Dreamcore captures the ethos of liminal spaces, using the Backrooms phenomenon as its springboard. Though certainly not a "chill" venture, the eerie vibes it produces are effective despite having only two levels available at launch.
The moment Dreamcore boots players into the fuzzy tile labyrinth of its first level “Dreampools”, there’s little denying its target audience.
When I first saw the Backrooms YouTube video a couple years ago, I found it to be a fascinating piece of Internet. It took me back to those experimental days of proto-YouTube where people were just having fun uploading videos with no rhyme or reason, perhaps uploading popular Flash videos there as well. Part Blair Witch Project, part Creepypasta, part “let’s try and figure out what the hell is going on”, that initial Backrooms video could have been a blip in the vast ocean of the Internet.
Fast-forward to present day and that simple video is now a cultural juggernaut, in the sense that we as a people and the Internet as a construct can seemingly craft numerous things into juggernauts. My coworker’s brother has a friend that has apparently gained success on YouTube, primarily focusing on Backrooms content. Small world. I search the term on YouTube and see games and ripoffs and it feels like since the video rose to prominence, people suddenly know what liminal spaces are.
Dreamcore could have been one of these types of games (I assume) that throws players into a network of confusing and semi-impossible spaces, have a crude monster splurt into existence from around a corner, and called it a day. A hatchet-job of Five Nights at Freddy’s scream-bait and “oooh sp00ky” vibes would have been enough to cash in a respectable paycheck and move on to the next thing.
Developer Montraluz seemingly has taken a more dangerous route, albeit one that still veers into safe passage more frequently than not. During my few hours with Dreamcore I constantly expected a weird little insect robot or incomprehensible being to phase into my periphery or silently wait behind an opened door, sitting in a chair merely glaring at me. But there are no monsters here. No attempt to suddenly slap the player’s hands and face to elicit an unearned reaction.
Instead, Dreamcore is an absolutely brief journey through two “familiar” spaces that have been intrinsically altered to look like the concepts they replicate but feel completely removed from their original purpose.
“Dreampools” suggests what’s on the label. The player comes into existence hurtling down a plastic slide that would be found at a playground or local waterpark. And the destination is a white, square-tiled cacophony of rooms disguised as pools and baths. At first the disorientation is gradual as turning down a hall leads to potential paths left or right. But then those may seem to wind around stairs, water may ooze through a crevice that must be crouched through, a weird gravestone sits raised by a path, a monolithic statue cues a haunting chant.
Nothing here is meant to make any kind of absolute sense. Its purpose is to provide an allure of hypothetical breadcrumbs that the player thinks they should follow. Dreamcore tells players to pay attention to every sight and sound. And genuinely, the primary goal is to pay attention to the nebulous source of an old-timey tune that plans off in the distance. The instinct is to move towards it, to potentially find a flashlight that will allow exploration of darkened hallways.
But instead, I decided to get lost in “Dreampools” and attempt to scratch at the bottom of the rabbit hole. My initial 30 minutes to an hour of the game was spent sightseeing dozens of combinations of rooms. Allegedly, there are over 500 “rooms” here and I truly believe it. The scope of these areas go from claustrophobic to leviathan. Ironically, the handful of rooms that seemed to rise to the heavens and feature architecture no sane person could ever conceive were often the most claustrophobic. They were the ones that featured numerous open paths, all begging to further disorient the player. What does it mean when the color of the tile goes from white to blue with clouds painted on? Where does that spiraling slide begin or end?
There is not meant to be any kind of confident answer here, a genuine purpose of Backrooms as well, at least initially. What looked like an office building soon turned into a nightmare. I enjoyed the aquatic setting here because of how sterile it looked. When a slide appeared or a creepy smiley face ball, it threw my brain off.
“Eternal Suburbia” is the second level and conceptually slightly simpler. The player is dropped into what looks to be an idyllic green countryside. Outside the fact that the rolling hills are peppered with near-identical buildings and white picket fences. The only standout is a water tower that the player is meant to pay attention to because one of the walls in a house has it drawn in black, circled, and with arrows pointing at it. “Eternal Suburbia” has a slightly more attainable visual goal because the player can use the water tower as a kind of North Star. That is until the next steps turn slightly more convoluted and mysterious.
As much as I appreciate the maze of fencing and the weirdly proportioned homes when players walk through them, “Eternal Suburbia” is not as awe-inspiring at first blush. In a way, it’s meant to give more of a light narrative because things happen in the confines of the level that tell a kind of story.
Dreamcore‘s cohesive aesthetic is that it feels technically simple but kind of isn’t. The spaces for both levels are quite massive and don’t require loading. Though it is not a graphical workhorse, there has to be some churning going on behind the scenes. In “Dreampools” I was occasionally about to approach a corner at just the right angle where I could move the camera and watch the background shift from black to rendered.
Giving the visuals a more chunky feel, players are able to incorporate scanlines, a VHS-like filter, and a few other options to make Dreamcore appear more analog, like an older kind of bodycam footage. I tried turning these visual touches off and the loss of the scrappy veneer didn’t mesh well with the game’s vibe. It certainly made things look slightly better but the tradeoff meant destroying the mood.
Players should expect Dreamcore to be a very stripped-down experience. The ability to zoom in and out as if holding a camcorder exists, yet is limited in purpose, especially in “Dreampools” where seeing off in the distance is not necessarily a means to an end. Players can crouch and they can also run. But this is a game where I doubt many people are not going to have their finger permanently pressed on the run button just because the default walk speed is aggressively slow. “Dreampools” can be frustrating because the player moves significantly slower in the water. Worse yet, the player can walk over an edge an into water but can only get out of the water by walking up to a ladder or steps. It’s a point of frustration because it’s so impractical: the water is always shallow, meaning the physical character should be able to walk up the minuscule incline, it merely just isn’t a part of the programming. Hopefully it will be fixed in a patch because several times I would have to retrace my steps to get out of a pool. And because there is so much water, I dreaded long stretches where I knew the run speed would be less than effective.
Outside of those gripes, Dreamcore runs great and certainly sets the mood with its omnipresent and often absent sound. Players will feel strange and isolated in these spaces. But it really is a shame that at launch, “Dreampools” and “Eternal Suburbia” are the only levels on offer. Three more appear to be arriving but are spread out for Summer and Winter of 2025 and the last one for 2026. Depending on how clever players are, they can wrap up a map in a couple of hours. But once all achievements are collected, there’s not really much else to do until new levels appear.
There’s certainly value in the brevity that Dreamcore offers. It doesn’t wear out its welcome to an exhausting degree. It will likely find success for streamers and content creators who thrive on these types of games where a community can participate in the dread and general eerie nature of being wholly lost. Though I’m not one of those players or viewers, I still appreciate the vibes offered here and applaud Montraluz for not cheapening the experience with pointless chases and trite horror.
Dreamcore is a game about dread, obfuscation, and disorienting players. It sends them to familiar spaces that have been purposefully altered to maximize discomfort. Though woefully brief and presenting only two levels at launch, if each new entry in Dreamcore continues to be unique, it will become a truly standout entry in the catalog of Backrooms-inspired works.