Lucy Dreaming sends you as a recurring nightmare girl to investigate a murder involving town secrets, bizarre encounters with residents, and some pretty crazy dreams.
The game begins with a nightmare that Lucy sees every night. She’s been falling through the sky for what seems like an eternity. When Lucy woke up, she decided it was the day she would try to rid her sleep of her nightmares. Before she can do this, however, she must find her diary. It contains a to-do list and is a basic guide for the rest of the game. You will also need to find your computer password as you will need to open your email.
The game begins to pick up pace once the diary is found. In her diary, her first goal is to create a dream box, a psychological concept proposed by her father. Anything she adds to it will appear in her dreams and help her face her nightmares.To create this, Lucy embarks on an adventure exploring her own home and town. Once she’s created her first dream box, she goes to bed to see if it works. She enters a new dream of being in some kind of comedy club and has to tell jokes to impress the judges.
Finding enough jokes will earn Lucy enough scores to help her find the computer password. She then leaves her dream and reenters reality, where she enters a password and opens an email to a cryptic message in an old newspaper article about the murder of a townsman named Fergus Fig. Who was his killer and what happened? The Fig family played a large role in the town, and the story of Fergus’ death is believed to be that his brother killed him over a disagreement over family land. But Lucy believes there’s more to this story, and that she believes it’s tied to her nightmare in some way. When the rest of the game follows her.
Lucy Dreaming is very easy to play mechanically. To move Lucy, click where you want her to go. To manipulate an object, simply click on it. At the bottom of the screen, there are a “see” button, a “pick up” button, a “talk” button, and a “use” button. Depending on how you want to interact with something or who you want to interact with, simply click one of these options before interacting.
You can pick up items and combine them or use them for objects. For example, there are points to combine tote bags and sticks, and points to fill a glass of water with a fish tank. However, most of Lucy Dreaming involves reading and finding clues that help solve Lucy’s situation.
This is where the challenges of the game arise. Lucy’s dream is a lot of fun and tells an interesting story, but there are some parts where she gets completely lost. Sometimes Lucy gives you hints, but it’s hard to understand some of the things you need to do without trying all the possibilities. She visits every area on the map, interacts with everyone she can, and speaks to anyone she finds.
In particular, some dream sequences have moments where you need to change things in the real world, then return to the dream to see what has changed and work from there. You can operate the dream box many times. Adding different things will change the place of your dreams and the people inside. A walkthrough is recommended as there are many considerations in solving different parts of this game. However, the game is still fun and I enjoyed playing it even though I didn’t understand some parts on my own.
Dreaming Lucy’s style has a 2D pixel vibe and is very well done. There’s a lot of detail in not only the story, but also the background and setting of all the places Lucy finds herself in. There are also plenty of references to various movies and books, which is always a fun factor in any game. (It’s Ludo!)
The music is great and not too distracting, and the characters are unique and fun to watch. Their voices are also well made. Normally I don’t like games reading aloud, but with Lucy Dreaming I didn’t mind.
Lucy Dreaming presents a deep and well-constructed mystery. It’s hard to put down because there are many twists and turns. Some parts can be hard to get past, but it’s still a lot of fun.The seven to ten hours of playtime are full of exciting discoveries, and the game’s sense of humor and overall storytelling Fun and very well made.
