Summary
- The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope incorporates a dream twist where the whole game turns out to be a hallucination, which divided fans.
- Dreams by Media Molecule gives players endless creative control over their dreams, leading to remarkable creations and fan games.
- Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance reveals a twist where the protagonists are not closing worlds simultaneously, but are actually invading dreams to help each other.
Dreams can be some of the wildest things that humans experience on a sometimes daily basis. They can range from sweet scenarios about getting cakes with friends in the park or involve an armed robbery with chickens. The human psyche is an unpredictable thing which is why dreams can make for an interesting gimmick in a video game.
Sometimes video games will make it clear that they take place within dreams or the human mind. Then there are games wherein the dream factor is set up as a twist. With that in mind, these eight entries will have spoilers warnings attached in case the endings need to be discussed.
8 The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope involves a bunch of high school kids getting trapped in the woods once their bus goes off the road. Like all games in this adventure game series, players have choices to make. Making the wrong ones will result in the death of the playable characters.
The odd thing about it is that it was all a dream or a hallucination of one of the characters as an adult. So, nothing the player does actually matters which rubbed some fans the wrong way. Others enjoyed the twists and turns along the way as it was completely unpredictable in The Dark Pictures Anthology series.
7 Dreams
When discussing the best dream games, one has to include Media Molecule’s Dreams in it. Their predecessor, LittleBigPlanet, also centered on dreams as the collective unconsciousness sort of made up the world of that series. The same is true for Dreams except players had a lot more control over their creativity.
Dreams could lead into other dreams and players created some truly astonishing pieces of work within the confines of the architecture. From fan games about Mario and Sonic to original titles, Dreams was only limited by the player’s imagination and skill level.
6 Epic Mickey: Power Of Illusion
The Illusion series is coming back into the limelight thanks to the Switch exclusive, Disney Illusion Island. Most of these Illusion titles involve dreams, or illusions wherein Mickey has to navigate through a mysterious world.
One of the best games in the series, Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, is akin to a Metroidvania and crosses over many Disney franchises such as Beauty and the Beast and Peter Pan. By the end, it’s implied that the whole thing may have been Minnie’s dream, although that is up to interpretation. Either way, this series overall is worth checking out.
5 Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance is a spinoff that takes place in between the second and third Kingdom Hearts games. Most of the core titles revolve around Sora having to close Keyholes to stop Heartless from invading other worlds.
This game stars Sora and Riku who have to close Sleeping Keyholes to stop a new set of monsters, Nightmares, from invading dreams. The big twist revealed toward the end is that the two heroes are not closing worlds simultaneously. Riku is sent into Sora’s dreams to help him wake up. It’s a bit confusing as most games in this series are, but the action is worth it.
4 Little Nemo: The Dream Master
Little Nemo: The Dream Master is a classic Capcom game from the NES based on both a comic and a film. The titular Nemo ventures off into Slumberland where all dreams meld with each other.
Players can use candy to lull animals to sleep and then crawl inside their bodies to gain powers. There’s a mole used for digging, as one example. It’s kind of a messed up process for a game on the NES. Imagine if players had to do that to raccoons in Super Mario Bros. 3.
3 Mario & Luigi: Dream Team
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is the fourth title in the Mario RPG series. The two brothers go to an island where Luigi finds and rests his head on an ancient pillow. Doing so opens up a portal to his mind which Mario jumps into for several reasons.
The team at AlphaDream was able to get more creative with battles inside Luigi since it does take place in a dream world wherein hundreds of Luigis aid Mario. Super Mario Bros. 2 also deserves a quick mention since that game turned out to be a dream of Mario’s.
2 Psychonauts 2
Psychonauts 2 doesn’t take place in dreams but it does take place in the minds of various characters. The same is true for the original game which is decades old by now. The subconscious holds a lot of secrets, and some of them are dreamlike nature, so it counts.
Psychonauts 2 in particular has some of the most creative platforming levels in the genre. While it did take a long time to get it, the wait was well worth it as Double Fine proved their creativity knows no bounds.
1 The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Mario had a game about dreams early on and it didn’t take many sequels for the Zelda series to follow either. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening takes place on an island after Link washes ashore from a shipwreck. The gameplay is similar to most top-down entries in the series except for one very large fetch quest that bleeds into dozens of others.
The twist at the end is that the entire thing was a dream of the Wind Fish, a godlike entity atop the island’s mountain. This is true for the remake of the game as well on Switch.