28 Nov 2024Developer post

Thank you for suggesting!

Thank You for Visiting Us at Milano Games Week! A big thank you to everyone who stopped by the PlaySys booth at Milano Games Week! As a solo developer, it was inspiring to connect with you, share thoughts about the gaming scene, and hear your feedback. It was also inspiring to as

Thank You for Visiting Us at Milano Games Week!
A big thank you to everyone who stopped by the PlaySys booth at Milano Games Week! As a solo developer, it was inspiring to connect with you, share thoughts about the gaming scene, and hear your feedback. It was also inspiring to assist the well-known Yotobi playing my game.

This week, I’ve been hard at work implementing some of your most critical suggestions, and I’m excited to share the improvements with you:

THE MENU NOW OPENS ON THE MAP

Previously, the menu opened on the Story tab to help players track their progress and objectives. However, after hearing your feedback, I realized the Map is the most frequently used feature. Starting now, the Map will be the first tab you see when opening the menu. Big thanks to Tom's Hardware for this suggestion!

THE MAP NOW SHOWS CHARACTER DIRECTION

Many of you mentioned that it’s challenging to orient yourself on the Map. Previously, it only highlighted your position. Now, a clear arrow indicates the direction your character is facing, making navigation much easier - especially in larger areas like the forest.

QUEST TARGETS STAY VISIBLE OFFSCREEN

While I recommend playing without the target marker for a better puzzling experience, I understand you may want to rely on it for guidance. Previously, the marker disappeared when offscreen, but thanks to a suggestion from the developers at Nacon, the target now stays visible on the edges of the screen to help you stay on track.

In addition to these major updates, I’ve also made plenty of minor adjustments:

Added new colliders and redefined some slopes.
Improved cinematics in the Mines area.
Tweaked input for the fishing mini-game.
Adjusted some quest marker alignment in the City area.
Fixed small 3D issues in the Islands and the Forest.

Everything should now be set for launch later next week here on Steam!
As the solo developer coding, porting and publishing DREAMERS all by myself, your support and feedback are invaluable.
Cheers,
Luca

Original post

24 Sep 2024Developer post

Game Demo Out Today!

In recent months, we've been at work on porting DREAMERS to PC, and today we’re happy to launch our very first demo here on Steam, marking the beginning of this journey with all of you. This demo is set in the early phase of the game (though not right at the start), and we believ

04 Apr 2024Developer post

Digital Art Book Launch Date

Last December we funded our Kickstarter campaign aimed to create the 300 pages hardcover Art Book of DREAMERS, available here . Here is a flip-through video of the hardcover version Later on, we decided to make a digital version of the art book available as DLC (or a standalone s

29 Dec 2023Developer post

A Path Beyond DREAMERS

We wanted to create a dark game and hide it behind a joyful facade. This is DREAMERS and you probably already saw the colorful trailers we posted so far. Today we have something unexpected for you all: a dark teaser that fully represents the mood of the game without any make-up.

20 Oct 2023Developer post

DREAMERS Collector Edition

Big news! Today we're launching our first Kickstarter campaign for DREAMERS Collector's Edition, and it'll only last 30 days. What's in it for you? We're creating a stunning art book, filled with over 200 pages of great images, and a cool 12'' vinyl record with carefully remaster

29 Aug 2023Developer post

We Are DREAMERS! Interview 02: Anri Kaneko

Introducing the team behind the development of DREAMERS adventure video game. Meet today Anri Kaneko from Yokohama, who took care of the Japanese localization of the game. Say "Konnichiwa" to Anri in the comments below :) More info about the game is on the official website

07 Jul 2023Developer post

We Are DREAMERS! Interview 01: Markus Elgland

Introducing the team behind the development of DREAMERS adventure video game. Today we want you to meet Markus Elgland, composer, arranger, and orchestrator from Finland. Markus handled the orchestration of the entire soundtrack of the game. Download the DREAMERS Steam Original S

31 May 2023Developer post

Adventures are better with friends

Adventures are better with friends. Some levels in DREAMERS feature collaborative single-player split-screen gameplay. Share your controller with a friend and solve puzzles together. Previously I wrote this article introducing the split-screen feature of some levels of DREAMERS.

18 Apr 2023Developer post

DREAMERS Guided Tours S01E02

Join us for our second episode of a series of guided tours with DREAMERS’ protagonists. Take a late afternoon stroll with the girl in her town and listen to some local rumours.

07 Apr 2023Developer post

It's Fishing Time!

Fish are friends…until you miss a quick time event and they become your enemy. Take a break from your daily adventures with the fishing mini-game in DREAMERS! Whether you’re an experienced angler or just starting out, you’ll love the challenge of catching fish and the thrill of r

02 Dec 2022Developer post

DREAMERS Guided Tours S01E01

Welcome to the first episode of a series of guided tours with DREAMERS' protagonists. Today the boy shows you a sneak peek at his life and his friends on the island.

23 Nov 2022Developer post

Meet Luca Deriu at DevGamm Fest

Tomorrow, November 24th at 4:30 pm CET, Luca will be live in an exclusive interview on DevGamm Fest. Don't miss it, and prepare your questions about DREAMERS video game for the live chat. See you there! here is the video

21 Nov 2022Developer post

DREAMERS Soundtrack on Steam

Develop, upload and boom. Online! If there is one thing that I really love about Steam is how clear everything is. Not that I dislike other platforms, on the contrary, I like them very much. Steam, however, never fails in the offer for both the developers and the players. One exa

26 Oct 2022Developer post

DREAMERS Original Soundtrack Released Today!

