I love indie games and I try to support them as much as possible. Much like the big news channels have failed us as far as information is concerned I feels as though the big game producers have gotten lazy and churn out crap games knowing that we are just going to buy whatever they make provided they have a good advertising campaign. There have been lots of examples just in the past year and for me and many other people, we have lost faith in the big AAA game companies like Rockstar and Square-Enix because of this.
Therefore, any chance that I get I try to support small indie studios even if I don't know very much about the game. This is what happened when I got involved with Dreaming Sarah
src
I for one have no problem with 16 or even 8-bit graphics provided that they come with a good soundtrack and if we are lucky, a good story. This game looked promising with the trailers even though it was evident from these same trailers that the graphics were going to be very very old school.
src
This really doesn't bother me provided that the game is somewhat interesting, has some sort of clear objective and if you are lucky, a nice story involved as well. Unfortunately, Dreaming Sarah fails on so many ways as far as all of this is concerned except one: The music in the game is fantastic.
They get away with having a convoluted story by somewhat suggesting that the entire whimsical world is taking place inside the dreams of "Sarah" but this point is just assumed as you progress through the increasingly very strange world that doesn't have much connection from one part to the next.
src
One minute you are in a field jumping on platforms the next you go up in an elevator to a tower filled with eyes that follow you as you move across the room. Almost nothing kills or even attacks you. You have no weapons and at one point you discover a rocketship that takes you to a planet that you can easily traverse in 30 seconds. None of it makes sense, just like a lot of dreams.
src
Generally I would enjoy this sort of "out there" mystique in a game but with Dreaming Sarah there is one very major flaw that you are going to encounter the entire playthrough: Where the hell am i supposed to go next?
As you gather items that are mostly completely meaningless as far as progression is concerned you have to just wander over and over and over to all the areas that you have already seen dozens of times before looking for that one thing that you missed and trust me, the things will be very difficult to spot.
src
In one of the most annoyingly frustrating parts of the game you are in a library of sorts where there are a sequence of doors that you have to enter / exit is JUST THE RIGHT PATTERN in order to get to a new area. There is no rhyme or reason as to why this sequence is necessary you just have to do it over and over and over and over again until you accidentally get it right or look it up online. This sort of nuance is something that used to be considered an Easter Egg in games in the past but in the case of this game it is a necessary step in order to progress to the end of the game. At one point in time you gain the ability to turn into a fish but this actually isn't necessary to reach any of the areas in the game, it is just a shortcut.
I'll be honest, the only reason why I finished this game was because I cheated on multiple occasions by looking online as to WTF I am supposed to do next. This wouldn't be so bad if there was some great variety as far as the various boards are concerned but that is not what happens at all. In one part of the game you find yourself in a desert where if you go to the right, you will continue to do so endlessly... or so it appeared because I actually held the controller down in one direction while doing something else with my other hand on my phone for around 20 minutes. It's just senseless!
src
Also, there were multiple times that the game bugged out and was stuck irreversibly and you had no choice but to exit the game, shut it down, and restart at your last save. For a game that could probably fit 400 times on an SD card the size of your pinky nail this is just inexcusable, even for a really small studio.
I bought this game because I wanted to support small studios but I sincerely hope that this studio remains small or even better, just gives up and starts making spreadsheets or something like that. This game is terrible even for a $3 game.
By the time you make it to the ending there is supposed to be some sort of deep story to interpret but honestly, I don't know what it is. Maybe I am not smart enough to figure it out. What Dreaming Sarah actually ends up being is a mess of a game that would have been considered garbage even back on the NES. The friggin trophies don't even display properly in the menu for someone going for platinum (and please don't try to do this.)
At $3 this game was a waste of frustrating time. Even if it was offered for free I would still suggest giving it a hard pass. I finished it only out of curiosity as to whether there was going to be some sort of amazing moment that put the almost non-existent story together but that never happened. When I finished it I immediately deleted it and feel as though that money, as small as it was, would have been better spent on tacos or literally anything else.