A game can be viewed as a form of art in several ways, for instance, its amazing soundtrack, beautiful visuals, and engaging narrative. Unfortunately, Lost Dream: Darkness, developed and published by Morning Shift Studios, fails at all of the ways a game strives to be an art form. Furthermore, the game also fails to deliver anything enjoyable at all. This title is a game that features a bland world, a poor narrative with no direction, and no music. The only saving grace of this title is that it has no bugs or glitches.
From Darkness to Light
The plot of Lost Dream: Darkness is as follows: A fox wakes up to too much rain. This fox has a blue light all over his body for some reason. Regardless, he journeys for about 15 minutes until you reach the light and the end of the game. Over your 15-minute journey, you will encounter four lines of dialogue, none of which explain what is going on, why you need to reach the light, and who this fox is.
Overall the story is very weak in this title. I did not care about the narrative being told because of the non-existent world-building and character development. The dialogue is also very pointless, all of which are various ways of telling the player how far away they are from the end of the game. This is a huge disappointment as the game’s marketing will have you believe it is very story-focused. Unfortunately, this game’s story is very weak and the gameplay is just as weak.
The Empty Land
It is a challenge to even get to the gameplay of Lost Dream: Darkness. This title has a very unclear menu that pops up as soon as the game begins which had me believing the game was broken. I would hit quit, to close this menu but it sent me to the title screen instantly. This was very annoying, however, it was a small issue compared to the rest of the game.
This game has some of the most boring and pointless gameplay I have ever played. There are three control options, jump, move, and attack. While the jump and move commands are used in this game, the attack button is completely useless as there are no enemies. Furthermore, the jump button is used only three times throughout the game. This means the game is essentially walking throughout a bland world with the same tree and rock models plastered everywhere until you reach the end of the game. As stated before this game is 15 minutes long. Even though it is short, it still felt like it took an hour to beat thanks to the boring nature of the gameplay.
Green Green Grass
Lost Dream: Darkness disappoints yet again with its presentation. As stated before, the same models and textures are reused throughout the whole game. While this isn’t inherently a problem, most games do this, the game doesn’t have any interesting landscapes or landmarks to counteract the lazy reuse of these models. Furthermore, you will see the same model on the same screen multiple times, which is very immersion-breaking. While the model work is well done, it’s overlooked by the reuse of these assets.
While the game does not have any music, the sounds of rain, swimming, and walking are done very well. I was quite impressed by it. Unfortunately, this doesn’t save the game from its lack of music or its lack of interesting gameplay. Lastly, the game runs smoothly at a consistent frame rate and is optimized very well.
Last Dream: Darkness
Lost Dream: Darkness is one of the worst games I have ever played. If it wasn’t for this review, I would have quit the game halfway throughout of pure boredom. While the sound design is alright, every other aspect of the game is lacking. I do not recommend giving this game a go even for its fairly cheap price. I hope that this title leads to a better game in the future from these developers.
