3rd-strike.com | Almightree: The Last Dreamer – Review
Follow	Genre: Action, Platformer, Puzzle
Developer: Chocoarts
Publisher: Digital Tribe
Platforms: iOS, Android, PC
Tested on: PC
Almightree: The Last Dreamer – Review
October 14, 2015	- Drydwen	- No Comments
Good: original concept, beautiful graphics
Bad: non-responsive controls, repetitive gameplay, low replay value, simplistic puzzles
Almightree: The Last Dreamer is a 3D puzzle platformer developed by Chocoarts and originally created as a mobile game. Digital Tribe has taken it upon them to release the beautiful looking game, as a mobile port, on the Steam platform. The question is whether or not the game has been adapted to fit the needs of modern gamers.
While the title suggests that you are the last dreamer, the protagonist certainly hopes this is not the case. Everyone he once knew has gone and he hasn't seen a single soul since the world started to fall apart, brick by brick. The shattering continues and you can only keep running to safety, hoping to find a way to restore balance. At last, the dreamer finds a seedling of the mystical Almightree. Imbued with the ability to commune with the spirits of nature, he restores the seedling causing the shattering to stop for a short while. As a dreamer, it is your task to find the majestic Almightree while helping its seedlings on your journey so that the earth – or what is left or it – is saved.
The game is an original concept story wise and the creativity reveals itself some more in the surreal yet beautiful crafted levels. The protagonist himself resembles something in the likes of a Wii avatar while the backdrops seem hand drawn illustrations. In combination with the somewhat detailed blocks and fauna that make up the levels, this is a great contrast but the odd mixture of art styles is quite beautiful in its own way.
While not a large part of the game, the menu deserves some recognition as it is a beautiful crafted and dynamic menu. A user interface is not really needed in-game but the clean look of the progression bar fits the game entirely.
Mobile ports can have clunky animations and sadly this is true for Almightree: The Last Dreamer. During the cinematic, the animations look perfectly flawless – at least to some degree. The in-game animations are simply terrible and wobbly, and this is not due to the rumbling of the world. It may also be caused by the clunky controls but either way, it's terrible in such a beautiful mystical world.
The game features a soothing instrumental ambiance sound which often gets disturbed by the shattering of the world in the form of blocks rumbling in the distance. The rumbling acts more as a warning to those who are not paying enough attention as time is running out. It can also give the player a little more adrenaline to finish the level as the calm background music can be a tad too boring.
As for voice-overs, there are none in-game but this may be a good thing as the voice-over in the cinematic does not quite match the protagonist. There are no pitches of any sorts making the spoken word extremely dull to listen to.
As mentioned in the graphics section, the game is a mobile port and has some clunky animations that may be indirectly caused by non-responsive controls when it is played with the traditional keyboard or the modern controller. More than likely, the game was designed this way so that the player can easily direct the protagonist but it has only resulted into a terrible platforming experience.
The gameplay is pretty straightforward but the game does provide some quick tutorials in-game whenever the time calls for them. As the last dreamer you must find your way through the mazes of blocks to the Almightree seedling so you can communicate with it and restore the balance in that level. There are twenty levels, and over a hundred puzzles.
These puzzles are not entirely mind-boggling puzzles as all of them requires you to use the key mechanic of plantsportation where you can "teleport" a block to another specific place to create bridges and stairs. This is simply done by choosing the place the block needs to go to, and have vines grow over it by pressing the spacebar. Next, you search for a block that you can directly see and "vine it up" with spacebar.
To increase the difficulty of these far-too-easy puzzles, the player must beat the pre-set timer while overcoming some obstacles along the way. These obstacles can range from simple metal blocks that cannot be plantsported to flaming pee shooters that remind me an awful lot of Zombies vs. Plants, which you will need to dodge. Even with all these obstacles, the puzzles are far too simplistic and can be solved rather fast without ever having to need to use the undo feature.
This brings me to the replay value of Almightree: The Last Dreamer. To put it bluntly, there is none, at least not in the singleplayer mode. You can certainly replay levels, in three different difficulties, but it's child play even on hard mode so you may as well start on that. The local speedrace game mode allows you to play with a friend on a split-screen. If none of your friends are into puzzlers, you can always do an online speedrace which is cross-platform between Windows and Mac.
Its artistic approach of a puzzle platformer is refreshing but the puzzles are lacking cleverness, causing the game to be utterly dull after a few mere minutes. I can certainly see it as a great mobile puzzler but as a PC platformer with non-responsive controls, the game lacks a handful of everything. The odd yet stunning combination of art styles and calming instrumental ambiance sound is simply not enough for the game to be a masterpiece.
Drydwen
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Hi! I'm Jess and I'm a writer, dreamer and gamer at heart since the early ages. I primarily game on PC but occasionally also on PS4 and Xbox One. I have a tiny obsession for World of Warcraft and caterpillars but you may also claim I have a devoted passion for the gaming industry in general. If you want to hit me up, find me on twitter!
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