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All Written Member Reviews

5 star:
(18)
4 star:
(12)
3 star:
(4)
2 star:
(1)
1 star:
(0)
Average Rating: based on 35 ratings
Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 5
1–5 of 5


0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Wanted More, April 24, 2022
by jdh
Related reviews: Strange

The world I liked a lot. I liked the feeling of exploring it and wondering what strangeness would come next. Intriguing ideas. I wasn't happy with the ending, as I thought it should've had more and it felt abrupt to me and not conclusive. Yet I really enjoyed playing it.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
surreal and dreamy in the best possible way, January 18, 2021

All of S. Woodson's games are just amazing- the worldbuilding is dense and rich, and you get the feeling that you're only seeing a tiny piece of the universe the game takes place in. It's the same thing with Beautiful Dreamer.

There's not much I can say about this game without spoiling it, but I really enjoyed playing. The descriptions are vivid and although there aren't multiple endings, you definitely feel like you're choosing your own path.


My favorite little addition to this game was (Spoiler - click to show)the person in the owl-print shirt, who was hinted to be the protagonist of Magical Makeover (especially in the cast section). I'm a sucker for little connections like that, and it made me really happy.

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0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A dreamlike game ?, April 3, 2020

"Beautiful Dreamer" is obviously inspired by the Sandman universe created by Neil Gaiman, where dreams are ruled by an immortal (Dream, renamed Lune by Woodson), and death by another one (Death, which look likes Cephiros). Thanks to subtle changes to this pattern (the moths, for instance), the game is nevertheless pleasant, in spite of too long passages.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A massive fantasy/dreamlike Twine game reminiscent of Howl's Moving Castle, September 14, 2015*
Related reviews: about 1 hour

Beautiful Dreamer is one of the best Twine games to come out so far this year. In this fantasy game, you try to sleep at night during a windstorm.

You slowly realize that the game's world is not the same as your own. The world has a strong internal consistency, and you begin to learn more of its rules and nature.

The game is quite large. I was quite thrilled to discover (Spoiler - click to show)a classic CYOA gamebook near the beginning of the game. I thought the game was quite big already, but when I finished it and read the credits, I discovered that I had missed thousands of words' worth of text, which I went back and read.

The tone is a lot like Howl's Moving Castle (both the book and the movie), with archetypal characters, much talk of dreams, surreal magic, etc.

I also felt there were many similarities with Eidolon: (Spoiler - click to show)exploring a dark and shadowy bedroom, dream-type worlds, and a moth motif.

I strongly recommend this game.

* This review was last edited on February 3, 2016
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Whimsical but internally consistent exploration game, November 22, 2015
by verityvirtue (London)

It's a sleepless night for you, and instead of laying in bed trying to go to sleep, you've started exploring the house. You can read books, listen to the radio, or do a million other little things; like Magical Makeover, there is a bit of combinatorial explosion, which lends a surprising but welcome depth to the game.

The breadth of the writing makes for entertaining reading. You can listen to a radio discussion between what we would probably call aliens, disputing the existence of parallel universes. You can catch the lunar moth which has been eating your books. Thankfully, the seemingly arbitrary worlds are unified with a few common themes, and things referred to in the beginning are remain consistent to the end, which stopped Beautiful Dreamer from being bogged down with beautiful but pointless detail.

It is stated in the ending text that this game was meant to be chiefly an exploration game. The order in which you explore partially determines what you experience, but otherwise there is a single ending. This is not meant as a criticism. Woodson creates gorgeously detailed worlds, awash with colour and light, as befits a world meant to belong in a dream - not your dream, but someone's dream.

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