In the latest in Q-Games on PlayStation VR2, guns are no longer weapons of war, but tools for imagination and healing.
If there is one thing that Japan-based studios have specialised over the years, it is to create artistically meaningful games from seemingly simple ideas, especially in the Pixel Junk series. At Pixeljunk Eden, you will jump from plant to plant, creating music and life in hypnosis and calm ways that reflect nature and life, as you explore the world of organic. This is directed by musician and game director Bayon. Bayon leads a visually ambitious life and death story that becomes even more impressive as he plunges into the realm of VR, even in another dream.
As confirmed in a recent Q&A, the concept behind another dream is to explore “the meaning of human contradiction, our inadequacy, dreams, regrets, and freedom” within the contradictory nature of guns. Therefore, you chase a man in pajamas and a wandering soldier in a dreamy world, trying to understand forgotten memories that are distorted and mixed under its impressive, coincided fictional universe. What do you remember or have you forgotten, and how do those memories shape us? That’s the heart of this title.
With this in mind, the game’s core revolves around treading on an ever-evolving cloud-like world that can be skewed into physical objects when shot. When a ton of bubbles turn into a house, a tired soldier, or a dead mole corpse, there’s nothing really realistic. The point is that each bullet will take you a step closer to understanding your own memory and self by witnessing these stories in this dream world. This is the perfect title for VR.
If another dream is impressive only in the trailer or visuals, placing it in such an immersive medium will enhance the game itself. From a flat screen perspective, seeing this story is the idea that the world unfolds and evolves from a third person perspective. On the other hand, from a first-person VR perspective only, I place you directly on this experience. Rather than aiming for a gun with a controller like in other shooters, fire the PS VR2 sense controller far into the gun-like controller and approach it for a detailed inspection directly from your own eyes.
In our short demonstration, taken from the early moments of the game, I realized that I myself was the equivalent of a town square and left it to my device. Fired my gun and it gave me a path to this voxel-like world, at least realizing where I was supposed to be. The fountain appears and the tired soldier appears. The houses and cafes bring life and speak to the tired faces I see. A photograph of the tables that existed before me creates a nostalgic town centre that is only at the edge of the realization.
After photographing objects and letting them exist from the balls of light around you, they look like real physical objects you can pass through. You bring this world back to life, but it is still just an imaginary being. After finally finding the manhole and filming it, I hear myself hearing seeing creatures gushing from within. Shooting footsteps, the manhole rolls around, dispersing light energy from the surrounding buildings, attempting to discover the truth just to find the mole mentioned above. The family is in a hole and probably wanting food, but it’s only going to be killed.
This, and the reaction of the older man we see in this short sequence, gives us a window into the storytelling ideas we can look forward to in the final release. By photographing and evolving this space, we witness these nonlinear stories unfold beyond new environments that blend real and imagined spaces. It is difficult to explain another dream that is very intriguing. It is a reflection of life, and the harsh decisions and experiences that define it have become abstract in a world of amazingly beautiful, not violent, but surprisingly beautiful bullets.
There’s a lot more to do in the final game than a short 15-minute demo could allow. But there is a real sense that the game is exploring my sense of self in depth and projecting it into a malleable world that somehow appears to be very familiar to me, although it doesn’t look like I’ve seen it in previous games. Have you ever closed your eyes and seen a ray of light swaying down the underside of your eyelids? It felt like that and transformed into a more decorated, interactive experience.
Another dream has the opportunity to be special, and VR is definitely the most immersive way to experience it. At least to some extent. I found myself obsessed with the game, but after initially confusing the overall purpose of the game, the idea introduced in the trailer that finally clicks with me has limitations that prevent me from becoming completely immersed in the world. This is mainly in the component of that story and is inconsistent with the way you want to relay yourself to the player.
Even space veterans are telling the story or conveying the challenges in the best way, using cutscenes in VR spaces. Do you prioritize immersion and hope that players will see the story unfold in the way you intended, or can they ruin the immersion by wrenching controls from the players? Unfortunately, by refusing to commit to any of these options, there is unfortunately the worst option.
The intention that Bayon said in his previous Q&A is to use a VR-only first-person perspective to make the story more immersed. When I meet soldiers on the fountain stairs, they speak directly to me from my own perspective and prioritize that they will keep me in space while sharing their fatigue and despair. But as I approach the manhole we are covered in a black void due to a pre-rendered cutscene of a flat screen. When Mokuro speaks the dying words, some aspects of this moment are spoken from a first-person perspective, while others throw me again into the black void and see the scripted scene from the virtual screen.
In the Q Game, I confirmed that this is not a result of a build under development that does not yet fit in VR. These choices are made on a scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene-by-scene- I can respect this choice, but I personally find it jarring in a distracting way, rather than reinforcing the boy’s emotional arc. If anything, this world is very adaptable and beyond reality made this even more jarring than if the game were to aim for a more conventional or photorealistic style. It’s very unrealistic and unlike anything I’ve seen before, I feel like a world built with my own hands limits to fighting like this.
This is my only negative experience from the demonstration that I felt something I had never experienced before. The game won an award at Bitsummit 2025 and was first featured in VR. This is completely natural. You need to see if this experience can be held through a full few hours of experience, but the building blocks of the unique ones are here and are improved by VR.
At least, when we remain in that immersive world, our team created it for us.
Dreams of Ather will reach PlayStation VR2 on October 10th.
Another dream wants to explore creative symbolism in the clouds
Another dream explores the symbolism of creating using guns instead of destruction, and interviews Q Games to learn more.
