2020-04-01_Total_Film

TOTAL FILM | APRIL 2020

THE HOME ENTERTAINMENT BIBLE

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of stage fright. Art’s Dream begins

as a narrative-led point-and-click

adventure with musical interludes

and culminates with an elaborate,

fantastical multi-vehicle pursuit

that transforms into a side-scrolling

shoot-’em-up. Dazzlingly inventive,

if curiously unemotional, it sets a

daunting bar for its player-creators.

Still, as the ever-present ‘made in

Dreams’ watermark reminds you, it’s

all eminently achievable. Although it’s

telling that collaborative creation is

actively encouraged – you’re unlikely to

make anything this good on your own.

A series of patient, thorough and only

occasionally patronising tutorials are

ideal for younger players in particular,

turning the creative process into a game

of sorts. Meanwhile, themed events and

the opportunity to remix other users’

Dreams helps overcome blank-canvas

syndrome. A terrific front-end makes it

easy to find whatever you’re looking for,

whether it’s first-person shooters or

hyper-realistic paintings of foodstuffs.

Questions remain over the

commercial side – this is, after all,

a walled garden, one where creators

get little tangible reward for their efforts

beyond the approval of their fellow

Dreamers. Yet as a sandbox of tools

to experiment with, and develop your

craft – whatever it may be – this is

a staggeringly flexible and powerful

piece of software that could well inspire

a new generation of budding artists.

Chris Schilling

That’s the hope, at least, and the

developer has supplied its own movie-

length example of what you can make

with the software. The aim, made

explicit by a sequence that invites you

to destroy a wall by physically jerking

the bricks aside with the controller, is

to inspire players to smash through the

barrier of self-doubt. As if that wasn’t

enough, there’s also Art’s Dream: a

strikingly weird movie-length example

of what you can do within the quaintly

named ‘Dreamiverse’. It’s a noir-tinged

story of an anxious double-bassist,

who quits a jazz band after an attack

I

t’s been 12 years since Guildford’s Media Molecule first invited us to

‘play, create, share’ with whimsical puzzle-platformer LittleBigPlanet.

Its latest project isn’t so much a game as an entire creative platform:

a set of tools primarily aimed at building 3D games, but which has

already been used to make digital paintings, sculpture, short films, animations

and music. If you don’t fancy yourself as an artist of any stripe, you can simply

sift through the growing suite of user creations, playing, watching, listening

and absorbing – which makes it all the more likely that your dormant creative

urges will be ignited.

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