Dream Maze: Kigurumi Daibouken for SFC

Image: MobyGames

Dream Maze: Kigurumi Daibouken

Five Nights at Freddy's with the lights on

Genre: rpg - dungeon

Publisher: Hect

Year: 1994

System: SFC

Gameplay Score: 1

Gameplay Notes:

I've never understood the appeal of this sort of game. Wandering aimlessly in a dungeon that looks the same everywhere. La tee da. That said, I gotta say this game is about as good as it gets, from a gameplay perspective anyway. Mostly. The battle mechanics are kind of annoying. But movement is great for this genre. Mind you, it's completely confusing and disorienting, like all of these first-person dungeon crawlers, but this one has all the QoL improvements you could ask for: press down to turn around, R or L to strafe, fast movement, and animation to demonstrate said movement. It even has a good inventory system and random encounters with the shop guy so you can buy items to recover health. Thank you for that. Combat is interesting, as you pick an area of the screen to attack rather than selecting an enemy. It's novel but unnecessary, and makes grinding even more of a chore than it needs to be since the cursor defaults to the center of the screen which 9 times out of 10 doesn't have an enemy. The only thing interesting is that you can collect up to 6 different suits called kitugami or something. Each suit is the skin of one of the animals creatures that you battle. One of the first suits I found was a chicken and after equipping it all I could think of was the Chicken Man from Al's Toy Barn in Toy Story 2. Supposedly these suits change which of the two attacks you have (punch and kick) but I didn't find any difference. Ultimately this is a dungeon crawler like all the other ones. It's a polished turd, but it still stinks. Thanks but no thanks.

Level Design Score: 2

Level Design Notes:

I'm not sure what the objective of this game is, but the map is a tower. You begin on level 1 and the goal is to find the room on that floor with a beanstalk which you climb. How very Mother Goose of them. Each level is very small so it doesn't take long to find the next level. I suppose I appreciated the smallness of the floors because I didn't get frustrated. Just bored.

Theme Score: 1

Theme Notes:

This was somsone's acid trip after reading a book of fairy tales. You're a little kid, your enemies are feral (but cute) stuffed animals, and the world's currency is candy. The dungeon looks like a gingerbread house. It's weird and not remotely appealing to these eyes.

Art Style Score: 3

Art Style Notes:

Credit where credit is due. The artwork, such as it is, looks great. It's the design itself that haunts me. I don't want to see the overtly dark, yet cutesy enemy designs and dungeons. It's Five Nights at Freddy's with the lights always on.

Audio Score: 1

Audio Notes:

Awful, terrible, no good music. THE song consists of a consistent drumline full of 16th notes, a series of three-note measures on the same tempo, while the last musician swoops up on the kazoo every three seconds. So annoying.

Overall Score: 29

Review ID: 1615