Dreamfall Chapters

Dreamfall Chapters is a strong adventure game, held back only by the required knowledge base for entry. A fascinating game with interwoven tales, beautiful set pieces and believeable protagonists, Dreamfall is going strong and only getting started.

76%Game Brain Score

story, graphics

optimization, grinding

80% User Score Based on 2,814 reviews

Critic Score 70%Based on 8 reviews

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About

Dreamfall Chapters is a single player action game with fantasy, drama and science fiction themes. It was developed by Red Thread Games and was released on July 21, 2017. It received mostly positive reviews from critics and positive reviews from players.

Dreamfall Chapters is an episodic, story-driven adventure game about choices and consequences, dreams and reality, magic and science, chaos and order, and the broken heroes whose actions will shape the course of history in all worlds. With a brand new storyline, Dreamfall Chapters introduces new players to The Longest Journey Saga, while returning players will get the conclusion they have been wai…

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80%

Audience ScoreBased on 2,814 reviews

story1.3k positive mentions

optimization39 negative mentions

Engaging and emotionally rich story that concludes the saga well, rewarding for those who played the previous games.
Strong character development and memorable characters, with excellent voice acting and a captivating dual-world setting.
Beautiful art direction and atmospheric music that enhance immersion in a complex fantasy and cyberpunk world.

Gameplay is often slow and involves excessive backtracking and wandering in large environments with minimal interaction.
Choice mechanics are superficial, with many decisions having minor or no significant impact on the story's ultimate outcome.
The narrative pacing is uneven with lengthy unskippable dialogues and cutscenes that can feel tedious or forced.

