I initially played this years ago, enjoyed it for the surreal and unusual experience it was, then moved on. I never really delved in passed a few dream days, now I decided to revisit this title properly. As a disclaimer I'm not really sure what rating to give this game, I initially gave it 3/5 but I'm not to confident in this rating, frankly I'm not to sure exactly what to rate this "game", as many know this is more of an "abstract art fever dream simulator" rather then a game, after all this was the intention of the main creator/devs of this title, and depending on how you view this aspect/intention of the devs, it can affect how you rate/view the title as a whole. Either you get what they were going for, or you don't. And like almost anything in media, it's not for everyone, which is fine.
The core mechanics consist of simply exploring the dreamscape. Either walking/or running through different bizarre locations, and sometimes interacting with weird NPCs/Objects via the Circle button. And also at the end of each dream is a grid which decides weather your dream was a "upper", "downer", "static", or "dynamic" dream. As far as I'm aware I'm not to sure what decides these things but I'm sure there's people out there who know why the grid decides what your dream was. There's no end goal besides I suppose reaching 365 days and getting the strange end cutscene. As far as gameplay mechanics this is about it.
When I first played this years ago, the initial days I played were for sure strange and weird, but after a bit I visited most of the locations the game had to offer and simply stopped. Personally, a mistake on my part, one of the main things about this game is the longer you play, the weirder and weirder the dreams get, the more bizarre the NPCs get, the more corrupt the worlds become. This is the perfect game to experience alone AND with a friend, seeing the reaction of someone on how incredibly offbeat the game starts becoming (if it already wasn't offbeat from the start), is a treat. The peculiar, and at times INCREDIBLY ambient music, also makes the experience all the more intriguing. The longer you go on, the more randomized events start to pop up, you might randomly see a weird/cryptic quote about a cat with a disturbingly robotic tone, and that will count as a whole day/dream. Or you might see the locations that are familiar to you growing increasingly more distorted, textures in places they seemingly shouldn't be, NPCs doing who knows what, etc. You might randomly see a cutscene of a plane calmly traversing the sky, a car driving on the road and crashing itself into the ocean, a farris wheel that (if interacted with) you can ride, along so many more uncanny, surreal and occasionally creepy/unsettling events that can transpire.
If I understand correctly, whenever you interact(/run into) with something or someone, you are often transitioned to the next random area, sometimes when you are transitioned you see a white transition screen, which is a neutral link, when you see a red screen transition, it represent a nightmare or negative link, a blue being a positive link, and I'm unsure what cyan, pink, or yellow represent nor am I sure what in the algorithm determines how the game decides these transitions, but that simply adds to the mystery of this title, I THINK they help determine where you land on the grid at the end of a dream, but I could be mistaken.
And a pretty important mechanic I have yet to speak on, is the incredibly mysterious/stress inducing Grey Man. He is the closest thing this game had to an "antagonist" and I can see why many say this. He will occasionally appear on certain day/locations and when you see him he will follow you, if he gets to you, he will erase your ability to "flashback" on a certain day/dream. It's best to run away as soon as you see him(as most do), sometimes if you were already running he appears right in front of you and due to the controls you can't turn around in time which can get a little annoying, but I think that can emphasize to the player not to be running all the time, simply incentivizing to merely walk, and truly take in/explore every detail of each location, also promoting the player to catch new NPCs/events that were not previously there.
The Gray Man, and MANY more elements of this game, if not the whole game all together, are all oozing with much speculation/fan theories. Supposedly the creator intended that there are no hidden meanings to anything, no hidden story elements, etc. But that certainly hasn't stopped the community, in fact many of the theories this game has are quite intriguing and somewhat make sense. I won't delve into them, but for the Gray Man for instance, there's been theories of him an Alien who's probing your mind/dreams, or That he's a murderer, or he's the result of the player trying to suppress bad memories, upon many more theories for him alone.
