Dreams of Another intrigues with its creative journey, though it’s frustrated by slow pacing and uneven PlayStation VR2 support. Here’s our full review.
Having jumped across the PixelJunk series over the years, Q-Games’ latest project has held my interest ever since its original announcement. The studio stood out across the decades for its artistically thoughtful flatscreen experiences, so its return to VR after 2016’s Dead Hungry caught my eye. Dreams of Another delivers another unique experience, though its flaws are soon apparent.
What is it?: A philosophical adventure based on the theme of “no creation without destruction.” It’s also on Steam but without PC VR support.
Platforms: PlayStation VR2 (Reviewed on PS VR2 with PS5 Pro)
Release Date: October 10, 2025
Developer/Publisher: Q-Games
Price: $34.99
Dreams of Another closely follows the theme of “no creation without destruction,” and your surroundings are brought to life through pleasingly memorable visuals that almost feel like walking into a retro game. Everything’s represented through bubbles, and Q-Games uses an extremely literal approach where you actualize this dreamlike world by shooting them. Subtlety is not the game’s strong point, but that isn’t a bad thing.
Gameplay footage captured by UploadVR on PS VR2 with a PS5 Pro.
This surrealist narrative starts on an intriguing note, navigating four curious tales at once as the Man in Pajamas, who’s always accompanied by the Wandering Soldier. Dreams of Another is sometimes compelling at its best, symbolizing themes like coming of age or taking action before it’s too late, which can feel sadly nostalgic. Though each story unfolds across different locations, these tales bring us closer to understanding our memories.
Some stories feel overly drawn out even with a 6-7 hour campaign, with a new game plus option unlocking upon completion that carries over your items. You swap between these stories regularly, and some segments last much longer than others. This often leaves Dreams of Another suffering from slow, inconsistent pacing and a disjointed approach. One segment involves snapping crayons by holding both Sense Controller triggers, which gets really tedious when you have to repeat that a dozen times.
On all PS5 consoles, Dreams of Another uses reprojection from 60Hz to 120Hz. Playing on a standard PS5 uses 1080p resolution, while Q-Games previously confirmed to UploadVR that playing on PS5 Pro increases this to 1440p resolution. You can’t choose between prioritizing higher performance or higher fidelity like some games provide.
Performance is generally smooth on the PS5 Pro and the stylized visuals mean reprojection isn’t majorly noticeable beyond the “cinema mode” cutscenes. However, I had consistent framerate drops almost every time you finish sections where you shoot disembodied spirits. I’m unsure if this is an intentional effect, but the brief slowdown is slightly jarring.
Progressing through this campaign doesn’t require shooting absolutely everything, but you must spray your path ahead with bullets to actualize them. Certain objects remain permanently affixed once in place, giving you the peculiar perspectives of everything from trash cans to doors commenting on human nature. If anything, it’s symbolic in its suggestion of considering other perspectives.
Your arsenal isn’t massive, not that it needs to be, and gradually unlocks across the game, starting with the soldier’s gun with unlimited ammo. You’ll eventually obtain grenades and a rocket launcher, useful for clearing through areas more quickly with the trade-off of limited ammo. Giving the Wandering Soldier found items scattered across each level replenishes your stock while giving him a moment to get philosophical, too.
Some sequences also involve shooting down “enemies” as their spirits, often following the formulaic rule of three before they return to their… well, not bodies as such, but designs. Have you ever tried shooting a Ferris wheel’s rogue spirit to return each carriage back into its position? For all of our sakes, I sincerely hope not. It’s memorable, though repeating this process across different stories soon gets repetitive. Your mileage may vary here depending on how much you engage with the wider stories.
Dreams of Another has very few comfort settings. Your only movement option is artificial stick-based locomotion, while the camera settings have snap rotation at adjustable settings with a fade you can’t turn off. Smooth camera turning is available without adjustable speeds. Aside from a few audio sliders, that’s it. Subtitles can’t be turned off, either.
Haptic and headset feedback can’t be switched off in-game, though you can turn this off from the PS5 settings menu. Adaptive triggers are also supported.
My bigger issue is that Dreams of Another evidently wasn’t originally designed with VR in mind, which is particularly noticeable when the game continuously swaps your camera perspective. You’re frequently shifted from first-person view into a “cinema mode” for cutscenes, an understandable choice when it’s highlighting an event you wouldn’t be able to see. However, this occurs all too regularly even when having a brief chat with someone standing in front of you.
This happens a lot, which isn’t helped by some gameplay sections using a mandatory third-person camera. Numerous scene transitions leave you in complete darkness for several seconds or suddenly switch to a bright white screen with nothing else happening. You also keep getting sent back to the main menu, which sometimes is fine because the overarching narrative unfolds here after clearing a story. But Dreams of Another frequently sends you back even without continuing that part of the story, and I don’t understand why.
This all significantly impacts your immersion, meaning it’s arguably a better flatscreen game than in VR despite the latter’s better gunplay, if only for greater consistency. Physicality is also disappointingly minimal. Weapons are swapped using a button press rather than an on-body inventory system, and the same applies to reloading. I’m not saying this needs manual reloading or anything that in-depth, but with gameplay I want more than to simply look around and point a gun.
Dreams of Another VR Review – Final Verdict
If you intend to play exclusively on PlayStation VR2, Dreams of Another has its benefits and drawbacks compared to flatscreen. Shooting feels more natural with motion controls than an analog stick, first-person mode is preferable, but you can tell this wasn’t initially designed for VR. Physicality is minimal, and continuously being taken out of the first-person perspective gets annoying.
Dreams of Another is a creative, thoughtful effort that’s given me plenty to think about, and I’m glad to see more experimental titles like this still being made by Q-Games. But when the VR support feels this lacking combined with the game’s slow pacing and repetitive elements, I can’t fully recommend it on PlayStation VR2.
UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.
