So I Tried… Dreams of Aether

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never played before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time, I played Dreams of Aether.

Well, technically, we played Dreams of Aether! Recently, I and a few others in the GrinCast slept as one and dreamt of many maddening microgames. We even managed to beat the main story in the time we spent!

What I Thought It Was

When I first heard of Dreams of Aether, it was pitched to me as “another one of those Rivals of Aether April Fools spin-offs, only this time, it’s a WarioWare spoof”. I enjoyed Lovers of Aether in the past, and I’ve long been a fan of WarioWare, ever since WarioWare: Smooth Moves from 2007 for the Nintendo Wii. As such, I was expecting a somehow even more tongue-in-cheek version of that series’ main gimmick: throwing a bajillion microgames your way and seeing how many you can complete with mere seconds per teeny tiny game.

What It Actually Is

Developed by Lepioid, Dreams of Aether definitely has a lot of great humour, but I was surprised at how sincerely it adapted the WarioWare formula! There are five different sets of story levels, each with its own set of microgames. You have to then complete roughly 20 such games with four lives, with a boss game at the end. It was noted during the podcast that some of the microgames seemed to repeat between levels, but there’s still a wide variety of games on display here.

I will note that many of them can be on the simpler side, even outside of the first level. However, this worked out nicely when the Dual mechanics came in and I had to complete several microgames at the same time. There are a few that I struggle with, whether or not they’re alone, but on the whole, Dreams of Aether offers some very polished and entertaining microgames with a ton of expressive animation.

Will I Keep Playing?

Oh, for sure! There are a few Endless modes, both alternate Endless versions of the story levels and special levels designed purely for infinite microgaming, so I definitely have plenty more to do in terms of getting high scores. Even beyond that, Dreams of Aether is just a very fun and expressive game, offering a slice of WarioWare fun for a fraction of the typical Nintendo cost, even if you didn’t get it when it was free!