Developed by Lizard Smoothie, a newcomer Korean studio founded by college students, comes Shape of Dreams, a MOBA-style roguelike where players explore a crumbling reality loosely tethered by a series of floating islands. In the Rapids, a dream dimension that started encroaching upon the real world, memories become tangible abilities, allowing a team of travelers to conquer this ever-changing landscape.
Just before release, I got an early look at a demo for the game, which features a surprisingly high amount of content, challenges, and unlockables, as well as a satisfyingly tight gameplay loop. Shape of Dreams is shaping up to be quite an impressive roguelike, so let’s talk about some of its pros and cons.
Demonstration Evaluation
In the three stages currently available in the Shape of Dreams demo, the player moves through different interconnected map nodes, battling dream creatures and collecting upgrades while attempting to stay one step ahead of the hunters, corrupt beings who spawn as the dream reality becomes more unstable. As the maps get larger, it becomes more difficult to explore all nodes without stepping into corrupted zones, forcing the player to map out their path carefully.
The four bosses currently available in the demo are quite challenging, with the second one being especially mean to characters who have low mobility, like Yubar, frequently using AOE attacks that are near impossible to move away from. It’s difficult to get a grasp on the game’s difficulty right now, as it remains unclear whether it’s geared towards group play or simply meant to be really challenging. The game is heavily advertised as a co-op experience, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the final release is tweaked with group play in mind, but so far, everything I have played has been beatable with the help of a cohesive build, a little luck, and getting over personal skill issues.
Metaphorically Progressing
All characters in Shape of Dreams have access to three shared talent trees, which serve as global increases to health, damage, and utility, as well as a fourth character-specific tree, which provides buffs to their signature abilities. Unfortunately, the talent trees currently available only serve as a simple vehicle for meta progression, lacking elements of player choice or customization. Every node is desirable and should be acquired whenever you have the currency for it, making it a functional, but plain upgrade system. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like the current talent trees will carry into the final release, as the developers have announced they will be reworked alongside a new mastery system.
During the Steam Next Fest event earlier this year, I played more of the demo and noted that Shape of Dreams featured unique challenges that were used to distribute limited-time rewards to players who completed the demo. Those challenges became a constant source of procrastination for me that I felt I had to achieve. This is a feeling that not many games manage to elicit, and it’s a little disappointing that upon revisiting the demo, the challenges currently available aren’t nearly as exciting, giving small amounts of stardust, the game’s meta currency, and sometimes having very grindy requirements. The game is set to have another set of event challenges on launch, and that feels like the way to go, adding another layer of replayability to the game through cosmetic rewards rather than grindy missions that feel like busywork.
The Past Is a Weapon
Most of the real build customization in Shape of Dreams comes from picking a character’s memories, which serve as their skills. The playable characters fit your classic archetypes of damage dealer, tank, and healer and seem to have been built with a specific playstyle in mind, like Mist being able to fight enemies hyper-aggressively in melee range as long as she keeps her temporary shields up, or Aurena constantly damaging herself in exchange for stronger attacks, but any of those skills can be replaced, allowing for a lot of freedom when crafting your build.
Shape of Dreams shines through its tight, fast-paced, and visually satisfying combat, but the amount of weird synergies you can acquire really takes the cake. It makes sense to craft a build centered around your starting skills, but you can also just dump all upgrade materials into a single skill you found and walk around biting people to heal yourself. The game gives players a surprising amount of freedom and control for a modern roguelike, which makes every run feel mechanically different.
Final Verdict
It’s no exaggeration to say that Shape of Dreams’ demo is already quite close to a finished product, putting some roguelikes that have already been released to shame, so it’s wild to imagine that what we saw is actually less than half of what the game has to offer for its debut.
Featuring bright and colorful visuals, a mechanically diverse cast, and a great buildcrafting system, Shape of Dreams has all the markings of a fantastic roguelike. It’s a little early to consider it as one of the greats, but the building blocks are certainly there. A good amount of post-release content and unique event challenges will make it a roguelike constantly worth revisiting.
