Unlike most of the gaming genres out there, when dealing with the world of horror, you often need to bring your own imagination to fill in some obvious blanks. This could be to fully flesh out that quick blur that snuck past you down a long hallway, or maybe it’s putting a real face on the pixelated psychopath that just buried his ax in your best friends back. In the case of Bad Dream: Coma, it’s building upon the storyboard structure to add a sense of realism to the framework of the nightmare that unfolds around you.

As a rule of thumb, I try to avoid point-and-click games like the plague, but I made an exception for this due to the minimalist art style and premise that really spoke to me. The entire game is displayed in what looks like a weathered sketchbook, comprised of mostly simple, stylized backdrops and characters that often lean on the cartoonish side, but occasionally venture into the more horrid, lifelike designs that would be at home in the heavy hitters of the horror encyclopedia. This not only fed my imagination to pull me into its macabre setting, but really sells the premise of the nightmare world you’re currently trapped in, as there are plenty of instances where logic and perspective are thrown to the wayside, just as they would be during a regular sleep cycle.

Unfortunately, the gameplay loop itself isn’t quite as interesting as the actions depicted within. You spend the vast majority of the game scouring the environments, which in some instance are much larger than they rightfully should be, housing one or two items of interest, be they items, puzzles, or interactive bits to unlock the path onward. There were a few instances where I found this to be a bit frustrating as the sweet spot I needed to hover over to interact with the world was entirely too small or in a weird place. The biggest offender was when I needed to hand a worm to someone that needed to fish for some sustenance before helping you with your way forward. I spent damn near a half-hour tracing his outline, trying to shove it into his hand, mouth, rectum, and everywhere in between, only to figure out that I needed to put it on his fishing pole that sat about five feet to his right.

The puzzles that are used to break up the monotony are sparsely placed and typically task you with either deciphering some type of pattern, or in many cases, are examples ripped from children’s activity books in which you take two photos and simply spot the differences. At first, the latter was a nice change from the standard gameplay tropes, but by the fourth example of this, I was ready to tag my son in and let him pick apart the photos of a moldy-looking chicken.

The game sets the expectation that your decisions matter, and before the credits roll, your actions will decide which ending you receive. While this is true, there doesn’t seem to be much depth or leeway given to the player since the menus clearly conveyed that I was on track for the bad ending before I even completed the first chapter, all due to me killing a few birds when I was just getting my footing. This struck me as a bit unfair, as I really struggled with how often I found myself lost with no clear way forward or semblance of what was needed from me, only to find out that I needed to backtrack to an unrelated area to shake the narrative loose, or switch the item equipped since there wasn’t any icon or indication that it was to be used where the developers wanted it too. This really felt off since some interactive bits would show my equipped item with a mark through it, while others did not. Any reasonable person in this situation is going to maniacally kill some random birds sitting on the side of a bridge if the prompt is given. By the midway point, I felt like there was a complete absence of choice and I was only doing what I could to move forward.

Bad Dream: Coma isn’t going to be remembered as the best horror game ever released, but if you’ve got an active imagination, it has some moments that will haunt you if you let it. For being a point-and-click style game, it has just enough substance to be worth the cost of admission, even if it doesn’t fall within the standard of what makes a great horror game great or have all of its pieces align perfectly. It was really easy for me to zone out here and there to picture it in the form of a walking simulator, the go-to trope for the genre, as I pieced together the mystery of why I was stuck in a never-ending nightmare.

8 out of 10

Pros

• The Sketchbook Style Visuals
• Interesting Premise Capitalizes on Dreams
• Multiple Endings

Cons

• Consequences of Choices Feel Forced
• Some Mediocre Puzzles
• Some Environments Feel Empty Despite Their Large Size

Bad Dream: Coma was developed by Desert Fox and published by Big Fish Games, Forever Entertainment S.A., PlayWay, and Ultimate Games S.A. It is available on Mobile, NS, PC, and X1. The game was provided to us for review on X1 and played on XSX. If you’d like to see more of Bad Dream: Coma, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

Check out OpenCritic for a better idea of how our review stacks against others.