"Sweet dreams, Thalia."
You wake up in a foggy haze with one hell of a headache. The way ahead is dark and foreboding. You remember who you are, but not a lick of how you got there. And to top it all off, you’ve got a persistent, bloodthirsty doppelgänger chasing after you. Welcome to your coma; enjoy your stay!
She Dreams Elsewhere is a surreal adventure indie RPG developed by Studio Zevere (a one-man studio), with original music composed by Mimi Page. It focuses on the story of Thalia Sullivan, a high strung, anxiety-ridden, comatose woman on a journey to defeat the nightmares preventing her from awakening, while also finding out how exactly this mess happened in the first place.
But sadly for Thalia, some nightmares are harder to confront than others…
The game is still in development, but a 1-2 hour demo can be downloaded via Steam
or itch.io.
Minor spoilers below. View at your own risk.
This video game contains examples of:
- Adventures In Coma Land: The main plot of the game is Thalia trying to find a way out of her coma and why she's in one in the first place.
- Arc Words
- "Sweet dreams" and variations thereof.
- Big Bad: The Other, Thalia's (supposedly) evil doppelganger.
- Body Horror: Laury goes from his normal dog form to a repulsive, vicious creature when Thalia and Amia face him at the end of Oblivion.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Bronco, who genuinely believes you can train a fish to run up trees if you try hard enough, among other oddities. Thalia seems to have a pretty good friendship with him, regardless.
- Critical Hit: A round of applause goes off whenever you strike one. There's even special charms that allow you to increase the rate it happens!
- Dark and Troubled Past: Implied with Thalia.
- Dialogue Tree: A major part of most cutscenes and NPC interactions.
- Dream Tropes
- All Just a Dream: The entire game.
- Anxiety Dreams: A result of Thalia's own social anxiety.
- Dream Land
- Dream Walker
- Dream Within a Dream
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Said nearly verbatim when Thalia realizes she's dreaming at the end of Oblivion.
- Hub Level: The Mirage, where Thalia can access her various dreamworlds, shop, and hang out with imaginary versions of her friends.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: The main premise and conflict.
- Medium Blending: The second teaser trailer mixes gameplay and live-action footage of a woman having a nightmare.
- Mind Screw: The entire game qualifies as one, though special mention goes out to the trippy battle backgrounds.
- Noodle Incident: Apparently something happened between Thalia and Amia during New Year's, to which Thalia is still pissed about.Amia: Hey, once we're out of here, let's have a girls night. We'll go out or chill inside or something.
Thalia: Only if it doesn't end up like New Years' again.
Amia: Are you ever gonna let that go?
Thalia: No.
Amia: You hoe. - Pre-existing Encounters
- Retraux Games: The entire game is done in a pixelated black and white, original Game-Boy style mixed with CGA colors.
