Indie Corner: Dreii

A while back, the guys at Gaming Boulevard sent a game my way to review or make a vid out of it, and said that it had won several awards.
If a game has won awards, it’s gotta be good right? Right? I mean… Otherwise, it wouldn’t win any awards!
Thus, I started off my adventure in Dreii.

… Turns out, some awards are about as reliable as the IMDb movie score.

Story

Well, this is the story of Dreii:

And there you go. That’s the story. Riveting, isn’t it?
No, I’m dead serious, there ISN’T a story. Not even a tidbit. As someone who usually uses the game’s story as a starting point to delve into it, this is already a red flag. Heck, this isn’t just a red flag anymore, this is a blood-soaked field covered in red flags held by the red army.

Okay, maybe I’m a bit harsh on Dreii, maybe it’s like Minecraft where you have to imagine your own story, and the gameplay and world will immerse you enough to warrant a fun experience. So, let’s move on to that.

Gameplay

… I was mistaken. This is the gameplay: You’re a Viva Piñata reject that hovers over shapes and you have to attach yourself to them and move them into place. That’s all you do. The entire time. And it’s not set in a pretty world you can look at. No. It’s a blank gray screen. Blank gray screen, white shapes and a flying piñata. Sounds like the set up to a joke without a punchline.

It’s selling point is the physics puzzles, but quite honestly, the physics aren’t even that special. Oh no, in one puzzle you have to complete it while it’s windy! Okay, I just need to build the tower right and I can avoid it getting blown down. Then the game tries to get trickier with a bouncing floor that I have to put the shapes on. Just stack the shapes fast and the bouncing gets canceled out just enough to keep the tower stable.
How about a shape that you HAVE to complete with two players? Two sides that have to be in balance or it’ll all tumble down and you’ll have to rebuild it all again! Muhahahaha!!

Or you just slowly inch the blocks apart so the balancing becomes a non-issue.

Oh, yeah, this game is meant to be multiplayer but I got through half of it without any help. I didn’t even realize I was playing multiplayer puzzles until I noticed the levels all had a multiplayer indicator.
I was forcing myself through it, so I’d, at least, complete the game, but while in the menu, I accidentally clicked reset, which resets the entire game, and caused me to say “F*** it” and move on with my life.

Music

Now, there has to be a redeeming factor right? Like music? Maybe it won awards for music! Yeah, that’s it!

… There. Isn’t. Any. Music. Nothing, zilch, nada, niets, nichts! The only sound you hear is white noise and the sound of your piñata when it picks up stuff! And what sound does your piñata make you might ask? The sound of a xylophone. That’s it. So while you’re forcing yourself to play the game, the only thing you hear is the sound of a xylophone that was unfortunate enough to be handed to a 2-year-old on a severe sugar rush. Well, either that or a music store for percussion instruments that got sucked up into a Sharknado.

Dreii is the kind of game that makes me angry. It just pisses me off to the point that making coherent sentences becomes a formidable task. This isn’t a game! As someone who studied art, I can draw direct parallels with the current state of art.

Back in the day, it was important that your art told a story, that it had substance, that people could look at it and see your craftsmanship and skill. Your art had to be something that was appealing to look at but also told an entire story in one image! You had to have mastered the entire art form.

Nowadays, it’s a blue canvas with a white line and it’s raking in millions and the appreciation of the art community… And that, dear readers, is what Dreii is to gaming.

The thing that disgusts me the most is that this thing costs €12!

As for the score, I’ll do what Dreii does. I give it “Apple-23²²/Kerflops.4.22;14”. Make any sense out of that, and Dreii will be the game for you.

1 out of 5