Dreamland (2025)

⠀

[quote][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop][b]Warning: AI Slop[/b][/url] This e-book is partially or completely written with talentless, soulless AI generated content.[/quote] "Dreamland" is not a game, it's an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game. This garbage Russian e-book is badly translated AI slop, and of course the topic is all about the author and his imaginary girlfriend as they go on a surrealist adventure in "dreamland", and the fantasy here is that someone really imagined it would be okay to foist all this disgusting AI slop at gamers in the form of a crap e-book about the author pretending to have a girlfriend. Ugh. It's incredibly cringey. This was slapped together with the godawful Ren'Py visual…

Dreamland is a really strange little adventure, and I liked how quickly it pulled me into its dreamlike world. I follow Alexey, an ordinary worker whose life starts becoming increasingly unusual after he begins seeing mysterious symbols. From there, the story sends him and a group of young people into other dimensions where reality and dreams start blending together. I enjoyed the feeling of never being completely sure what I was going to encounter next. The gameplay is mainly built around visual novel style storytelling, exploration and puzzles. I move through different scenes, interact with characters and work through situations that can involve both puzzles and interpersonal conflicts. I liked that the choices I make are important to how the story develops, because it gives me a reason to think about my decisions instead of simply clicking through dialogue. The characters are another part I enjoyed. Dreamland has a colorful cast with their own personalities and stories, and the strange situations they find themselves in make the conversations more interesting. I especially liked the contrast between the ordinary beginnings of the story and the bizarre places the group eventual…