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Hypnagogia 無限の夢 Boundless Dreams

Linux

https://sodaraptor.itch.io/hypnagogia-boundless-dreams

What is this game?

A full-fledged follow-up to Hypnagogia, originally a free game made for the LSD Jam, which I talked about before.

Hypnagogia on gardenapple's Linux and low-spec-ish gaming

Hypnagogia 無限の夢 Boundless Dreams is a first-person exploration game that takes players on an adventure through a series of mystifying dream vignettes, each with their own unique theme and visual style.

Youtube trailer, TL;DW: PS1-style wobbly low-poly graphics + surreal (liminal?) spaces

Did I enjoy playing it?

Kinda. I think the style and the environments are cool, after all, they are the one selling point of this game, and are the reasons why I bought it. Everything else is a bit lackluster though. Hypnagogia does not have the fun platforming aspects of that era of gaming, instead relying mostly on walking around, talking to surreal characters and solving weird puzzles - again, good aesthetics and variety, but not inherently fun. There is an attempt at story-telling but it's just far too vague and nonsensical to matter to me at all - this game has more story cutscenes than the original free Hypnagogia but I'd prefer if they kept the story more minimal.

6/10*, I want to love this game but it's a bit underwhelming. Though if you're just looking for something novel and weird, then this game is an okay way to spend a few short hours. If this game was even shorter and "tighter" I'd probably give it a higher rating, in fact the original/free version got a higher rating from me for that reason alone.

Playing it on Linux, or low-spec hardware?

Another disappointment was the game's optimization. You'd think a low-poly-styled game could run on anything, but then they add these detailed water reflection simulations, which don't seem to be optimized very well. They do look fancy (they are proudly displayed in the YouTube trailer), and they do fit well aesthetically, but my laptop just slows down to a crawl on any level that has water surfaces. The "low" graphics settings seem to just barely influence it. The game does have a native Linux version, which is nice, I guess.

gardenapple - 2023-04-22

Game finished 2023-02-13

Linux and low-spec-ish gaming