams being more akin to an engine at that point. So I feel a bit strange about how to log, rate and review this and other Dreams games that I may try in the future - and there are a few that look really interesting - as while I'm technically playing Dreams, I'm also not. I know a line has to be drawn somewhere but it feels really fuzzy to me here.

Due to the huge toolset and variety of content that can be created which spans a huge range of genres and tone, I think Dreams in its own little world of almost being its own platform - a normal level creator this title is not - and I find it a bit disappointing that there's no way to talk about these games on BL in standalone terms. The record will say that I replayed Dreams with a playtime of 9 hours, but that really doesn't tell the whole story.