I have a title that is a little dreamy and a tad unusual. Developed by Montraluz and published by Tlön Industries, Dreamcore takes you on a journey that involves a lot of walking… a lot of walking.

“Step into the surreal with Dreamcore, a body-cam styled psychological horror game that plunges you into the eerie beauty of “liminal spaces.” Unravel the mysteries of Dreamcore’s non-linear worlds and uncover its hidden secrets. Can you discover what lies beyond the edge of reality?”

First, I have no idea what this is being marketed as a horror game, it’s not. It’s dream-like, but there is nothing horror about it. Also, the blurb is doing a lot of heavy lifting as it makes the game sound really interesting, but it’s not. What you get with Dreamcore is two maps to walk around in… and that’s it. You walk around a bit. The first map, Dreampools has you wandering around a collection of oddly shaped swimming pools with the aim to find the exit. There no interactions, no scary monsters, no combat – nothing. You just walk around. You need to find a flashlight then head to the basement to get to the exit, which took me just under 50 minutes.

The second map, Eternal Suburbia is more of the same but you now find yourself in a picturesque, 1950s American-styled, but bizarre looking neighbourhood. I didn’t finish this map because, if I’m being honest, I got bored. There’s really nothing to do other than walk around a bit. You find easy to decipher clues that I think are supposed to be puzzles – but there is just zero challenge here. You just walk around until you find the exit. I admit that Dreamcore has a really nice eerie and surreal quality about it. The graphics are certainly quite nice, especially on the Dreampools map and they have this fuzziness quality to them that add to the dream-like atmosphere. The main problem is that there is no gameplay here, you just walk around.

Dreamcore is not scary in any way, it’s not a horror game, as it is being marketed as. It’s a walking sim, a very pretty-looking walking sim. This “game” (I use that word hesitantly) is stylish, but there’s zero substance. How long are you going to walk around these maze-like environments before you get bored? For me, that was around an hour. Dreamcore feels like a tech demo, a showcase for some nice looking environments – but not a game. As I said, there are only the two maps. Three more will be released throughout the year, but I’m assuming that these will be more of the same. Nice-looking, but nothing to do. Just watch a playthrough on YouTube and save yourself some money because there’s nothing to play here anyway.