Embark on a journey through dreams and nightmares.
"Your corruption will never harm the Dream Crystal!"
— Gogi
Hypnagogia is a 2020 first-person exploration game developed by sodaraptor as a game jam title for the 2020 LSDJAM. Influenced by other nostalgia-fueled low-polygon-count games inspired by the aesthetics of iconic 90s consoles such as the Dreamcast and PlayStation, Hypnagogia takes players on a short but intriguing journey through various worlds inspired by real dreams. You, the Dreamer, enter a world where reality ends and dreams begin, a place created from the essence of joyful fantasies, twisted nightmares, and the stranger places in-between. To wake up, you must get to the end of each of the eight dream worlds and collect the red crystals, with Gogi the dream protector, in the form of a cute bunny, to guide you along. Each world is a small area where you must navigate, speaking with dream denizens and usually having to complete a Fetch Quest to open the way to the crystal.
In 2021, a more expansive follow-up game and loose sequel called Hypnagogia 無限の夢 Boundless Dreams was released. In it, Gogi is kidnapped by a mysterious shadow, with the Dream Crystal shattering, dispersing the shards throughout the dream worlds. The Dreamer is called upon by Hypno, who has taken the role of guardian in Gogi's absence, to recover the shards again as she watches over the nexus. As nightmares begin to corrupt the dreamscape, your adventures through the realm of fantasies may take an unexpected turn...
Like the original game, Boundless Dreams is split up into eight main worlds; however, there are also several secret worlds that can be found. You also have the ability to make choices when speaking to NPCs, though this has little effect on your progress.
Hypnagogia
and its sequel Boundless Dreams are available for purchase and download on Windows from Itch.io, and Boundless Dreams is additionally available on Steam.
This video game provides examples of:
- Acid-Trip Dimension: These are dreams, after all. The Dreamer will meet all manner of colorful characters and discover mysterious secrets while exploring a series of abstract worlds based on dreams and nightmares.
- Alien Blood: The Mimic, thought it appears to be made of patchwork cloth, sometimes leaves behind pools of reddish-pink blood.
- Anti-Frustration Features: To prevent the player getting lost in the larger levels, glowing stars will sometimes guide them to the next objective.
- Bookworm: The Dreamer is well-versed in deities from myth and mythology, and a good chunk of that knowledge and lore transitions over into their dreams.
- Big Good: The all-powerful entity known as the Dream Catcher, while terrifying, also prevents the Dreamer by its benevolent will alone from dying in their sleep, and keeps Sleep Paralysis Demons at bay.
- But You Were There, and You, and You: The Dreamer encounters most of their fallen and rejected dreams in the Heaven World after the Dream Catcher Seraphim destroys the Tower World. They each impart wisdom before becoming one with the paradise dreamscape.
- Continuity Nod: In the Ice World, the Dreamer can find a hidden path that leads to a cave where a Snow Child from the first game is trying to build a snowman, and they seem to recognize the Dreamer from their previous encounter.
- Cosmic Keystone: The Dream Crystal. It's essentially a metaphorical representation of the core of the Dreamer's mind, so of course it fulfills this trope, as it's the beating heart of the dreamscape, the nexus of all worlds connecting conscious and subconscious realms. This is also why the nightmares are so desperate to seize it.
- Creepy Doll: The Mimic in Boundless Dreams is a poor imitation of Gogi. Even the naive Dreamer can see through the thinly-veiled ruse. In the end of the game, it's revealed that it was tasked with gathering all the shards of the Dream Crystal by Hypno, but failed miserably.
- Defiant to the End: The manifestation of nightmares, Hypno, is screaming her beak off that she cannot be destroyed just as she's erased from existence by Gogi for trying to corrupt the Dreamer's subconscious.
- Despair Event Horizon: What triggers the plot of the sequel is that the Dreamer can no longer bear a harsh, cruel reality where the goodness of beliefs, people, and society are on the evident decline. This despair and hopelessness allows their nightmares to not only manifest but threaten the stability of their dream world.
- Diegetic Interface: The Dreamer acquires one when donning the alien diving suit in the Sunken World update for Boundless Dreams. When they foolishly dive down to crushing depths, it even starts malfunctioning, and the helmet's glass begins to crack
- The Dog Bites Back: In The Stinger, it's shown that the Mimic survived its master disposing of it, and washes up on the shores of a tropical paradise. Nearby are other Dream Crystals of other humans, and the Mimic makes its intent to conquer them all known with a Slasher Smile.
- Dream Apocalypse: The nightmares of the first game attempt to keep the Dreamer from ever waking up. Gogi of course has none of it, and grows large to protect the Dreamer's path to the Dream Crystal and waking world. The nightmares swear they'll capture the Dreamer next time.
- Dream Weaver: It's heavily implied that Gogi is not just the guardian of the Dreamer's memories, but also an All-Powerful Bystander in the dreamscape who doesn't interfere with the Dreamer's journey. Justified, as he wants them to grow and develop, and only gets involved if they are in any real danger.