There is SO much more to delve into on theories alone, this is an aspect that personally enhances this experience, whether any of is true or not, I feel it may add "reason" to an otherwise strange, bizarre, and sometimes disturbing abstract experience. as most things there's so much more to discuss, but this was my experience with the game. If you're not boring, I definitely recommend this title, or at the very least, play through the first 20 or so days. But once again, this isn't for everyone.
If anyone cares, here's some moments of me playing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpmZF7AwErI
The core mechanics consist of simply exploring the dreamscape. Either walking/or running through different bizarre locations, and sometimes interacting with weird NPCs/Objects via the Circle button. And also at the end of each dream is a grid which decides weather your dream was a "upper", "downer", "static", or "dynamic" dream. As far as I'm aware I'm not to sure what decides these things but I'm sure there's people out there who know why the grid decides what your dream was. There's no end goal besides I suppose reaching 365 days and getting the strange end cutscene. As far as gameplay mechanics this is about it.
When I first played this years ago, the initial days I played were for sure strange and weird, but after a bit I visited most of the locations the game had to offer and simply stopped. Personally, a mistake on my part, one of the main things about this game is the longer you play, the weirder and weirder the dreams get, the more bizarre the NPCs get, the more corrupt the worlds become. This is the perfect game to experience alone AND with a friend, seeing the reaction of someone on how incredibly offbeat the game starts becoming (if it already wasn't offbeat from the start), is a treat. The peculiar, and at times INCREDIBLY ambient music, also makes the experience all the more intriguing. The longer you go on, the more randomized events start to pop up, you might randomly see a weird/cryptic quote about a cat with a disturbingly robotic tone, and that will count as a whole day/dream. Or you might see the locations that are familiar to you growing increasingly more distorted, textures in places they seemingly shouldn't be, NPCs doing who knows what, etc. You might randomly see a cutscene of a plane calmly traversing the sky, a car driving on the road and crashing itself into the ocean, a farris wheel that (if interacted with) you can ride, along so many more uncanny, surreal and occasionally creepy/unsettling events that can transpire.
If I understand correctly, whenever you interact(/run into) with something or someone, you are often transitioned to the next random area, sometimes when you are transitioned you see a white transition screen, which is a neutral link, when you see a red screen transition, it represent a nightmare or negative link, a blue being a positive link, and I'm unsure what cyan, pink, or yellow represent nor am I sure what in the algorithm determines how the game decides these transitions, but that simply adds to the mystery of this title, I THINK they help determine where you land on the grid at the end of a dream, but I could be mistaken.
And a pretty important mechanic I have yet to speak on, is the incredibly mysterious/stress inducing Grey Man. He is the closest thing this game had to an "antagonist" and I can see why many say this. He will occasionally appear on certain day/locations and when you see him he will follow you, if he gets to you, he will erase your ability to "flashback" on a certain day/dream. It's best to run away as soon as you see him(as most do), sometimes if you were already running he appears right in front of you and due to the controls you can't turn around in time which can get a little annoying, but I think that can emphasize to the player not to be running all the time, simply incentivizing to merely walk, and truly take in/explore every detail of each location, also promoting the player to catch new NPCs/events that were not previously there.
The Gray Man, and MANY more elements of this game, if not the whole game all together, are all oozing with much speculation/fan theories. Supposedly the creator intended that there are no hidden meanings to anything, no hidden story elements, etc. But that certainly hasn't stopped the community, in fact many of the theories this game has are quite intriguing and somewhat make sense. I won't delve into them, but for the Gray Man for instance, there's been theories of him an Alien who's probing your mind/dreams, or That he's a murderer, or he's the result of the player trying to suppress bad memories, upon many more theories for him alone.
There is SO much more to delve into on theories alone, this is an aspect that personally enhances this experience, whether any of is true or not, I feel it may add "reason" to an otherwise strange, bizarre, and sometimes disturbing abstract experience. as most things there's so much more to discuss, but this was my experience with the game. If you're not boring, I definitely recommend this title, or at the very least, play through the first 20 or so days. But once again, this isn't for everyone.
If anyone cares, here's some moments of me playing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpmZF7AwErI