Labyrinthine Dreams was a title that seemed interesting at first glance, but turned out to just be unremarkable. Hell it seems to fit in with a slew of short story driven games that I am attempting to finish simply so I can clear out my 280 plus game Steam backlog. With Laybyrinthine Dreams, it had a premise that seemed interesting; you solve puzzles in a surreal dream world of a girl who is currently dying while said puzzles and environments represents her own insecurities and fears.

The issue is that there just was not really that much to connect to with the base story line of Labyrinthine Dreams. This game is yet another one of those games whose idea of a subversive narrative is basically monologues set over completely irrelevant scenery. As a result, one cannot really get into Beth or Artie’s character.

I really need to wonder if there is something I am missing about this specific approach to characterization and storytelling. It isn’t as if there is any strength to this approach, all that it does is make the narrative incoherent. Of course I honestly feel like I am beating a dead horse here so I will give credit in that Labyrinthine Dreams does do this specific style of story better than most of these games.

First of all, I can at least tell what is going on in the first place and there is at least somewhat of a sense of atmosphere, albeit not much. This is largely in part to the game’s music which is haunting and elegant. The soundtrack is actually available for download on the game’s steam page, but it costs the same price as the game itself (which is just $2.00) so it’s a bit much. The graphics, on the other hand, all look like the most generic RPG Maker effects one could use.

Secondly, what Labyrinthine does better than other art games is that there is still some semblance of gameplay involved. Specifically, Labyrinthine Dreams is a puzzle game, albeit it rather simplistic one. Most of the puzzles are stuff that would be a small part of a dungeon in a JRPG that one needs to solve in addition to dealing with enemies and various other gameplay mechanics. In Labyrinthine Dreams, it is just these simple puzzles, then a few sentences of monologue until you reach the end credits.

Most of the puzzles you get tend to fall into the category of mildly enjoyable puzzles that you will solve in a few minutes, or ones that are absurdly trial and error based and that you can’t complete without a guide. The puzzles where you need to avoid the monster are the worst offenders since you will need to redo previous parts of it if you fail later parts, which is something that goes horribly with a trial and error based puzzle.

In the end though, I can’t really say much about Labyrinthine Dreams other than that I didn’t care for it. Hell I almost didn’t review it considering how bland it was. It might be worth the money considering how cheap it is, but I’d still be hesitant to recommend this one. Even the parts of it that are good still are not great. Overall the game is just unremarkable and I have so little to say about it that I can barely even break the word limit for this to qualify as a review on GameFAQs. As such, I can’t really recommend this game, maybe if it goes on sale, but otherwise, just get the soundtrack and let this game stay in its dreams.

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This review was originally posted to GameFAQs on March 16th of 2016.

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