There is a small amount of background at the start of Dream Quest to give you a vague idea of what is going on, but very little is actually told about your character in the game. You have escaped from a prison galleon bound for a penal colony (what you were imprisoned for in the first place you don't know) and have now found yourself washed up on the shore of a fishing village. What you do next, how you go about discovering the secrets of your past, are the main thrust of the game.

Dream Quest, in my humble opinion anyway, plays far better as a straight text adventure than one overburdened with graphics and sound. In all honesty, the graphics aren't much to write home about and while the sound effects are a nice touch, they quickly outstay their welcome. For someone who prefers playing text adventures without sound altogether, the sound effects were distracting and soon had me reaching for the volume control.

Ignore the graphics and sound and Dream Quest isn't a bad game at all. The style of writing is reasonably atmospheric and there are nice touches with different coloured text to emphasise events - perhaps a minor thing but a nice one all the same. Static item descriptions are pretty much a hit-and-miss affair: some locations contain examinable items, others don't (although the items are listed in the description so being faced with the "you see no such thing" when trying to examine them is annoying).

Conversation with the various characters you meet is awkward in that it uses the standard ADRIFT conversation technique of "ask [character] about [subject]" without providing any kind of hint as to what you're supposed to ask them. Quite a few times I met a character and was unable to elicit a single response from them. Another time I came across someone called Mrs. So and was unable to reference her at all! As to whether this makes the game unfinishable I really couldn't say but it's one of the signs Dream Quest shows of a definite lack of playtesting.

Though it comes with a hints option, Dream Quest is a difficult game to make much progress with. In part this is due to some quite awful guess the verb problems. When trying to distract a guard so I could sneak past him, I found a pebble but was unable to figure out how to solve the puzzle without resorting to the hints. "Throw pebble into bush" might have seemed perfectly logical and straightforward to the writer but it doesn't to the poor player. "Throw pebble" would have worked just as well and would have prevented much frustration.

For a first effort, Dream Quest isn't a terrible game by any means. As said above, the writing is quite atmospheric; the story, while hardly enthralling, held my attention for long enough; the layout of the locations was reasonably interesting. But its bad points - guess the verb, difficulty and lack of communication with characters - turned what could have been a fairly decent game into a decidedly average one. A major rewrite to rid the game of its bad points would be a very good idea.

Logic: 8 out of 10
Hard to fault the game here as the few tasks I completed were nicely logical although how it fairs later on I couldn't say.

Problems: 5 out of 10 (10 = no problems)
Guess the verb struck quite often and there were some occasions when the game seemed overly difficult. And, of course, being unable to reference one of the characters was a major problem.

Story: 5 out of 10
Fleshed out a little more, the background story could have been interesting. Left as it is, there's too little to go on to give it any real depth.

Characters: 3 out of 10
Pretty one-dimensional with the exception of Bert. Conversation with them was awkward and hints as to what to ask them would have been a big bonus.

Writing: 6 out of 10
Generally pretty good.

Game: 5 out of 10
Not a good game, not a bad game, but somewhere in between. Dream Quest at least shows promise that the writer has the potential to produce far better games.

Overall: 32 out of 60