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I’m a little staggered that I hadn’t heard of Shape of Dreams before—while it has updated and promoted its demo for Next Fest, it’s actually had a “prologue” available for a while, which has essentially been a sort of open alpha test for its devs. Click on that link, and you’ll find that while its reviews are nice and humble—around 3,700—almost everyone who played this thing last year (95% of them, to be precise) liked it. Well, I’ve played the new Next Fest demo, and wouldn’t you know, I like it, too.
Shape of Dreams is a co-op roguelike with action MOBA controls, a batch of word salad I would usually roll my eyes at—in fact, I sort of did, saying out loud to myself ‘that’s a lot of nouns’ when it greeted my Steam client this morning. It’s more simply described as Risk of Rain, but make it Battlerite. Which, given my love for both games, feels somehow targeted at me.
This isn’t the first time someone’s used an action MOBA/ARPG template for a roguelike, mind. Ravenswatch is another game I’m very fond of, for example—and well worth the recommendation that I’m tucking into this article. But what impresses me about Shape of Dreams is how thoroughly off the training wheels are—it’s a game that’s eager to let you get weird.
It occurred to me that Shape of Dreams was cooking with gas the moment I got to a shop and realised: ‘hang on a minute, I can just sell half of my starting abilities?’ See, in contrast to a game like Risk of Rain, each character in Shape of Dreams doesn’t actually start with a full kit.
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You might spy an ultimate and a couple of active abilities, but the truth is, the only immutable part of your character is their Identity Memory—essentially their basic attack—and the way in which their dash works. Every run, as a result, is an act of designing your own ad-hoc MOBA hero—but there’s more going on here.
Each of these abilities (called “Traveler Memories” in game) can hold up to three essences, which modify them further. These can range from giving you an attack speed boost when using anyone, to firing heat-seeking arrows. It’s kinda like Hades’ boon system, except you have complete control over where the modifiers go.
Shape of Dreams also allows you to rearrange your abilities—and their essences—at any time, which was the cinching dealmaker that tells me this game gets it, dude. The real magic at the heart of a roguelike is stumbling into some busted machine of RPG interactions to become a living god, and the amount of possibilities here are mindboggling.
Naturally, there’s also a meta-progression system, too. You can pump currency nabbed from your runs into a set of constellation skill trees that carry over between runs. Three of these are broad, and apply to every character, but there are also smaller, character-specific trees you can spend your spoils on if you want, too.
While the flavour here is unmistakably Risk of Rain, this game’s developers have replicated the good bits, too: like its fluidity of movement and the ability to send my dopamine production into overdrive. Screen flashes, particle effects, and camera-shakes are weaponised to some excellent results—and it feels, in a word I rarely use, downright sexy. It’s a game with a deft handle on its kinaesthetic design. It all just feels right.
I am genuinely, supremely impressed with how Shape of Dreams is… well, shaping up. My gut feeling for which games become sleeper hits isn’t always accurate, but I’m getting the tingles here—and there’s already enough game to make playing through the demo more than worth your time. Shape of Dreams doesn’t have a specific release date yet, but it’s set to drop in May 2025.
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Kurt Indovina
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