Bloodborne Meets Studio Ghibli In Twisted RPG You Can Try Free

Indie developer Nicolas Petton is set to launch action-adventure RPG Dreamed Away next month, and it’s a title I’d recommend you keep an eye on.

In fact, you can do more than that as a demo for the game is already available.

As I said, Dreamed Away is an action-adventure RPG, albeit an “emotional” one that incorporates "psychological horror elements”.

It centres around Théo, a boy who finds himself lost in a dark and mysterious world.

Uniquely here, the combat consists entirely of minigames with every encountered enemy having “different variations of dodging and time-based mini-games of increasing complexity”.

“On a rainy summer night, Théo wakes up in his bedroom and realises his parents and his sister Louise have disappeared. The true nature of the world lays itself bare,” the synopsis teases.

“Ghosts, Phantoms and Revenants haunt Théo inside the catacombs and dark places where he searches for his sister. Always a step behind and never able to catch up. What happened? What does it mean? Why is this place so familiar? That's how his journey begins.”

Tonally, Dreamed Away is a weird ol’ title, but I mean that in the best way.

It boasts the charm of a Studio Ghibli film, but is as dark as the works of FromSoft including the likes of Bloodborne.

It boasts a pixel art aesthetic so although unsettling, Dreamed Away should be accessible enough for all players regardless of whether you’re a horror aficionado or a total scaredy cat.

From what I can gather, the demo will introduce you to the game’s first dungeon, allowing you to sample some of Dreamed Away’s puzzles with a couple of spooky moments in store for the player.

Since the demo’s initial release, improvements have been made to the balancing, making the difficulty of the featured boss fight slightly lower.

Localisation has also been improved which is always great to see.

As I said, if you like what you play, you don’t have long to wait as Dreamed Away will finally land in full on 23 October, several years after it entered development.

It’s being published by Pineapple Works and it’s set to launch across PC, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

The demo, however, is only available on Steam.