Dream Chronicles is a downloadable game released in 2007 by KatGames. It's classified as an adventure game, and is mostly puzzle based. You play as Faye, and your job is to rescue your husband, who has been kidnapped by the fairy Lilith. Turns out your husband is a fairy as well, and his parents are somewhat famous in the fairy world—they married for love rather than go through an arranged marriage. Lilith was supposed to be your husband's 'match' but he too married for love (to you) and thus we suppose Lilith is out for some revenge, fairy style. Luckily Fidget knew this day would come, but rather than oh, tell you about it, he wrote some notes and hints in his diary, to help you find him and also break the sleeping spell that's been cast on your daughter (Lyra). The game is a series of puzzles to solve, as you journey out of your house and to Lilith's castle to find and rescue Fidget.
This game was pretty popular when it was released, with numerous sites giving it favorable reviews. There's also a sequel, suggesting that enough people bought the first installment to merit a second. You can download a trial version and play for an hour free, but if you get hooked, also know that Big Fish Games is also having a sale on all their downloadable games, so you can get Dream Chronicles for 40% off the regular price of $19.99 (through September 3). Lastly, if you'd like the developer's views of the game, read the postmortem at Gamasutra.
So from a gameplay perspective, the game is fun to play, with puzzles ranging in difficulty. I only had to consult a hint site once, and that was mainly because I wasn't reading one of the game's own hints that well. Given time and some trial and error, you can solve all the puzzles, which I did in only a few hours. Another challenge lies in collecting the “dream stone” gems that are scattered throughout the game, which add to your score at the end. As many reviewers have noted, you can't go backwards though to find them, which probably drives completists to try the game again. The game also has a leaderboard, so you can compete against other game players. I don't know exactly how scoring works—and the game isn't forthcoming about how gems and time convert to a score, but obviously the more gems and the less time, the better.
Analytically, the game could be approached in a few ways. Plot-wise, this game follows in a long line of cliched 'rescue the princess' style games, with the conceit here being that you are rescuing your husband instead. The gender flip is meant to appeal to the many adult female casual gamers that developers believe is their audience. This is compounded by the implication that the main character must also undertake the adventure in order to wake her daughter, Lyra, who is trapped in a sleeping spell. So although the gender dynamic is reversed, we can (again) get caught in another stereotypical trap, with the main character's action being driven not through a desire to simply 'be the hero' but instead to 'be a good wife and mother.' Of course, any ideological read like this runs the risk of feeling hollow when you consider the actual gameplay. As with any 'rescue the …' game, this gameplay goal sets up a reason to play, but doesn't do much more. Each level or scene is about solving a puzzle, and it is interest in puzzles that will likely drive the player towards completion, rather than a sense of being a hero or a good woman.
A somewhat more interesting facet to explore is the notion of a 'high score' in this game. Presumably players will play through the game at least once to see how it progresses and to overcome the challenges; but with the addition of points awarded for finding gems, a timer to keep track of how long you take, and then the ability to post your score to a public website and then seek comparisons with other players, makes this interesting on another level. If the player does decide to play again, it might be to at least in part (or maybe primarily) to seek a higher score, to rank (more) highly on a leader board. While the game itself has no real competitive component—not even a timer to solve puzzles or move through the areas—the addition of the leaderboard creates the opportunity for players to compete in a single player game. This style of game competition appears similar to types of competitive sports that draw significant interest from girls and women. Bracketing the phenomenon of soccer, I'm thinking of figure skating and gymnastics in particular. Such sports are competitive, but solo in their performance. Even when gymnasts compete as part of a team, they are really out for their own personal best scores, to advance themselves in part through helping their team. Girls and women are socialized to dislike competition, and to avoid conflict with others. Direct competition is not seen as 'feminine' enough, yet when sports highlight women who seek to attain 'their personal best,' that is often seen as acceptable and even encouraged. If women then position themselves as somewhat competitive, but still out to better themselves, sports are acceptable. Women who perhaps enjoy playing computer games can compete against others in a socially acceptable way through the use of leaderboards, rather than a more direct competition. The game even offers players the option to not submit your score, in case you don't feel your performance was good enough. I wonder if players who eventually become proficient and feel competitive about their scores are more likely to try directly competitive games? That's a question for another analysis, I suppose.
Leaderboards aren't exclusive to Dream Chronicles, but the inclusion of that option seemed important to explore. I'm sure there's more I could say in relation to this game, but for now I'll end here. As I mentioned, the game has spawned a sequel (which the first game sets up), and I'll likely be playing the second one soon enough. In a review for that game, I'll try and focus on more specific gameplay elements, and how game studies scholarship might be useful in understanding such a game.