story
3,746 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
35%
62%
3%
Dreamfall Chapters delivers a rich, emotionally engaging story that continues the saga of The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, blending fantasy and cyberpunk elements across two parallel worlds. While some find the narrative complex and occasionally convoluted, most praise its deep character development, impactful choices, and satisfying conclusion to a story spanning nearly two decades. Although gameplay and pacing receive mixed reviews, the story’s strength, immersive worldbuilding, and memorable characters remain its standout features.
- “Dreamfall chapters isn’t just a story‑driven game — its mechanics elevate every moment by blending exploration, choice, and interactive pacing in an engaging way.”
- “Rather than discarding the themes and characters that defined its predecessors, Dreamfall Chapters leans deeply into them, building a story that spans two parallel realities: Stark, a technologically advancing dystopia, and Arcadia, a realm of magic steeped in political turmoil.”
- “Every story thread from the previous two games resolves in a satisfying, poetic, and thought-provoking way; this game is going to linger in my mind for a long time, in part owed to some disturbingly prophetic plot points.”
- “By the end of the game, it was pretty clear that the devs did not know how to finish the storylines and tie the plot together, so they just created Saga to shove her in the right place and resolve everything.”
- “The story has constant plot holes with random characters that randomly show up and can do exactly what is necessary when the plot needs it, but will never be mentioned or utilized again.”
- “The story is compliantly destroyed in this game. It's like they forgot what they were writing several times along the way and never actually had any clue as to what the story was supposed to culminate in, all of which gets progressively more apparent as it stumbles on.”
graphics
701 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
49%
45%
6%
The graphics of the game are generally praised for their beautiful, colorful, and immersive art style that effectively brings the diverse worlds and environments to life, though they are sometimes considered dated compared to AAA titles and exhibit occasional glitches and optimization issues. While character animations and facial expressions receive some criticism for being stiff or lacking detail, the overall visual design, lighting, and atmospheric effects are noted as strong points enhancing the storytelling experience. Performance can be demanding on hardware, with some players reporting frame rate drops, but updates like the "final cut" have significantly improved graphical fidelity and stability.
- “Graphically, Dreamfall Chapters is absolutely gorgeous, the character models, the environment, it's pretty amazing.”
- “The graphics are incredible; it looks gorgeous, and in terms of quality/polish, Chapters is a very well refined experience, with far fewer rough corners than its predecessors, although not entirely without small problems here and there.”
- “Chapters looks drop-dead gorgeous on modern hardware, sometimes the graphics look like painted.”
- “The graphics are outdated yet the performance is quite bad, worse than many new games such as Witcher 3, Doom 2016, Rise of TR, etc. The character animations are abysmal by today's standards, the facial animations are nonexistent.”
- “5) The graphics are horribly unoptimized on the Unity 5 engine; I clocked my tanked-up GPU running at 80% just on normal graphics. So good luck to you folks trying to get it running on higher without setting your house on fire, and it doesn’t even look that amazing. I think the development team just cranked up all the post-processing steps and crossed their fingers.”
- “The textures are bad; the animations are either non-existent or really bad. I can't tell if it's an illusion caused by the bad textures, but I'm pretty sure some characters were just floating a few centimeters above the ground. Somehow, even with low-res textures that look like they came from an N64, this game makes my graphics card fan go bananas!”
gameplay
660 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
17%
71%
12%
The gameplay in Dreamfall Chapters is generally light and heavily story-driven, focusing on exploration, dialogue choices, and simple puzzles, with minimal combat or stealth elements. While some praise the engaging narrative and choice mechanics that add replay value, many criticize the gameplay as slow, repetitive, unintuitive, and sometimes frustrating, with excessive backtracking and limited player agency. Overall, the game appeals primarily to players who prioritize story and character development over challenging or intricate gameplay mechanics.
- “Dreamfall Chapters isn’t just a story‑driven game — its mechanics elevate every moment by blending exploration, choice, and interactive pacing in an engaging way.”
- “The dialogue and choice system is one of the game’s strongest mechanical pillars.”
- “The flowchart of possible outcomes isn’t just narrative — it’s a mechanic that engages you in strategy, making each playthrough feel personal and deliberate.”
- “The moment-to-moment gameplay is terrible and destroys the enjoyment of the good parts of the game; if the game were a 2D point-and-click adventure, it might eliminate frustrations with the gameplay.”
- “The gameplay is utterly boring, with long runs from one location to another, simplistic stealth, and mostly meaningless choices, resulting in very little engaging gameplay.”
- “The gameplay is often confusing and counterintuitive with a number of graphical glitches; puzzles can be frustrating due to lack of guidance, often requiring a guide to progress.”
music
278 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
53%
44%
3%
The music in this game is widely praised for its emotional depth, atmospheric quality, and effective storytelling support, often elevating scenes and immersing players in the narrative. The soundtrack is described as beautiful, memorable, and a central element that enhances the game's mood and emotional impact, with standout compositions and well-integrated ambient sounds. While generally lauded, a few note some repetition or less memorable moments, but overall the music and sound design are considered a highlight and integral to the experience.
- “Lighting, color, music, and voice acting combine to give each chapter emotional weight, with the soundtrack in particular emerging as one of the game's most effective storytelling tools.”
- “The soundtrack deserves a special shoutout for its distinctive sound and for doing what all the best soundtracks do: underscore the emotional tone of the scenes, while simultaneously driving the plot home.”
- “Simon Poole did a phenomenal job with the music, each scene enhanced by the score.”
- “The music is awful and annoying.”
- “- music is far too simplistic, forgettable, used incorrectly or not at all in places - this is surprising considering music is such an integral part of an atmospheric and story driven experience.”
- “Throughout the rest of the game, it was usually a recycling of the soundtrack from book one.”
emotional
172 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
98%
2%
