‘The Dream Observatory’ Shapes Dreams Through Playing Cards

In The Dream Observatory, you need to figure out the best tile to create to bring about the ideal dream for a sleeping person.

The Dream Observatory was originally made for a Game Jam, but inow being expanded upon. The version that I got to play at Indie Dev Day was absolutely stunning. There was just something about all of the little details – the way the cards come together when you combine then and then re-appear. The blankets on the sleeping people. It was just fantastic.

But, let’s talk about the gameplay. Each of the sleeping people have a phrase that conveys what they want to dream about. Sometimes, these are really easy things to figure out; for exmaple, someone telling you something like how they want to “soar above everyone else” or are “missing someone important to them.” Other times, they become more challenging and complex.

You’ll need to take the tiles at the bottom of the screen and combine them to create a dream concept. Love can be combined with someone to make couple. This can allow the person to dream about their loved one. Fear cards can be combined with another fear to create screaming. You can then combine some of these combined cards with more base cards to change them again.

There are a lot of possible concepts in The Dream Observatory, so when you do actually get something wrong, you will cause the person to have insomnia. Get three incorrect people a night and you’ll find yourself breaking your tools and needing to re-calibrate them. This is done through positioning different components so that the tools are working correctly, then you will be transported back to the main game. So far, it’s showing a lot of great polish and thought, and we’re curious to see how the full game shapes up.

The full version of The Dream Observatory is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can grab the Game Jam version on itch.io and follow the developers on Twitter.

About The Author

Jupiter Hadley

Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist, writing for Metro UK, Big Boss Battle, AlphaBetaGamer, and many more, all with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, judges many jams and events.