What The STRUCK is Dreamscaper?

(a beautiful rogue-lite aRPG, that combines dungeon crawler elements with a ton of loot diversity and respects your time)

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Dreamscaper is a strategic, fluid, and dynamic aRPG Roguelite blending elements from brawlers, top-down shooters, and dungeon crawlers. Every slumber is a different dungeon and you must unlock the power of your dreams to see a new day. Players battle the nightmares that live in a young woman’s subconscious. Tackle the permadeath of the dreamscapes by night, but keep the friendships you make by day in order to face the next dream stronger than before. Play as Cassidy and dive into her subconscious, taking on the surreal nightmares she wrestles with in order to save her from a dark fate.

Video Version:

The Story:

Without spoiling or revealing too much: You will take control of Cassidy, the heroine, and dive into her dreamworld to fight various nightmares, while using her friendships in the waking world to help he overcome her challenges.

Adventure through beautiful, haunting dreams to discover untold secrets, vanquish nightmares, and upgrade your gear all while uncovering Cassidy’s story.

Lean into the nightmares and make the rush of permadeath your ally as progressive exploration, a multitude of surreal items, and an ever-changing world create deep replay-ability. 

Live Cassidy’s waking life and forge friendships with the people around her. Empower Cassidy with their hopes and memories to dispel the darkness of her nightmares.

Combat:

The game’s combat is pretty fun & fast paced. You can choose: 1 of 36 Melee weapons, 1 of 16 Ranged weapons, 1 of 8 Shoes, 1 of 15 Shields, and 1 starting (+ 1 more later as drop) of 37 Lucid Attacks. On top of this you choose 1 of 7 Influences (passive auras/buffs) that are based on your friendship level with certain waking world NPCs. And it doesn’t end there! As you explore the dreamworld you can find a plethora of “keepsakes”, which provide you with passive stat bonuses and/or procs… some of them even grant you companions/summons. The mix-and-matching of those things gives players the freedom to take advantage of the fast-paced combat and play their “runs” the way they want.

A rich, expansive combat system rewards skilled play. Use careful positioning, exact timing and quick reflexes to defeat foes with an abundance of combat options.

Each weapon class in Dreamscaper is unique, from rending the earth below your nightmares to whipping a yo-yo into their faces. You’ll have a myriad of ways to approach combat.

Loadout:

As I mentioned above, You can choose: 1 of 36 Melee weapons, 1 of 16 Ranged weapons, 1 of 8 Shoes, 1 of 15 Shields, and 1 starting (+ 1 more later as drop) of 37 Lucid Attacks. On top of this you choose 1 of 7 Influences (passive auras/buffs) that are based on your friendship level with certain waking world NPCs.

Each of those items starts as Tier I and with white rarity (the worst). However, it is possible to later upgrade those items’ Tier (I believe the max is Tier IV), while the rarity seems to be something we can not change. Better rarity version of all items (green, blue, purple, yellow) seem to be obtained only as drops from mobs or chests inside the dreamscape. Better rarity means more affixes. Those affixes can be re-rolled while inside the dreamscape (if you encounter an enchanting room):

You can see me scroll through the lists of each category below:

Those may be the starting loadout’s 7 components but there is another layer of loot/gear – the Keepsakes. There are various kind of Keepsakes that one can find as drops from mobs or chests. Some examples are simply passive stat boosts, or companion that, for example, attack each time we do, some can be procs that trigger when certain conditions are met, and others can be a mixture of a stat boost + stat decrease to balance out. The Tier and Rarity rules apply to keepsakes as well. Keepsake tiers can be upgraded while the rarity can not (unless you find a better one as a drop).

Difficulty/Intesnisty:

There are 3 difficulty stages: Normal, Hard, & Nightmare. Hard will unlock after you’ve played a few runs (not sure exactly how it unlocked). And eventually Nightmare should unlock as you get further in your Runs.

There are also 4 categories of difficulty that can each be modified separately to suit your preferences. The options for normal/hard/nightmare are:

• Enemies – Standard Enemies/Increased number & configuration of Enemies/Increased number, types & waves of Enemies
• Damage – +0% Damage Received/+50% Damage Received/+100% Damage Received
• Floor size – Standard Floor size & easier Challenge Rooms/+50% Floor Size/+50% Floor Size & Font Disabled
• Bosses – Standard Bosses/Faster, +50% Health & +50% Damage/Faster, +100% Health & +100% Damage

Each single increase of any category will add 1 Intensity. For each Intensity point you will get +5% Resolve, Glass & Inspiration. It also says “Upgraded apartment decorations” regardless of intensity point so not sure what that would be.

