Developer Interview: DREAMERS

I’m Luca Deriu, the founder of PlaySys, and the idea has always been to develop videogames, so this was my goal since the beginning. I opened the studio in 2007, and at the time, the idea of developing videogames — especially here in Northern Italy — was something that wasn’t supported much, or at least not within my environment with friends and family. We were always playing games, but most of my friends left them behind, seeing them as a way to pass the time as kids. For a time, PlaySys was doing 3D computer graphics for things like renders, interior design, product design... that sort of thing. The goal was always to create videogames, though!

Eventually I moved more and more towards coding, so in DREAMERS, I am the lead developer. Everything you’ve seen working in the game has been designed and developed by me.

So, a key member, for sure, is Elena Kartseva. She was involved in a lot of the parts of the game. We worked on the code and design of the game together and certification for PlayStation, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Sound design, for example, we had to think of how a character’s footsteps would sound on different surfaces, so lots of hypothesis and implementation!

Elena was also tasked with organising the work with the other external team members. So mainly, the team behind DREAMERS consists of two people at PlaySys, myself and Elena. But then we outsourced part of the 3D assets, all the sounds and music, all the translation to other companies, not necessarily companies in Italy. Some of them were working with us in the studio up until COVID hit, which was quite near the beginning of creating DREAMERS, so since then, we’ve been working remotely. Even if people were from Italy, they remained in their cities, some team members weren’t too far from Northern Italy, although some were from places like Sicily. Some of the team were even further away in Finland, who were responsible for the 3D assets and level design. Benedict Sanderson, who worked on the sound design, lives in Italy, but was originally from London. Then we had music composers from various countries and people working on the Japanese content who live in Japan. In total, 23 people are included in the credits, it was a massive coordination done mainly by Elena.

Well, it was very different! It was less amateurish than the previous approaches we’ve had. Consoles have always been a place that I wanted to publish games, but it was a very difficult goal to reach. Technically, I would say that the development kits are one of the main differences from previous developments, there are no shortcuts with consoles. For Nintendo, you need their specific development kit and same for PlayStation and Xbox. This was one of the main changes. Then, as middleware, we did use Unity, which, in a certain way, simplified the process. But then, in certain moments, you discover after a point in development, you’re totally left without much knowledge, and I underestimated the difficulty [of] using the same data on different machines. Each console’s systems and how they worked differently from each other, such as the save system, or the Trophies on PlayStation, Xbox has Achievements, and Nintendo has none. We had to find a way to make everything work with each other, so part of the development of the game, we used what we call the PlaySys Interaction Framework, a set of tools that we tried to perfect to match up better with each of the development kits.

For sure, Monkey Island was one. It was one of the first games that gave me that sort of “wow!” emotion when playing it on the Amiga on multiple floppy discs! The opening where you arrive at the port at night, with the lighting, it was super! Then there was Zelda, so many to name, but specifically the Super Nintendo’s A Link to the Past. Another title is [profile game=Okami], I played it first on the PlayStation 2, then the Wii, and that was a huge source of inspiration for the dialogue in DREAMERS, with characters mumbling instead of speaking, but also it was a kind of shortcut to not having voiceovers for each character!

Some darker influences, for example, I really enjoyed [profile game=Rule-of-Rose], certain moments and one of the ending parts in DREAMERS is dark-ish. For the entire development, we called it the “dark region”, but using these dark and black colours was kind of obvious, and it turned out better with the white fog, so I can say Silent Hill was another strong influence. DREAMERS is not a horror game, but some parts do have a darker atmosphere.

It’s very difficult, it’s like music: I listen to so much it’s impossible to pick a favourite. There was Monkey Island, yes, which I tried to replicate the emotions that game gave me for DREAMERS. But I really can’t say, I played the Double Fine game [profile game=Broken-Age] which surprised me. It was funny — like most of their games — [profile game=Psychonauts], for example, is one of my favourite games. I’m not an enthusiast of any specific genre, but I’m not an [profile game=Elden-Ring] or [profile game=Bloodborne] player, they make me too nervous! I like to relax with a game, and with those games, your skills are super relevant when playing, and they make me frustrated!

