Dare to Dream

Very few of us gamers were around when the Internet was synonymously called a Geek's Plaything and Doom was the king of the roost. The few of us that WERE around knew one thing: Shareware was king. For those of you who have no clue what Shareware games are, they are simply limited demo games where for a select fee, you could play the whole game (As in entering a software key you bought via a mailing list or something). Most of the time, shareware games came in bundles (Like in my case, 300 shareware games on a disc entitled "Way Cool Windows Games").

At the time, the company Epic Megagames (Yes, the people who now have Unreal Tournament) was one of the biggest creators of Shareware games on the market. Essentially, they contracted out to individuals who made games, but whatever.

Dare to Dream was a project by Cliff Blezenski. You are a 10 year old boy who basically goes nuts during his sleep, and goes in a strange world with wierd people, confusing puzzles, and mirrors of his life at home. Strange, unique, and somewhat fun.


Dare to Dream runs on some bastardized Visual Basic engine that basically pops up three windows: Your inventory/info/save/etc, your visual view, and the information window that describes everything going on. For example, double click a baloon in the game that you can pick up, and the baloon moves to your inventory, and the description tells you what you did. Lovely.

The game is simplistic, but actually hard. It gives you two options- "Normal" mode and "Easy" mode- and sets you into the world. The Normal mode, unfortunately, is a little too difficult for anyone who can be impatient, because getting the "Chain Reaction" of items going that us adventure gamers are so fond of is harder than you'd think. The Easy mode, is, of course, very very easy.



Overall, the game is hard, but short (It's shareware). While it does present some challenges, it really couldnt take more than 15 minutes for a standard gamer to get through it. Its an old game, and that's probably all that can be said for it. There are two other chapters to this game, but I would recommend straying from them, as they arent much longer or complex.



Also, as an added bonus, this game is shareware, so you can download it on the internet! Go google it, it's a nice game, and it's a good time waster. As long as you're not paying for it.

4 star(s) out of 5

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