Recently I was given the opportunity to check out an upcoming new game. I received the print and play files for the game with everything I needed. This is my thoughts and opinions on the presented materials. Enjoy!
Pleasant Dreams is a game by Aerjen Tamminga, published by Aerjen Games. It is for 1-2 players. It was ran on Kickstarter earlier this year and will be released soon. In this game, players will be doing their best to stay asleep throughout the game, not literally of course. The player that is best able to sleep through the nightmares and cause their opponent to wake up screaming in terror will be declared the winner.
To begin, each player will take a wakefulness card, choosing between the boy or girl side. A glass bead is placed on the 1 position instead of the 0, to note that they aren’t quite completely asleep. Each player also takes a barrier and a premonition card, placing them beside their wakefulness card. Dream fragment cards are shuffled together. Cards with flip symbols are shuffled in with the flip side up. The deck is place between the players. Play now begins.
On a player’s turn they will tell the opponent how many dream fragments cards they want to draw from the dream deck between 1 and 5. That number of cards is drawn, placing cards closes to the deck and moving out. Cards are then resolved in reverse order, moving towards the deck. The player can use their premonition card, if it’s not been used, to look at the top 3 cards before choosing a number. Once used it is flipped over. Each card has either a minus or a plus with a roman numeral. This is how far to move the bead either up or down. There are also symbols that require the card to either be flipped or added back to the deck, discarded or that indicate that the card is the same on both sides. If at any point while resolving cards, the player’s wakefullness goes up to 5, they lose the game. The only hope they will have is that they haven’t used their barrier card yet. This allows the player to avoid the effect of one card if it has an equal or cross symbol on it. Once used it’s flipped over like the premonition card, not to be used again. Play continues back and forth until either one player wakes up or a player completes their turn, is still asleep and there are no cards left in the dream deck. The player that does that is the winner.
There is also a Lucid Dreams Expansion that adds more player cards to the game. During setup these are shuffled together with the barrier and premonition cards and each player draws 2 of these. These do different things to help a player stay asleep.
COMPONENTS
There doesn’t appear to be a lot to this game, as far as components go. There are 19 dream fragment cards, 4 player cards and 2 wakefullness cards. The Lucid Dreams expansion adds 12 more player cards. These cards are all tarot sized and have really unique and interesting artwork. Not really sure how how sturdy or thick these will be but they look really nice in any case. There are also 2 glass beads that will be included to keep track of the wakefullness. All in all, everything looks really good. I just hope the production version is as good.
9 out of 10
RULEBOOK
There are rule cards instead of rule book. Everything is easily read and understood. There is even an example of gameplay to help you out. There are also variants for solo play or for raising the difficulty of the game. There are several pictures that look really great. Very nicely done.
9 out of 10
GAMEPLAY
I was pleasantly surprised at how cool this game is. The game play looks really simple but fun. Looks to me like everything has been well thought out. Gameplay looks to be about 5-10 minutes. I’d say that’s about right. It definitely has a uniqueness about it that I really like. I really think that this game takes the micro game approach to a higher level.
9 out of 10
OVERALL
Pleasant Dreams looks to be a light game of sleepy goodness. I’d say that this game will fit in with anyone that loves this new trend of micro games. This should appeal to those fans of games like Love Letter and the like. Overall from my perspective, I’d say that this could be a breakout title. It looks like it will be portable and easy to play. I really think this will be a great game and one that should definitely be picked up.
9 out of 10
For more information about this and other great games, please check out Aerjen Games at their site.
Pre-orders are still available. Check out the link below.
GAMING BITS 