The updates we’ve released so far have been mainly bug fixes. At the moment, there are no plans to extend the game, it’s just all been fixes. Very recently it was reported that one Trophy was not popping, we found a streamer who was playing the game that was a completionist, so he had a massive list of Platinum Trophies. We saw that he had a huge list of 100% completed games on PlayStation, and then noticed DREAMERS in there, which was only at about 80%, so I can imagine the frustration of buying a game you don’t know, only for it to ruin your statistics. It was enormously embarrassing, and we decided that no matter what, we’d stay at the office and patch everything. It had to be done in any case, but that was a moment we felt kind of ashamed.

We are working parallel to DREAMERS, we released the art book since the style of the game was something that people liked. We printed the 300-page book as well as a digital edition and a soundtrack with around two hours of music. But right now, we’re just enjoying the moment. DREAMERS didn’t make us superstars, to be honest with you, I expected to get better sales and sell more copies, but I underestimated the marketing. So we’re spending time making trailers, images, [and] spreading the word on X mainly!

Yes, it’s absolutely true. I saw the paragraph at the beginning of your article, and yes, I can confirm it is very difficult! We’re a new developer and a publisher. The publishing part is something I liked on the journey to release and something we want to continue in the future. But, when you’re a new developer/publisher, the will is to create a game that is a 10/10, but of course, reality is different. We are here to create games, but we are also realistic and know that it takes more than just skills, budget, and time.

Entering into a new space like PlayStation and Xbox without connections and introductions is difficult. So I am happy about getting there, we even reached the ID@Xbox programme. So I’m hoping that our next title can be noticed better and promoted by PlayStation and Xbox. Although, when we released DREAMERS I saw that Xbox shared our trailer and branded their YouTube channel with DREAMERS for two weeks, which was super cool! It was very time-limited, and maybe they had a lot of expectations for the game but seeing our game with the ID@Xbox logo on their channel was, yeah, it was really cool. PlayStation also shared our trailer both on their international and Japanese channels, but like you said, you get buried in a moment by other games. On Nintendo, it just didn’t happen. We tried, we applied and asked if they wanted to share any news or the trailer, but they weren’t interested.

Yes! So, with the DREAMERS PC release, we plan to release on both Steam and the Epic Games Store. We are more prepared for releasing on Steam, but we immediately got this request to have keyboard and mouse support, and the game was developed mainly on PlayStation and was developed around a gamepad. I’m not a Steam player, generally, I relax with Xbox or PlayStation on my sofa. For me, Steam being on PC, the PC reminds me of work! I’m afraid about releasing a game on PC with only gamepad support and receiving negative reviews, so we are working on making it work with keyboard and mouse. We are also planning on some extra content, like it would be cool to add real-time ray tracing for the lighting, but then on PC you need to have the options for things like resolution and anti-aliasing, so it requires a lot of adjustments. You know, PlayStation 5 is PlayStation 5. Xbox One, for example, is an Xbox One, but PC can be a lot of different specs and machines. So yeah, it’s there, pending, we’re pushing to get it released but no solid release date quite yet.

I do like how it came out, but probably combat. We decided to not put it in the game, but the initial idea of DREAMERS was an idea I came up with around 20 years ago whilst doing my thesis project, so I wanted to make a game that is talking about very serious topics in a colourful way. So I wanted to do something weird at that time — we’re talking around 2005/2006 or so — but today we’re used to games like that, there are multiple titles that do this. Back then, I was laughed at for this, people were thinking that videogames were just all about shooting zombies and that sort of thing. I wanted to have real issues you know, things like conspiracy, social isolation, difficulty integrating with people, that sort of real-world thing.

But, probably, if I could go back, I would think of something revolving around a combat system. I like the Like a Dragon franchise, and they have very, very deep topics that are related to the Yakuza, but it’s much more than that. But then, from time to time, they have the fights that sort of break up the atmosphere, and it makes the combat feel less tense than interacting with characters, where usually in games, fighting is the main challenge; in Like a Dragon, I felt that the combat was a fun way to relax after the story moments. It’s something for the future, who knows? But if time wasn’t a constraint, then it would be something I’d like to go back and implement this sort of fighting, somehow!