Hello everyone, we are happy to share this news with you and you can listen to it on Spotify , Apple Music , and Amazon Music . Here below you can find some official information about it. DREAMERS Original Soundtrack features nearly two hours of orchestral and ambient music, crea

14 Oct 2022Developer post

Steam Achievements and Trophies

Here we go, we just finished preparing the trophies for you to unlock while enjoying the world of DREAMERS. From classics to hardcore trophies, we think we have made good work and we estimate about 15 hours of gameplay to complete them. A core idea of DREAMERS is that "life goes

04 Oct 2022Developer post

Motion Capture BTS

Hello, everyone! Did you know that we used motion capture to make our characters have more fluid and realistic movements? Even if the low-poly graphic is not photo-realistic on purpose, we still wanted to give our players an immersive game experience, so we decided to use mocap f

26 Sep 2022Developer post

Developer talk: DREAMERS step system

Today we are talking about DREAMERS step system! We used our PlaySys Interaction Framework and the inverse-kinematics technique to make it look as accurate to reality as possible. But it will be Luca, DREAMERS' game designer and main developer, to explain the details. So, Luca, h

Today we are talking about DREAMERS step system!

We used our PlaySys Interaction Framework and the inverse-kinematics technique to make it look as accurate to reality as possible.

But it will be Luca, DREAMERS' game designer and main developer, to explain the details.

So, Luca, how was the PlaySys Interaction Framework involved in the steps' programming?

Thank you Federica for this interview. It feels odd but fantastic to write at the same time on this form with different accounts :)
The PlaySys Interaction Framework is a set of tools that I am developing since the early years of PlaySys. I usually pretend in my articles that it is very stable and consistent, but in reality, it is continuously being iterated.
This happens because we don't have a single style in our projects and it is very difficult, if not impossible, to define objectively everything that may happen in a game.
This is the case of DREAMERS for example, where a lot of functionalities have been designed and implemented for the first time in my profession.
In DREAMERS we have characters, and the game is seen in third-person. Moreover, the game is an adventure so we need to constantly move and fetch something.
So as a result we implemented the PlaySys.StepSystem namespace, that is technically a group of classes and methods used to define everything that may happen in our game and that influences the fact of having feet and being on surfaces.
In this vast system, there is one third-party tool, Final IK, that I want to mention because of the excellent work of its author Pärtel Lang. There are not many plugins in the DREAMERS development because of the risk of a lack of compatibility when developing a project in such a long term, but this is another story.
So the PlaySys.StepSystem provides a quick and reliable answer (about 60 times per second) to many questions such as:

when you move from one point to another, how is your motion happening?
when you step on a surface what happens to your feet? and what happens if the surface is not planar?
what happens if you stand (or move) on a moving apparatus?
what happens with the collision detection? are the characters colliding with something invisible or are they really colliding with what we render to the screen? what is the fastest method? what exceptions we may have?

What is that you're most proud of, regarding the characters' moves?

In the game, we wanted to give a sense of freedom and for sure the players will enjoy this when exploring what we call in the development "the port region".
Now, this region has multiple zones and areas and, of course, materials.
One element I am very, very proud of in DREAMERS is the sound of the steps. My colleague Elena and I were spending days thinking about how to play a certain, consistent, sound effect when stepping on a surface and we ended up with what I consider a great solution if I can say so myself. it was one of the first "wow, it really works" moments during the development, and the computation is insanely fast.
And once again, this is handled entirely by PlaySys.StepSystem classes.
Also, consider that the sound effect is played together with some particles and these have a size, speed and colour depending on the stepping surface. They are also real 3D particles, bouncing and spreading in the scene for then disappearing. If you look at the gameplay videos you'll see this detail and I am sure it will increase the satisfaction of the players; It certainly increased ours during the development.

Thank you, Luca, for your time! :)
It's very interesting to get to know and understand all these behind-the-scenes details from you and I hope it will be as fascinating for our readers and future players of DREAMERS as well.
If you have any more questions for Luca, please feel free to comment below!

Original post

19 Sep 2022Developer post

Back-and-forth dialogues

Hello, everyone! Today we are talking about our back-and-forth dialogues: in DREAMERS, when you interact with the NPCs, you will start conversations that always include an answer from one of the main three characters. The NPCs don't start talking to say something one-directional

12 Sep 2022Developer post

Have a glimpse behind the scenes

While we are still working on the localization of our game into multiple languages, we wanted to show you backstage content from one of the first phases of the development of our game: concepts. Here for you are some inspirational artworks for DREAMERS' mountain region! They serv

07 Sep 2022Developer post

We're back!

Howdy, fellow dreamers! Just passing by to say hi and share with you some great news: the game will finally be released this Autumn, by the end of the year! Are you excited as much as we are? We're working to fix some minor bugs and to incorporate all dialogues' translations in o

Updates & announcements

THE MENU NOW OPENS ON THE MAP

THE MAP NOW SHOWS CHARACTER DIRECTION

QUEST TARGETS STAY VISIBLE OFFSCREEN