PC Game Review: Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child

Gorgeous art nouveau style adventure game, Dream Chronicles, now has a third game in the series. Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child picks up where Dream Chronicles 2: The Eternal Maze left off. Only Faye has lost her memory and thinks her name is Brenna. Dreams again take center stage as she keeps dreaming about a man and child. The journey, again, is a pleasurable one that comes to a sudden ending that feels incomplete.

Faye stumbles her way around trying to put everything together. Lilith, the Fairy Queen of Dreams, returns and this time, she has Faye’s daughter. Poor Faye, she keeps having to search and rescue someone she loves. This world has various fairies and several work to stop Faye from progressing in her search. The fairies shake up scenes, remove steps and add other roadblocks.

In this one, the dream pieces and dream jewels have a real purpose. Dream pieces have appeared in all three games — they’re crystal-like gems that you pick up in the scenes to add to your dream journal. Dream jewels aren’t complete until you find their missing pieces. The pieces go into the jewels to complete them. They didn’t have a purpose until this one other than challenging you to find all of them. The dream pieces help you unlock the doors in the Nexus room. The room contains doors and gears so you can move the doors left or right until you find the one you wish to enter. These gateways make it fun to travel to wherever you need to go.

The series continues to impress with its careful attention to detail in its elegant scenes and smooth effects. The music is lovely that you never feel the need to turn it off. The Chosen Child, like its predecessors, holds many puzzles for solving. Only two activities annoy the heck out of me. One is the Simon-style game where you have to play the music exactly like the game plays it. The other is the 3D maze near the end of the game. My eyes and head start feeling lousy as I work my way around the maze — and it requires quite a few visits and long walks to arrive at your destinations.

When I finally finish the maze, the rest of the game doesn’t do much to make up for that long walk as the very abrupt (and I don’t use “very” often) ending comes shortly after. Nonetheless, the trip is worthwhile although too short. It only takes me an afternoon to play the entire game without getting hints from the man in the crystal ball. Well, I understand the game contains so many details and original puzzles, I think it could stand to entertain us a little longer.

I replay the game to see how well the crystal ball helps and it doesn’t. The objects you need do move to new places when you replay the game. I have trouble finding a key and Mr. Crystal Ball keeps telling me I need to sew something. So it might frustrate those who need help finding an object.

After completing the game, my jaw drops as my score doesn’t touch the Global Score list. I thought I did a good job finding the dream pieces and nuggets. Plus, I never used the crystal ball. So competitive players might feel motivated to play again in hopes of scoring better. But me — I have to move on to another game.

The free download only lasts 30 minutes rather than the typical 60, which is understandable consider The Chosen Child is short.

Download and play Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child.