The Smurfs: Dreams is an uncomplicated 3D platformer with a cheery art style and easy-to-learn controls; it’s perfect for a younger generation of gamers.
While I enjoyed playing on my own, I had the most fun in the couch co-op mode with my five-year-old daughter. It’s 100% family friendly, though some of the platforming can be tricky at times.
My solo playthrough took about eight hours, and by the end, the game’s platinum popped naturally, so it’s a pretty easy one to get for all of the trophy hunters out there.
Story
That dastardly Gargamel is at it again! He’s only gone and sprinkled sleeping potion over all the berries in Smurf Village! What a menace!
After all but a few Smurfs are put into a deep sleep, Papa Smurf fills you in on your mission: dive into the dreams of the sleeping villagers and rescue them from their nightmares.
That’s about it when it comes to the story; it’s pretty bare bones, but it does a good enough job of getting you into the platforming.
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Gameplay
In The Smurfs: Dreams, you’ll enter the dreams of the Smurf villagers, platforming through a series of interconnected mini-levels, sometimes fighting a boss, and eventually waking villagers from their slumber.
With the ability to run, jump, hover a short distance, pick up, throw, and interact with various objects — the controls are pretty straightforward. You can also suspend yourself in the air for a short time with a magic bubble, this helps when you need to wait a few extra seconds to find a safe place to land. The bubble can also be used to add extra distance to your platforming. Once you’ve jumped and hovered, you can then bubble up and do an additional jump out of that bubble, much like jumping off Mario’s cap in Mario Odyssey.
For the most part the platforming is quite easy, but you’re still going to miss jumps, or get killed by enemies. Luckily the checkpointing is quite generous in the game; it never took me very long to get back to where I had died.
Scattered throughout the different dreams, you’ll find berries, mushrooms, and needle and thread to collect, which can be used to unlock additional dreams as well as new outfits. Greeting your fellow Smurfs will often net you extra berries, and somewhere hidden in the level, will be an innocuous object that’s moving slightly, which will be hiding a Smurf with a needle and thread.
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On your journey through the dream levels, there are simple puzzles to solve and enemies to defeat. Sometimes there are challenges to complete before you can move on, such as collecting a number of golden clovers, or escorting a firefly to its destination while keeping the baddies at bay.
After you complete a dream, you’re transported back to the village to see which Smurfs have woken up, which was kind of annoying when you just want to move on to the next level. It wouldn’t be that bad if there was anything at all to do in the village, but besides the tailor who sells you new costumes, there’s nothing to do. You can’t interact with anyone, there’s no lore to uncover, no games to play… It’s boring.
Dreams
The different dreams you’ll be visiting vary in length, some can be done in fifteen minutes, others might take an hour. The handful of bigger levels have their own unique designs, like the mouth-watering world built from chocolate and candy, or the fairytale-like castle in the clouds. But the majority of the levels you’ll visit are very repetitive and generic in their design, usually just a series of sandy floating platforms suspended in space.
Each dream is made up of a series of smaller levels that are connected by either a dimensional door, or a golden grind rail. As you cross the resplendent railings, you get a good view of the world you’re in and can even perform a few tricks along the way. You can’t go back once you get to the next area though, so only go once you’re ready to move on.
Cool little mechanics and design elements come together to make levels more interesting and engaging. Sticky caramel patches on the floor that prevent you from jumping until you’re out of the mess, a hammer that can both destroy and rebuild certain objects, or a lantern that reveals hidden pink surfaces while causing blue ones to disappear.
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By far the most inventive dream was one with massive mirrors on the walls or floors. The level is filled with invisible switches, collectibles, platforms and enemies that are only visible in the mirror’s reflection. You end up focusing on the mirror image while you move around, instead of your real Smurf, which brings complexities to the platforming as certain directions are obviously flipped.
Aside from the main platforming levels, there is occasionally a one-off mini-game in the style of a different genre. One cool example involves moving the camera angle to a birds eye view, where you have to navigate your Smurf through a maze of moving thunderclouds. While another has your pants literally running away from you and you need to avoid being detected by other Smurfs for fear of being laughed at — we’ve all had that dream right!? — unfortunately these forced stealth sections were tedious at best.
Co-op
The best part of the game for me was the co-op mode — not because it added anything revolutionary, but because I got to spend time gaming with my five-year-old. The couch co-op system allowed my daughter to run around and explore the different levels at her own pace, while also having me there to defeat any baddies or lead her in the right direction.
When things got really dicey, she could magically hide in a little flask that followed me around, then hop back out when it was safe — though we would occasionally run into a bug where she would get stuck inside the jar, and I had to purposefully die so we could both respawn.
My daughter loved running around Smurf Village, and while there wasn’t much to actually do there, she made her own fun. She would pretend her smurf was my Smurf’s mum, and drop me off at “Papa Smurf’s daycare” and if I ran away to bounce on the mushrooms, I would have to clean all the Smurf toilets as punishment!
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While I can critique the game from my experience, let’s be honest, a thirty-something year old man probably isn’t the target audience for this game. So, I attempted to interview my daughter after a few hours of playing the game…
Me: “So what do you think of the game?”
5yr Old: “Cool.”
Me: “What’s cool about the game so far?”
5yr Old: “The beautiful skies.”
Me: “Do you mean the backgrounds?”
5yr Old: “Mmm hmmm”
Me: “For the level we just played (the candy-land level), do you like how it looks?”
5yr Old: “I feel like I could eat the whole place.”
Me: “And how does the music and sounds make you feel?”
5yr Old: “Hmmmmm comfy.”
Me: “What don’t you like about the game?”
5yr Old: “I feel frustrated because I keep falling down, but I feel happier when you help me.”
Me: “What else do you like about the game?”
5yr Old: “I love the Smurfs”
Should you buy The Smurfs: Dreams?
The Smurfs: Dreams is a solid little 3D platformer that brings a few interesting ideas to the table, like its fantastic mirror world. Unfortunately, its hub world is woefully underutilised, and the design of the smaller levels was bland and repetitive.
My daughter really enjoyed playing around in this world (even though she barely knew what a Smurf was), and has asked multiple times since our first session if we can play again. It hasn’t turned into a full-blown obsession like with a certain little space robot last month, but there’s enough here to keep us both interested for a little while.
There’s a demo available now so you can try before you buy.
Quest Daily scores The Smurfs: Dreams:
7/10
The Smurfs: Dreams releases on October 24th on PlayStation, and Xbox consoles, Nintendo Switch and PC.
A copy of The Smurfs: Dreams was supplied to Quest Daily for the purpose of this review.
