In Dreamshift, you must guide our exhausted hero to the doorway across the level. (Arrow keys to move, Shift to jump, Z to toggle switches or use the exit.) His energy drops quickly and he is unable to jump when his energy is low. His stress also builds, but very slowly.
When his energy runs out, he falls asleep. In the dream world, he can fly and recover his stress and energy. If his energy completely refills, he wakes up again. Taking damage in the dream world, however, wakes him up immediately and causes extra stress.
You can force him to fall asleep (or force him to wake up, if he's near his 'body') by pressing 'x', but it will cause extra stress doing it this way.
The higher your stress gets, the more miasma will appear in the dream world and the more shades they will spawn. If your stress level gets too high, they will manifest in the real world, and are deadly to you!
(There are only two levels in the game currently; I may take the time to make more and add extra elements to the game if the rest of you think it's worth pursuing.)
Great idea! Just some glitches in the dream world (sometimes you wake up as soon as you fall asleep). I love how the worlds merge when the stress bar fills up!
I really liked the interplay between the awake and dream worlds, and the ways each of them affected the sleep and stress meters. The dynamic music was good, too.
As designed, this game involves a lot of waiting. Get to ledge, wait to fall asleep, flip switch, wait, wake up etc etc. Then I died...didn't want to wait again.
@lucidsheep - It's not a glitch; you wake up as soon as your energy recharges, so if you force yourself to go to sleep while your energy is almost full, it will wake you up immediately. Jump around a bit to burn off some energy first and you'll be fine.
Good game! It took me a second to figure out how to get past the second jump and that I needed to use the dream world, but once I got a hang of the mechanics, it was pretty cool.
The audio in the game is awesome. I like how it changes based on stress level and whether or not you are in the dream world.
Lots of ominousness, specially when stressed. Definitely adds points to mood. Although, with the game's slight difficulty, there should be a checkpoint at round 2. I get stressed to restart the entire game again. :( Also, SHIFT key for jump isn't friendly on a Windows computer due to the "Sticky Key" feature. Just to let you know. Very nice game overall! Now, I must sleep...zzz
Nice idea- A bit buggy at times, it even crashed once for me- But worked fine after that. I like how the dreamworld and realworld merges when stress is high. I could've been without the yawn animation everytime I switched back and forth, but that is being a bit nit picky :P
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samooJAM27 Aug 2014, 20:01
The controls felt a bit stiff. Transition between worlds could be faster too. Good points from innovation and theme :)
The way the dream world "leaks" is amazing, I love it. However, it is very frustrating to fail on level 2 and get booted back to level 1, especially if I just did something stupid like miss the first jump!
It's a pretty neat concept. I got a little freaked out just from reading your gameplay description, heh... I really liked how different the dream world felt once the stress level started rising. You pulled off a very nice transition between a happy, ethereal rest and... something very wrong, and very dire. The music for it was most excellently done.
Unfortunately the platforming itself was a tad buggy. I stopped after missing the same jump a second time because for some reason it didn't register the key press (or something). I really liked what I played of it, though.
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Nice music, good production values.
The audio in the game is awesome. I like how it changes based on stress level and whether or not you are in the dream world.
Also, SHIFT key for jump isn't friendly on a Windows computer due to the "Sticky Key" feature. Just to let you know. Very nice game overall! Now, I must sleep...zzz
Incredible for a compo, good job!
Unfortunately the platforming itself was a tad buggy. I stopped after missing the same jump a second time because for some reason it didn't register the key press (or something). I really liked what I played of it, though.