Sweet Dreams Alex is like a tower defense game but without the towers. There is a singular monster taking the shortest path towards a sleeping child. It’s your job to create a maze to make sure the dream ends before the monster makes it to the kid. Later levels have multiple monsters, faster monsters, and benevolent ice cream creatures (who doesn’t like ice cream?!) so the game provides more of a challenge than you’d think.
The game is separated into individual levels and each level requires you to create a maze that will deter the monster for sixty seconds. The monster takes one step each second so basically you have to create a maze that will be around sixty steps in length.
The difficulty in Sweet Dreams Alex does start off on the easy side because you can use unlimited resources to create the maze. The resources for the first world happens to be cardboard boxes since Alex is in the process of moving. The game is based from the perspective of a child’s imagination. As the game progresses, the levels have sections prebuilt, limited resources to create the maze, and more monster spawn points.
It gets even more difficult when you have both the speedy monster (which moves twice as fast) and the ice cream spawning at the same time, since you have to allow the ice cream to reach the kid while preventing the fast monsters from doing the same.
While there is definitely a challenge, the game moves at a very relaxing pace. If you fail, you can simply continue with designing your maze. You can take as much time as you need and experiment as much as you want before moving on to the next level. I’ve noticed in general that using the edges of the map, doubling back to walls you’ve created, and using prebuilt walls as guides to be a general strategies if any of you are having trouble with the puzzles. You want to create the longest path possible and the map gives gentle visual cues to aid the player.
Once you finish the first area, there are additional levels that provide a greater challenge and then it moves onto another dream world where the mechanic changes completely. The second dream world focuses on streets and creating long paths by using traffic signals and crosswalks. The monsters learned from their parents well and will not cross a street that does not have a crosswalk. If they find a crosswalk, they will look both ways before crossing the street and it actually uses up more time.
The focus of the puzzles shifts from designing mazes to placing the few crosswalks and traffic signals you have available to create the longest path possible. Traffic signals are paired with switches and once the monster steps on the switch, it’ll change it from a green light to a red light. Since all monsters obey traffic signals, once they run into a red light, they will do a prompt one eighty and march in the other direction.
It would sure be nice if all drivers obeyed traffic signals like these monsters did. Jokes aside, these puzzles are a bit more difficult because you have very few placeable objects and have to consider the map and road layout much more closely.
I didn’t get to the other worlds but they also have new mechanics so that’s something to look forward to. Overall, Sweet Dreams Alex is a pretty chill puzzle game that starts off like a tower defense game and then evolves into something more cerebral.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1561090/Sweet_Dreams_Alex/
Review Score: 100% positive with a total of 25 reviews as of this writing (10/12/23)
Developer: Clarity Games
Publisher: Kasedo Games
Release Date: Oct 5, 2023
MSRP: $14.99
I received a key from keymailer. Thanks radical person!
Time spent: 4.7 hours
Achievement Score: 5/32 achievements
Ducky Obrien 