Kit Reviews - Dare to Dream

http://www.turtledreamgames.com/

The Game

Dare to Dream is an asymmetric card game for 3-4 players (technically it can be played with two, but as you’ll see later I recommend 3-4). 2-3 players play as the Dreamers, a group of people trying to get a good nights sleep before going to work or something I don’t know. The dreamers prepare for their nights sleep by selecting guardians, a group of toys and the odd pet, that have specific sets of powers that can help you fight against the Darkness, there are also Wards which can help bolster your guardians or act as one use walls.

One player plays as the Darkness, sort of like an evil sandman, and the Darkness’ job is to make sure that the Dreamers turn up to work all bleary eyed and exhausted (also known as Monday). The darkness achieves this goal by sending nightmares to weaken the guardians and monsters to attack them, and when it succeeds I guess they roughly jab the dreamers in the ribs, waking them up. If the Darkness succeeds in waking the dreamers a set number of times, defined by the amount of players, then that player wins immediately, whereas the Dreamers have to last the night (or again, a set number of rounds defined by the number of players). The dreamers have action cards that they can use, but this is the only kind of card they can use while they are asleep, and can’t use them if they are awake, and using them transfers the Dreamers power to the Darkness (represented by sand tokens).

The more actions the Dreamers use the more available sand the Darkness has, and the resource isn’t unlimited.

I really enjoyed this game, and although I wouldn’t recommend it to board game beginners, I would highly recommend it to someone who has played a few games before and is looking for something new, especially if you have someone in your group who always takes over and seems to win everything. The game has an inbuilt difficulty setting so you can make it more or less difficult for either side, and it is immensely satisfying to gang up on those smug gits who win everything, and they can’t say it’s unfair, because its the basic game mechanic!

All in all Dare to Dream scored 3.3/5, and that sounds low but it’s going to come down to the five rating categories: Originality; Theme; Mechanics; Clarity; and Availability.

Originality - 3/5 *

The game is familiar enough, in both mechanic and theme, but still feels fresh. The game designers have obviously put thought into the game. The game really does feel new, and I would have scored it higher but it does strongly remind me of other games and it isn’t the first game to use the elements within the mechanic, but it is the first that I’ve seen to combine them like this.

Theme - 4.5/5 *

The theme reminds me of Stuffed Fables: the darkness sending nightmares and monsters to scare and wake sleeping children; and the brave toys defending their sleeping children. The beautiful artwork reflecting the theme beautifully, the toys are cute and reassuring, whereas the monsters are distorted creepy and disturbing. The theme and mechanic are expertly woven together and fleshed out with care.

Mechanics - 3.5/5 *

While 3 and 4 player games work very well once you have a handle on the rules and round structure, the two player game leaves something to be desired.

The rounds run smoothly and the game comes to a satisfying tense conclusion, suggesting finely tuned balancing. With the darkness limited to two cards per turn until the last turn the player cannot overwhelm the dreamers outright. Likewise the dreamers are limited to only playing Action cards while asleep (which strengthens the darkness, allowing them to use more powerful cards) and being unable to play action cards to help their comrades while awake provides balancing and tension. There is also an inbuilt difficulty setting, extra cards are included that can be added to the decks to make it easier for either team. The added tension in the last round is a master stroke, both the dreamers and the darkness get to draw and play extra cards, this prevents the game from getting stale.

The two player variant is disappointing however. There is an attempt to adjust for the fact that there is only one player for the darkness to wake (the darkness only has to wake the dreamers a mere 4 times in 10 rounds), it isn’t enough sadly. The inability to play cards as an awake dreamer, and the fact that the darkness cannot attack an awake player removes the options in the rounds in-between being awoken and falling asleep. This creates a lot of down time and the game fells like it sags. I feel as if the designers should have made it 3-4 players only.

Clarity - 3.5/5 *

On the first play through it took some time to get a hang of the rules, especially what happens when dreamers are awake, it simply wasn’t intuitive. There was a lot of discussing of the rules, even with the rule book in front of us, and even a trip to the forums. The rulebook could probably have a little less ambiguity, for example, one problem we came across was whether or not the darkness can attack an awake dreamer. At first glance it would seem not, as the darkness only scores points from waking asleep dreamers, but it isn’t explicitly stated and the question has an impact on monster placement. We played it that you can’t but playing it either way changes the game completely.

Availability - 2/5

At the time of writing the game is only available on the publisher’s website http://www.turtledreamgames.com/ but this game is a recently shipped kickstarter project, so this may change in the future.

Final Score - 3.3/5

This is a really enjoyable game, with beautiful artwork, and theme and mechanic intertwined expertly, the only let downs are the saggy two player game and a hint of ambiguity in the rule book. I would definitely recommend the game, just don’t play it two player, it’s meant to be a asymmetric game and doesn’t work with equal team size. Hopefully the game will be more available in the future as its availability is what lets it down the most.