‘The Sailor’s Dream’ for iOS game review

The Sailor’s Dream is the latest game from Simogo, the developer who made highly rated titles such as Year Walk and DEVICE 6.

The Sailor’s Dream is in typical Simogo style of interactive story telling. The game is already receiving rave reviews from people so let’s see how it is.

Gameplay

The Sailor’s Dream is less of a game and more of an interactive novel. It tells the story of a girl, a man, and a woman on an island. The game world is split into a handful of places in the ocean and you visit each place by swiping down on the screen.

Once inside, you can move around by swiping up, down, left or right as the game tells you to. You can swipe around and explore the place. The story is told through short pages scattered here and there in the game world.

The game is 2D and the exploration is done by swiping sideways. As you swipe you see images with some interactive elements but there is not much you can do. It’s like exploring a pop-up book. There is nothing to do here as such. There is no gameplay or puzzles of any kind like we saw in DEVICE 6. All you do is read and explore.

Call me a simpleton if you will but I thought that’s incredibly boring. I didn’t find the story all that interesting and the whole exploration thing got boring quickly. Even worse, there is not much to explore, and you can go through everything in about twenty minutes. The lack of anything to actually do in the game is also mildly annoying. Although at no point does the game claim to be some sort of a puzzle game or anything, the lack of literally anything to do other than scrolling and a bit of reading makes it nowhere as interesting as DEVICE 6, which had plenty to read, a much better story and actual gameplay elements.

Graphics and Sound

Even though it may be boring, I have to admit the game is pretty. The artwork is fantastic and the way it is all animated and smoothly flows when you scroll is beautiful. The game also includes some beautiful music, along with some very eerie background sounds and voices that you hear as you move around that add to the slight creepy factor of the game.

Verdict

I’ll be honest, The Sailor’s Dream has a very modern art kinda feel to it. The one where people pretend to understand and appreciate it when it actually makes no sense. The ‘game’ looks and sounds beautiful but other than that offers very little to actually do. It’s not even greatly interesting. You could say not every game has to be the same but when you’re calling it a game the least you could do is give people something to play with.

Rating: 6/10
Pros: Beautiful audio/visual presentation
Cons: Not much to do other than some reading and a bit of scrolling around

Download: iOS