Meditation:

There are 3 main improvements/activities that players can take advantage of during the “waking” phase in-between dreamscape runs. One of those is Meditation, which allows us to boost our own stats passively.

Meditation allows the player to improve stats like: Maximum Health, Maximum Lucid (used for ranged attacks and lucid attacks), status effect duration, additional starting companion, dmg to bosses and more. Spending enough of the related currency on upgrades will add up and reaching certain milestones will unlock more “resolutions” for Cassidy to invest into.

Daydreaming:

Daydreaming is another waking wold activity. Unlike Meditation that lets us upgrade Cassidy’s stats, this one will let us improve the Dreamscapes in various ways.

Daydreaming allows the player to unlock improvements like: the number of unlocked equipment in the Merchant Rooms (shops), the number of utility items in the Merchant Rooms (shops), unlocking various rooms & puzzle rooms to each of the 6 acts (starting from act 1 unlocks and going up), increased rarity of the Merchant Room items, decreased enchanting cost and more. Spending enough of the related currency on upgrades will add up and reaching certain milestones will unlock more “daydreams” for Cassidy to invest into.

Sketchbook/Sketching:

The Sketchbook is a waking world activity will allow you to Sketch various “Ideas” that you find and unlock during your dreamscape runs. Once an idea has been found it will go into the Sketchbook. From there, you can invest Sparks (which drop from the act bosses and you also get some from the “To-DO List) to complete those sketches and unlock the items/abilities/passives. Once something has been unlocked/sketched it will start dropping in the dream world and in some cases it will also be unlocked in your loadout as a starting item choice.

Other Locations & Gift Recipes:

There are also 2 additional Locations that have no activity tied to them: Alexandria Books & Zeitgeist Records. Those 2 as well as Taylor Park (where we Meditate), Silk Lounge (where we Daydream), and Caspecci Cafe (where we Sketch) will randomly spawn blue glowing orbs that the players can pick up. Those blue orbs are Recipes for crafting Gifts, and those gifts you can give to the various NPCs to improve your relationship level with them.

Influences & NPCs:

There are 7 NPCs that we can interact with via “Chit-chat” or by giving them gifts. Chit chats are not always available but once they are it will allow us to learn about an NPC’s interests, which affect how much relationship points we get when giving them certain gifts (based on the gift and the NPCs interests). The game keeps record of any interest we’ve discovered in the “Notes” section of our Journal.

Each of the 7 NPCs has a different Influence aura/buff that will level up and improve as our relationship with that NPC improves. There are (i assume) a total of 8 levels for each Influence.

Crafting Gifts:

When it comes to Crafting Gifts, you’ll first need to find the recipe and a few of those seem to randomly spawn after each dreamscape run. Not sure if how far you reach in your run affects the quality (stars) of the recipes that spawn but its possible that it does affect it. Crafting requires its own currency (just like meditation and daydreaming have separate ones as well) and the better the start of a gift the more of that currency you’ll need to craft it. Once you’ve given a gift to an NPC and it end up liking it (matching their “Likes”) it will indicate so in the crafting menu. Otherwise you’ll have to guess based on the items and the “Likes” if it will be a good match.

My advice will be to try and focus on giving gifts to just 1 NPC at first so you can max out your favorite Influence as quick as possible. Even if an NPC doesn’t “match”with a certain gift, you’ll still improve the relationship between the two of you. Can’t confirm if giving the same “matching” gift twice will yield the same gains but it’s worth giving it a try if there’s nothing better to craft and you don’t feel like waiting for a new recipe.

To-Do List:

The To-Do List is the place where you can check your achievements and claim rewards for the ones that have been completed. There are all sorts of challenges that rewards various currencies as reward that you can use for Meditation, Sketching, Daydreaming or Crafting.

PROS & CONS:

PROS

• Beautiful World
• Each run rewards your time
• Fast Paced Combat
• Solid VFX & SFX
• Amazing Build Diversity
• Separate Difficulty Sliders
• A TON of replayability value
• Option to SKIP boss fights

CONS

• no option to start from a higher act
• no co-op (local or online)

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This concludes my First Impressions of Dreamscaper. If you’re interested in the game below are links to the various platforms where one can buy it (you can just click the links to open a new tab):

• Official Website

Platforms

Steam

Nintendo Switch

Epic Games Store [this is a referral link – i get some profit if you use it]