Dreamfall Chapters delivers a deeply emotional, character-driven narrative that resonates strongly with fans of the series, often evoking tears and a profound connection to its world and characters. Its music, voice acting, and storytelling effectively underscore the emotional weight of the saga's conclusion, though new players may find it harder to engage without prior context. Despite some unevenness and pacing issues, the game is widely praised for its heartfelt, bittersweet, and immersive emotional journey.
- “Dreamfall chapters is a narrative-driven adventure that embraces the weight of its lineage while attempting to push the saga into new emotional territory.”
- “Lighting, color, music, and voice acting combine to give each chapter emotional weight, with the soundtrack in particular emerging as one of the game’s most effective storytelling tools.”
- “Yet for all its unevenness, Dreamfall Chapters offers an experience rare in modern adventure games: one that is unapologetically character-driven, emotionally ambitious, and deeply invested in its world’s philosophical underpinnings.”
- “This is not a game, but a long-winded, artfully boring story experience.”
- “Only played book 1 and was disappointed by the bad graphics, boring story, and glitches.”
- “Speed up the running, make the animations more fluid, clean up the boring story parts, and stop forcing me to run from point A to B to A to C; the game would be much more enjoyable.”
optimization
149 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
13%
61%
26%
The game suffers from notably poor optimization, with frequent frame drops and stuttering even on high-end hardware, particularly in large or outdoor areas and due to limitations of the Unity engine. While patches and updates have improved stability and performance over time, many players still experience inconsistent frame rates and performance issues. Despite decent visuals, the optimization problems significantly impact the gameplay experience for a substantial portion of users.
- “It has nice music, story and considering it's a Unity game, I was surprised with perfect visuals and performance even on older PCs.”
- “Performance wise, I didn't have any issues other than occasional framerate dips in big areas, but the performance improved for me as the new episodes and patches were released.”
- “The release of the first 2 episodes were plagued with bugs and performance issues, however this has all been fixed now.”
- “The graphics are horribly unoptimized on the Unity 5 engine; I clocked my tanked-up GPU running at 80% just on normal graphics. Good luck trying to get it running on higher settings without overheating, and it doesn’t even look that amazing. I think the development team just cranked up all the post-processing steps and crossed their fingers.”
- “The performance of the game is laughable even on a GTX 1080 at 1080p, a stuttering mess.”
- “This could be a true masterpiece but with such poor optimization it is wasted potential because the game works very slowly and is unstable.”
humor
144 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
99%
1%
The game’s humor is generally well-received, praised for its clever, witty, and often lighthearted dialogue that balances darker themes, with characters like Crow and Enu highlighted as particularly funny and endearing. While many find the humor natural and a key charm of the series, some criticisms mention forced jokes, occasional cringeworthy or vulgar humor, and moments where comedic timing feels awkward or undermines the narrative. Overall, the humor is seen as an important, enjoyable aspect that complements the emotional and complex storytelling, though it may not appeal universally.
- “The humor and the lore really carry this diamond in the rough.”
- “In short, it's clever, it's emotional, it's brilliant, with good writing and lots of humor.”
- “Just know that the story is quite complex, because there are a lot of elements to remember, but it's one of the reasons that makes the story strong, and the characters... oh man, you'll become attached to the characters... the characters are all charismatic and they all have their own personalities, believe me you'll never forget them, there are countless cult replicas, and the humor of the game will make you laugh a lot, it's at a good dose and there are never too much.”
- “Terrible humor that's absolutely not funny (meet the sand-witch that sells sandwiches).”
- “You get to play as a semi-depressed / fully apathetic Zoë Castillo, who aimlessly walks around a metropolis doing mundane chores, such as following a silly (and awfully unfunny) robot around.”
atmosphere
143 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
64%
31%
5%
The game's atmosphere is widely praised for its rich, immersive storytelling, compelling world design, and emotive soundtrack, creating a captivating and unique experience reminiscent of classic adventure titles. While some note occasional issues such as sparse NPC interaction, slower pacing, or less dynamic animations that slightly detract from immersion, overall the atmospheric blend of fantasy and sci-fi elements, combined with strong voice acting and art direction, is a defining strength that deeply engages players.
- “For newcomers willing to immerse themselves in lore-heavy storytelling and atmosphere-rich exploration, it offers a compelling narrative experience unlike most modern games.”
- “The voice acting, the characterization, the atmosphere and many other things are simply top notch and I heartily recommend anybody reading this to give the games a try.”
- “It's obvious that a lot of care and love was put into this game, from the detailed and vibrant environments, to the atmospheric, moving music, and the well acted, thought-provoking plot and dialogue.”
- “The art direction and many of the characters are interesting, but the game massively lacks atmosphere due to its feeling of emptiness and lack of interaction.”
- “There were too many scene/character changes, too many cutscenes, or too many loading and intro screens that quickly wrung out any of the atmosphere I had absorbed exploring and interacting with the world.”
- “I’m so horribly disappointed by how this game doesn’t even come close to the excellence and the magical otherworldly atmosphere of The Longest Journey.”
grinding
78 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
3%
97%
Grinding in the game is widely regarded as tedious and slow, characterized by repetitive backtracking, lengthy unskippable cutscenes, and fetch quests that disrupt pacing. Many players find navigation and puzzle-solving overly drawn out, making the overall gameplay feel like a dull chore despite an interesting story. This tediousness often leads to frustration and reliance on external guides, detracting from the experience.
- “You watch badly animated cutscenes, then select from a dialogue wheel, and if you pick the wrong option you try again until you pick the one the game wants you to pick to play the next tedious cutscene.”
- “I love the story world but the gameplay was tedious—you spend a lot of time running errands across the same areas over and over again—and some of the characters and story feel inconsistent, like the writers changed their minds between chapters.”
- “The puzzles are simple but tedious, usually taking you on pointless jogs from one edge of the map to the other, or relying on you to catch that one hint buried in the awkward and long-winded dialogue.”
stability
62 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
3%
97%
