Dreamcore: A Backrooms Puzzle
Developer Montraluz
Publisher Tlön Industries
Release date 23 January 2025
Platform Unreal Engine 5
Formats PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store)
The Dreamcore aesthetic has swept social media over the past few years, involving images or videos of strange, liminal spaces and surreal, dream-like motifs, such as flying eyes or TV-headed people. It’s closely related to the surge of interest in liminal spaces more generally – eerily abandoned ‘in-between’ places – and in particular the immense popularity of the Backrooms concept, the idea that it’s possible to ‘no-clip’ through reality and end up in an endless expanse of empty rooms.
Dreamcore is a Backrooms Puzzle
Made in Unreal Engine 5 but reducing all that power and capability to rendering simple, stylized spaces, Dreamcore is an interesting premise. One that takes the Backrooms concept and turns it into a puzzle – but it’s simplicity fails to grapple with what makes The Backrooms so engaging.
The Aesthetics of Liminal Spaces
It’s perhaps little surprise that liminal spaces have captured people’s imagination. Images of oddly empty offices and shopping malls were something we were all fascinated with during the COVID lockdowns of 2020, and although such images have always been unsettling, they are doubly so now in the wake of our collective trauma. But the Backrooms also arose directly from video game logic: the act of ‘no-clipping’, slipping beyond the world the player was intended to see. The aesthetic of repeating textures and echoing endless corridors is drawn straight from the gaming realm, and liminal spaces abound in titles like Portal (2007), Control (2019), and Superliminal (2019).
Dreamcore: An Unfulfilled Promise
There are two levels included at launch, although more are in the works. The first level, Dreampools, is styled after a digital series by designer Jared Pike that features endless white-tiled swimming pools leading off into ominous darkened archways. The level sees you exploring a series of vast, increasingly absurd pools until eventually the sound of music leads you to a torch, which you can use to enter a pitch-black doorway and descend to the enormous, dimly lit basement in search of an exit.
All of this is mesmerizing, at first. The surreal landscapes draw you in, and the feeling of slowly getting lost in the maze-like levels is tantalizing, triggering a tingly, subconscious feeling that you’ll never find your way out of this nightmare dream space. But slowly, the shine wears off. The vistas merge together. The realization dawns that there’s nothing to do here, no threat to avoid, nothing to manipulate, no one to speak to.
All Style and No Substance
Tantalization rapidly turns to tedium, and frustration at the slow plod of your nameless character as you trot around in mindless circles, your sole aim to escape. There’s no substance here, other than the realization that getting lost in the Backrooms for real would be really, really boring. Sadly, what you’re left with is all aesthetic, and zero game.
Dreamcore: Verdict
This is a game that embraces a zeitgeist aesthetic without adding any depth or tension to its world to keep you engaged. For it to work, surrealism needs to explore the unexpected and irrational as well as offering a dreamlike state, Dreamcore does one of the three, and so feels like style over substance.
FAQs
Q: What is Dreamcore?
A: Dreamcore is a game that takes the Backrooms concept and turns it into a puzzle.
Q: What is the gameplay like?
A: The gameplay is slow and plodding, with no threats to avoid, nothing to manipulate, and no one to speak to.
Q: Is Dreamcore worth playing?
A: No, not without significant changes to the gameplay and the addition of depth and tension to the world.
