She Dreams Elsewhere – PAX East 2020 Preview

She Dreams Elsewhere is an adventure RPG tailor made for fans of Undertale. It’s impossible to look at this game and not make that connection. The old school black and white graphics with a few splashes of color to guide you will be familiar to anyone who spent time with Toby Fox’s game. From the demo we played at PAX, that’s about where the familiarity seems to end.

In the demo you’re wandering around an unfamiliar location. Your dog disappears and you take off after them. As you search the halls you’ll be introduced to combat. Battles are turn-based with boxes in the top right corner showing you the order. During the battles you’ll choose between all the usual RPG options. Along with the ability to fight or flea, you’ll have the option to use an item or a skill as well. During the demo the combat was self-explanatory and anyone that has any history with turn-based RPGs will be able to dig right in. They say the combat is easy to learn and hard to master, so it appears as though the combat and enemies will become more challenging as the game unfolds.

The battles are a nice break from exploration and puzzle solving. During our demo the latter two elements of the game could be quite tedious. Throughout the world you’ll have signs to read that will give you hints at what you are trying to accomplish. A good portion of our demo was finding the right path to get to where we needed to be. However, take a wrong turn and you must start over. With every correct turn you need to remember which direction you went in order to continue. I just kept thinking left, up, up, right, forward etc. etc. It’s a great idea for a puzzle that could have a ton of potential if developed further.

She Dreams Elsewhere looks to have a trippy yet fascinating story so stay tuned because they are hoping to launch in 2020 for both PC and Xbox One.