- Dream Within a Dream: The Mysterious Forest is set entirely within the dream of one of the inhabitants of the protagonist's own dreamscape.
- Featureless Protagonist: You play as the Dreamer, whose body is modeled as gender-neutral, and not much is known about them or details of their real-world life. Their past can only be indirectly inferred by all the dreams they're having.
- For Happiness: In Boundless Dreams, Gogi rebukes Hypno's boasting that nightmares gave the Dreamer a goal, a purpose the dreamscape was lacking. Gogi states that dreams are sacred experiences of imagination and self-reflection, and were never supposed to be corrupted by nightmares or have "a goal".
- Hell Has New Management: The Lava World is run by various Obstructive Bureaucrat devils and demons in a corporate hierarchy. It's implied by this that, in real life, the Dreamer has a horrible call centre job they want to quit.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Gogi ends up mortally injuring his physical form to protect the Dreamer from Hypno, asking them not to cry since he'll always be there to protect them.
- Horse of a Different Color: You come across and can ride Striders in the Desert World, which are friendly Chocobo-like birds used to quickly traverse the dunes and terrain and jump to greater heights.
- Jet Pack: The player acquires a jet pack early in the Space World to allow them to get around the space station.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: The Dreamer is implied to be one in the first game, as some of their fondest memories were being surrounded by cats in a visit to a Japanese Shinto shrine. These manifest in the dream world as friendly Cat Folk.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the first game, Gogi cheekily does a lot of this, promising they'll watch over the player, but asks them to tell the developer immediately if they notice anything REALLY BAD.
- Minion with an F in Evil: The Mimic honestly thought their orders were to follow the Dreamer and "have fun" across the various dream worlds.
- Nightmare Weaver: The traumatic experiences the Dreamer has had in the real world cause them to gradually abandon and reject all their hopes and dreams. As a result, the personification of all their despair, Hypno, manifests into being and seeks to plunge the dreamscape into a "paradise of eternal nightmare".
- Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: Platforming sections are commonplace throughout the dream's Bizarrchitecture, but the player cannot die from a mistimed jump, as it's All Just a Dream. Instead, the Dreamer will respawn on safe ground close to wherever they fell.
- Our Angels Are Different: In Boundless Dreams, a benevolent Seraphim/Ophanim appears before the Dreamer three times. The third time reveals it's your Guardian Angel, and creator of all the dreamscapes you encounter.
- Our Demons Are Different: The Dreamer encounters various nightmare demonic forces, Sleep Paralysis Demons, that are held at bay by an all-powerful force, and there is also one very powerful demon seen early on who was hidden in plain sight in the shape of a gigantic bird.
- Permanently Missable Content: It's entirely possible to miss the paths to the hidden levels that contain the Lava World, Desert World, Nightmare School, and Candy World. However, after completing the entire game, there's a dream hub which allows each level to be replayed, so if you missed a secret the first time around you can always come back for another go.
- Righteous Rabbit: Gogi protects the Dreamer in both games from all malevolence, internal and external, that would disrupt the sanctity of their dream world.
- Roguelike: The first game has no way to save your progress. Fortunately,
the journey isn't too long, and will usually take just an hour. - Scenery Porn: Each dream's visuals are vivid, varied, and often just gorgeous to behold.
- Shameless Self-Promotion: Downplayed. In the shopping mall level's hidden arcade, you can find cabinet machines for sodaraptor's other games, such as Pathogen-X, WOLFGUN, and Descension.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- Stairway to Heaven: Of the To Hell and Back variety. As the Dreamer traverses the Tower World, the dream version of Hell, they come across the rejected husks of all the dreams they have cast off. All the beings in its forgotten depths are lost and suffering without purpose. Fortunately, the Dreamer's Guardian Angel and dream catcher appears at the top of the final tower to bring them all to Heaven.
- Swallowed Whole: What happens to the Dreamer when they foolishly release an evil sea deity who was sealed away for threatening to swallow the whole world from its oceanic prison. Of course, it proceeds to consume the entire dreamscape, and the Dreamer along with it. Fortunately, they can escape her belly and return to the dream nexus via a Dream Shard.
- These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: There are some dark, unsettling dreamscapes the Dreamer can find by chance, where the nightmarish shadowy residents flat out spell it out for them that they do not belong there.
- Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey: The Eldritch Abomination of nightmares Hypno, and her minion, the Mimic.
- You Have Failed Me: Enraged that their servant the Mimic failed to gather the shards of the Dream Crystal, Hypno hurls it into the void. Though in The Stinger, it's revealed that the Mimic survived.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Hypno turns on the Dreamer as soon as they reassemble the Dream Crystal. Having already usurped Gogi from his position as Guardian, she now plans to create endless nightmares for the Dreamer using the power of the Dream Crystal.
