I would like to thank High Tower Games for the review key for this title.

Video game parody is not a new or unusual thing. It's been done numerous times, with varying degrees of success. Dream Warrior is a parody of the 8-bit era of RPG from the NES age, and it has a few interesting ideas that make its form of parody stand out.

To understand Dream Warrior, you have to understand the era it's doing a parody of. It parodies old-school, turn-based RPGs that compensated for their primitive graphics and music by making those aspects as memorable as possible while having rather grand stories to tell despite mining the most generic of fantasy medieval tropes. This era of games would prove the beginning of far grander games with much better aesthetics, and look quaint now, but modern RPGs owe them a lot for setting down a lot of basics.

Dream Warrior's parody starts off with a cliche "the world needs to be saved", plot, but immediately veers off script and makes clear you are not a grand hero, you are a pathetic drunk. You get a chance to escape the bottle and actually be a hero, but how your adventure pans out is going be up to you.

Dream Warrior is not going to be a surprise for anyone who has played an RPG game. You fight monsters in a turn-based style, discover treasure, get new equipment and levels, and so on. Uniquely, though, the way you progress is more like a choose-your-own-adventure book. Instead of walking around a world map, it's a map with several nodes that branch out to more nodes. Each node has its own potential challenge (hinted at in the description), and the nodes are randomized. As a result, no two games will be exactly the same, which adds a bit of randomness and replayability.

Another interesting feature is the way you choose your class. You can choose one of two alcoholic beverages to consume at the start. The first starts you as a Warrior, who is strong but has limited healing options. The second starts you as the Cleric, who is not as strong but has more healing options than just items. Other classes are unlockable as you play.

Graphically, the game is a medley of classic 8-bit RPG styles. The world map and town areas resemble Dragon Quest/Ultima's NES port (being colorful and hand-drawn with an anime look). The battle UI and enemies have a Fantasy Medieval Earthbound look (wacky-looking monsters albeit as drawn by the developer who openly admittedly did it themselves). Overall, it's clearly intended to pay homage to 8-bit RPGs of the NES era and nails the aesthetic pretty well.

Music and sounds are a mix of chiptunes clearly homaging the 8-bit fantasy style of old-school RPGs. Nothing too memorable, but it's pretty decent to listen to and again nails the old-school aesthetic.

This game is controlled only by keyboard and mouse. The developer admitted this was designed with really old PCs in mind and the default controls are easy to figure out (a brief tutorial is even given to get you started).

Stability is rock solid. If you have any computer that is able to get on Steam and has more processing power than an abacus, you can run this game. It runs natively on both Windows and Linux. It does not have any information about Steam Deck support, but it runs out of the box on Steam Proton, though the controls will require remapping since it's not optimized for Deck control at all.

Morally, this has a few issues.

Violence is RPG style "give orders and watch it happen" style violence, minus blood and gore, and enemies disappear after death. All violence is generally in self-defense.

Language is pretty clean for the most part, as this parody does try to keep within the family-friendly translation limitations of the 8-bit era. The graphics also don't lend themselves to any sexual content.

There is mild fairy tale-esque magic and some undead and demonic enemies, generally of the comedic variety. Morally, you are going to be a heroic character, but worth noting you do start the story as a canon drunk and you do have to drink an alcoholic beverage to actually start the story (more a "choose your class" mechanic in disguise).

It's not an overly hard or long game, though the rogue-lite-style random events do add a decent bit of replay value. Technically, it's a super lightweight game that should run on basically anything with little trouble. Morally, it's got a few concerning elements but nothing a reasonably mature person would not be able to handle. For a parody, it's pretty amusing while having a nice mix of uniqueness and nostalgia to it, so I'd recommend it if you need a good laugh at the RPG genre's tropes.