Dreamwalker review for PS Vita, Switch

It?s not often that you see DSiWare games get new life nearly a decade later. But Dreamwalker is precisely that: a 2011 DS game that got re-released for both PS Vita and Switch.

Did it need to be? Probably not. I get that it received little notice back when it first came out, but there?s not really anything here that makes it seem like it was an overlooked gem. It?s a fairly average puzzle game: nothing more, nothing less.

The gist of Dreamwalker is that you?re guiding a man named Walker as he sleepwalks through the clouds. You have to get him from the moon to the sun, and you have to avoid things like alarm clocks and nightmares (sorry, Night Mares). He moves forward constantly, so you have to move the clouds beneath him and create a path from beginning to end.

It?s fine for what it is. The controls are easy enough to figure out, but you?ll find yourself at constant war with the camera, which wants to focus entirely on Walker, rather than letting you free roam to plot out a path from beginning to end. Given that the game places a premium on both the number of moves and the time it takes for you to finish a level, it seems like a weird oversight to make it so difficult to plan ahead.

In the big scheme of things, though, it?s hard to get too worked up about that. Dreamwalker is pleasantly unobtrusive — it?s not going to wow you in any way, but it?ll pass in a way so forgettably that it?ll almost make you feel like you?re the one starring in the game. You could do worse than this, but you could also probably do much, much better.

Code Mystics provided us with a Dreamwalker PS Vita code for review purposes.