Dream of Things 物之梦

My instinct with small Chinese indie releases published by indienova is to pay close attention, and Dream of Things justifies that instinct within its first few minutes. You are the Ringmaster, a post-mortem amnesiac who can hold a phone up to household objects and slip inside their inner worlds. The setup sounds absurd. It earns the absurdity. The core loop works like a chain of miniature anthology games connected by a single mansion. Each object you befriend, from the shower curtain to the old clock, has its own self-contained puzzle space built around its personality and regrets. Mechanically, Tear Bird leans into laser-redirection challenges, physics-driven prop puzzles, and mechanism-unlocking sequences spread across more than ten of these dream spaces. The variety is genuine. One room asks you to redirect light beams with careful mirror placement; another has you carrying objects across a dreamscape with no inventory and punishing physics. That second type is where the game earns its "Difficult" Steam tag honestly. Items slip, collisions are slightly loose, and there will be moments where frustration creeps in through the side door. The developer has already shipped post-launch patches that adjusted magic circle positioning, fixed laser properties, and added ramps to prevent balls from getting stuck, so the roughest edges are being smoothed. But go in expecting some friction. The visual register is a cartoon-style 3D world that reads bright on the surface and melancholy underneath. That contrast is the whole mood: primary colours housing things that are quietly sad. The in-game phone used to navigate dream spaces and communicate with objects is a double-edged tool. Early players noted the device has several pages and menus that go largely unexplained at the start, which can stall momentum before the world properly opens up. Stick with it. The game also ships with multiple endings tracked through achievement unlock patterns, meaning the accumulation of scattered notes, recent memories, and distant memories actually changes what you see at the close. Completionist-minded players will find structure where casual ones might find loose ends. Who this is for: players who liked the quiet surrealism of games such as Patrick's Parabox or the object-centric worldbuilding of smaller narrative puzzlers, and who can forgive a slightly opaque opening and occasional physics jank in exchange for a genuinely unusual premise executed with care. It is a short game, probably a single sitting to a handful of hours, and it seems to know when it wants to end. That is rarer than it sounds.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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