Multi Bafta-award winning developer Media Molecule have an amazing track record of superb and impressively creative games. Games like the Little Big Planet series and the excellent PS Vita title Tearaway have helped established them as a creative tour de force. 

Games like Minecraft have shown that there is a thirst amongst gamers to craft and create their hearts desires in digital form, but Dreams hopes to take that one step further. In a similar vein to the now canned game-creator, Project Spark, Dreams provides gamers with the tools they need to design and create their own games.

Numerous tools are put at the player’s disposal, including tools for painting, sculpting in-game assets, music creation tools, and gadgets. Gadgets can be configured and linked to the other in-game assets, and work to provide the games logic and gameplay mechanics. Assets made by users can be shared locked, or unlocked, which will allow other users to tweak, adapt and use these assets in creations of their own.

Want to create that platformer you’ve always wanted, or make an RPG in your own style? With a little perseverance and technical knowledge, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination. There are already hundreds of games made by users on Dreams, spanning almost every imaginable genre. A user has created a pixel-perfect recreation of Super Mario Bros 1-1, right down to logos and character movement. Legal ramifications aside, it’s an impressive technical achievement.

Creativity isn’t just limited to making games, either. If you want to make your own animated movie, paint a picture, or create a piece of music, the tools are all there at your disposal. If you want to play a part in making a game but don’t feel ready or haven’t the knowhow to make a full game yet, you can collaborate with others and design items or character models to use in their games, or perhaps you specialise in creating logic maps for triggering in-game events. Whatever your speciality, there is a place for everyone within Dreams.

With so much user-generated content to come, curation is an important consideration. You don’t want to have to wade through thousands of poor quality assets and games to find something decent, but likewise, you want your creations to be easy to find to allow others to enjoy the fruits of your labour. Hopefully, the Dreams developers have managed to come up with an effective solution, and finding and creating content can be a rewarding experience.

There are limitations on size and complexity, measured by an in-game thermometer, so it remains to be seen just how detailed a game-world can be created, but the developer promises that tricks such as forcing games to employ LOD will be available, along with other methods of managing resources, so we’re very excited at the possibilities available in Dreams. Budding creators who long to work for gaming companies or simply scratch that itch to make their own game have surely had their appetites whet at the prospect of showing the world what they can create.. 

With the possibility of so much quality user-generated content to come in the months and years after its release,  Dreams is poised to be the game that will keep on giving long after its highly anticipated release.

“Learn how to design your own games, animate, make music and more with easy-to-follow tutorial videos – and then share or collaborate with others.

Browse through unique creations uploaded by other players. Rate them, recommend them to friends or take inspiration for your own designs.

Embark on a full-length, genre-crossing story campaign created by developer Media Molecule that showcases the immense creative potential of Dreams.

At Media Molecule, we believe that making video games should be for everyone, and have the same accessibility and pleasure as playing with a camera, a guitar, or a pencil – something you can start to learn just by picking it up. Dreams allows players to create anything from games to gadgets, music to movies, puzzles to paintings and everything in-between and beyond – all from their own sofa, with just a PS4. And Dreams isn’t just a space to get creative – it’s a platform where you can share and collaborate with others or just play and explore the creations of people around the world.”

–Media Molecule

Dreams releases on the 14th February 2020 for PlayStation 4.