Dreamed Away Review

A dream worth chasing, with a few rough edges

Dreamed Away is a turn-based action RPG from WAKE UP GAMES, published by Pineapple Works, that wears its influences proudly: EarthBound and Mother for its pixel-art presentation, Undertale for its bullet-dodging combat, and Omori for its blend of childlike whimsy and creeping psychological horror. Players take on the role of Théo, a boy navigating a strange, dreamlike world in search of his missing sister Louise, uncovering a slow-burn mystery as they go. The game's development history is unusually public and long-running -- a Kickstarter campaign launched in February 2024 followed more than two years of demo updates and community playtesting stretching back to 2023, giving a substantial share of its eventual reviewers direct, hands-on familiarity with the game well before its confirmed, unambiguous release on 23 October 2025. At NZ$27.49, it launched to a Very Positive review sample -- 58 reviews at the time of writing, with only 3 negative reviews in the English-language pull -- reflecting a genuinely devoted following that had been tracking the project for years.

That devotion comes through clearly in the praise. One reviewer who logged nearly 400 hours across the demo period alone before release day writes simply that the game "blown me away," citing an atmosphere that "feels familiar yet foreign at the same time." Another, with over 10,000 minutes of pre-release playtesting behind them, calls it a game they've been "following... since 2.5 years," praising graphics that are "surely inspired by mother/earthbound" with detail and consistency maintained "until the end." The comparisons other reviewers reach for are just as specific -- Undertale and Omori come up repeatedly, both for the combat's dual dodge-and-rhythm system and for the tonal mix of cozy exploration and genuine horror beats, with multiple reviewers describing being caught off guard by how effectively the game shifts between the two. The story draws similarly strong, if more guarded, praise: reviewers consistently describe it as captivating and worth theorizing about as it unfolds, with several specifically crediting a multiple-ending structure and a thoughtful, non-obvious conclusion for rewarding the time invested.

Set against that praise, the review sample converges on a specific and genuinely serious combat complaint that appears across both negative and otherwise glowing reviews. One detailed negative review, written by a player who completed the game up to its final boss, describes enemy attack patterns as "entirely random" and "literally impossible to dodge" on higher difficulties, paired with a levelling system that leaves damage output "consistently dealing out 8-13 damage all the way through to the final boss" regardless of how much the player invests in gear or experience. Crucially, this isn't an isolated complaint from someone who simply didn't enjoy the game -- a strongly positive review from a self-described beta tester who played on the hardest "Nightmare" difficulty independently corroborates the same core issue, writing that "some attacks would be downright impossible to avoid. Sometimes unfair even," and explicitly recommending other players stick to the easier "Dream Mode" instead. A separate positive reviewer raises a related but distinct problem: enemies that respawn immediately upon re-entering an area, which they say repeatedly broke their concentration during puzzle-solving sections badly enough that it pushed them to quit a session entirely rather than push through.

The other recurring thread in the sample concerns pacing, focused overwhelmingly on one specific stretch of the game: an extended underwater hospital sequence that multiple reviewers, including several who otherwise strongly recommend the game, single out by name as a slow, fetch-quest-heavy detour that drags noticeably relative to the rest of the game's tighter pacing. One detailed negative review calls it "utter nonsense where the only way to continue is to run around through the entire game's map and press the A button on literally everything," while a separate strongly positive reviewer, writing well after a post-launch patch specifically targeting this section, still describes it as feeling "slow" even with the fixes applied. A smaller number of reviewers separately note that the game's promised multiple endings share roughly 80% of their content before diverging, limiting the incentive to replay for a different outcome, and one detailed, generally positive long-form review raises a related dialogue-pacing complaint -- specifically, moments where the game withholds an objective's location from the player despite its own characters treating that information as obvious, leading to extended, unguided searching that reviewer found more frustrating than intentionally mysterious.

Performance and platform support come through as a relative strength rather than a weakness -- the game earned an official Steam Deck verification roughly three weeks after launch, and reviewers who mention the platform consistently describe it running smoothly on handheld hardware, a contrast worth noting given how many of the sample's complaints are about design choices rather than technical execution. Value also reads favourably across the sample: at NZ$27.49, reviewers who completed the main story describe runtimes in the 8-to-15-hour range depending on how much exploration and puzzle-solving they pursued, and several who bought the game after following its multi-year demo period describe the price as more than justified by both the finished product and the years of free playtesting access they'd already received. The developer's post-launch responsiveness also draws specific praise -- three patches landed within the first two months of release, with at least one reviewer noting directly that a patch had already addressed part of the pacing complaint around the underwater hospital sequence, even if they felt the section still ran long afterward. That pattern of a small, dedicated studio visibly listening to specific, detailed player feedback in the weeks immediately following launch is consistent with the trust many reviewers say they'd already built up over the game's unusually long public development window.

Verdict

Dreamed Away succeeds at what it clearly set out to be: an atmospheric, EarthBound-and-Undertale-inspired RPG with a genuinely captivating mystery, striking pixel art, and a devoted following built over years of transparent public development. Its combat system asks real questions about fairness at higher difficulties -- questions raised independently by both its harshest critics and some of its most enthusiastic supporters -- and its pacing sags noticeably during one specific late-game stretch that a meaningful share of reviewers call out by name. For genre fans willing to play on a forgiving difficulty and push through a rough patch in the back half, it's a strong, heartfelt recommendation.