The game is generally plagued by numerous bugs, graphical glitches, and occasional performance issues like frame drops and freezes, which can hinder gameplay and immersion. While many players experience minor annoyances rather than game-breaking errors, stability remains inconsistent across platforms, though ongoing patches have improved some issues. Despite these technical flaws, many still find the overall experience enjoyable, but it requires patience with its rough edges and occasional instability.
- “Otherwise a flawless experience; runs great on Deck using highest visual settings.”
- “RTG is trying really hard to squash the bugs and my gameplay was pretty much bug free.”
- “In my opinion, this game was released buggy, still is buggy and unplayable. I have not been able to play the game because it keeps glitching out on me, despite my hardware being capable of running it.”
- “Because this game is very buggy and poorly optimized, playing it feels like masochism.”
- “I wanted to love Dreamfall Chapters, but besides being very buggy (it crashes a lot, characters get stretched while talking or disappear), the running animation is annoyingly slow.”
character development
53 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43%
51%
6%
Character development in the series is generally praised for its depth, emotional impact, and integration with storytelling, with standout characters like Zoe and April receiving notable acclaim. However, some entries face criticism for inconsistent or diminished character arcs, especially in transitions between games, and certain characters lack sufficient development or connection. Overall, the character design, voice acting, and narrative choices contribute significantly to an immersive and engaging experience, though some players find the focus on dialogue and story over gameplay less appealing.
- “It is a captivating and immersive adventure game that masterfully combines compelling storytelling with rich character development.”
- “As I recently only managed to finish the game, I have to say the game, despite choppy controls and some puzzles that leave you hanging in confusion (nothing too buggy still), this game has accomplished to bring the first and second game to a totally new level, a visual masterpiece, amazing character development, old and new reunited, the world(s) feel so alive, characters are speaking to you more than dialogue, worlds get connected, questions are indeed answered, choices are made.”
- “There's some good character development over the game, and you do have a feeling of your choices mattering and changing things well into the future - it's a good mix of immediate and far-reaching effects.”
- “Unfortunately, the new voice actors and character designs for existing characters are a jarring downgrade from Dreamfall, especially when going from Dreamfall to Chapters immediately.”
- “While the pacing can be a bit odd since you switch between characters and worlds, it also has some really poor character development and I found myself not caring for most of them, especially Saga. It seems like they want you to have a connection with her but it's so poorly done that I couldn't attach to her at all, especially when she's one of the main characters. You don't get any real answer to who and where she is from and you are left frustrated at the lack of lore towards her.”
- “- the character development is just terrible compared to previous games.”
replayability
37 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
30%
62%
8%
The game offers strong replayability primarily due to its impactful choice-and-consequence mechanics that noticeably alter story outcomes and character interactions. While some players desire faster pacing or more streamlined replays, most appreciate the multiple story paths, unique achievements, and moral dilemmas that encourage multiple playthroughs, often totaling 30–65 hours. Overall, its replay value is considered above average for adventure games, making it a compelling experience for those who enjoy exploring different narrative possibilities.
- “There are plenty of choices and other ways to affect the outcome, which makes this game good for replayability.”
- “The story is very engaging and with your choices actually changing things, there's more replayability than has traditionally been associated with these sorts of games.”
- “Multiple stories unlocked by individual decisions add to the replay value of the game, and the ending does not disappoint.”
- “The new choices system, which lets you (slightly) alter certain story elements, adds some replay value, but its implementation could have been more subtle and organic.”
- “I guess this was mainly formulated to increase replayability but even though I have a lot of affection for the story world, I don’t feel like replaying the entire game just to see what would have happened if I hadn’t allowed Brian Westhouse to stay behind in Abnaxus’ home.”
- “This clearly provides some replayability, although the game and how the story unfolds remain fairly linear even when you are allowed to wander around the environment which can honestly feel a bit challenging to navigate through at times.”
monetization
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The monetization of Dreamfall Chapters is viewed by some users as a cynical cash grab, especially given dissatisfaction with the representation and depth of its touted inclusivity. While the game offers an engaging story with meaningful choices, concerns about exploitative marketing and disappointing character development affect the perceived value of the purchase.
- “Dreamfall Chapters feels like a cynical cash grab.”
- “I bought this game only because I heard it was brave enough to have a gay main character. But from what I've seen, there's nothing meaningful about it, and you only get a choice to kiss the opposite sex multiple times. If that's true, then it's inclusivity used for advertisement without substance, which feels like cheap exploitation.”
- “I'm regretting purchasing this game right now and potentially rewarding such cheap exploitation. The dialogue is tedious, and if the portrayal of the gay character remains shallow, I don't think I'll finish the game.”

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70%Critics’ scoreBased on 8 critic reviews

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13h Median play time

15h Average play time

22h Main story

35h Completionist

5-30h Spent by most gamers

*Based on 36 analyzed playthroughs

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Dreamfall Chapters is a action game with fantasy, drama and science fiction themes.

Dreamfall Chapters is available on Xbox Series X|S, PC, Mac OS, PlayStation 4 and others.

The main story can be completed in around 22 hours, while the entire game is estimated to take about 35 hours to finish. On average players spend around 15 hours playing Dreamfall Chapters.

Dreamfall Chapters was released on July 21, 2017.

Dreamfall Chapters was developed by Red Thread Games.

Dreamfall Chapters has received mostly positive reviews from players and mostly positive reviews from critics. Most players liked this game for its story but disliked it for its optimization.

Dreamfall Chapters is a single player game.

Similar games include Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, Life is Strange, Syberia: The World Before, Life is Strange, The Longest Journey and others.

Dreamfall Chapters

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A strong start to a long journey - Dreamfall Chapters: Book One Review