Dreams of Tomorrow by Weird Giraffe Games – Kickstarter Preview

The future has fallen. After a mysterious Decline brought humanity to the brink, the people of the future got to work on fixing the past – by sending sequences of dreams back to our time in order to give us the inspiration we need to change the future.

As a Dream Engineer working in the distant future, you must intertwine memorable and powerful dreams in order to change your present. Catch dream fragments from the Dreamscape and either use their abilities to help you – or weave them together into a completed dream sequence that can be sent back to the past and secure victory!

Dreams of Tomorrow is a competitive set collection game about weaving dreams, manipulating action spaces, and careful timing of abilities. Can you shape a dream so powerful it can change the world?

Objective

Each turn, players move around the Collective Consciousness (Set of Action Spaces) using their Experience to catch Dreams from the Dreamscape and their Hope and Creativity to weave the Dreams together into a Dream Sequence. The first player to weave a complete Dream Sequence triggers the end game. The player with the most dream points from Dreams, plus bonus points for Resonance in their Dream Sequence, wins!

Game Setup

  • Select the four Consciousness Fragments Cards for the current player count and place them in numerical order in the center of the table within reach of all players. These cards should be front side up. This forms the Collective Consciousness.
  • Shuffle the Dream Deck and reveal cards from the Dream Deck based on the number of players: –
    • 1-2 players, reveal 4 Dreams.
    • 3 players, reveal 5 Dreams.
    • 4-6 players, reveal 6 Dreams.

Place these cards face up in rows at the centre of the table below the Collective Consciousness. This is the Dreamscape.

  • Place the Dream Deck face down and to the side of the Dreamscape. The Dream Discard will be next to the Dream Deck.
  • Place the Icon Key Cards where players can reach them.

Player Setup

  • The player who most recently woke up is given the first player board and is now the first player. Give all other players a player board.
  • Give each player a player figure in the color of their choice, four matching Resource and Direction Tracker Tokens, and a reference card.
  • Each player sets their Resource and Direction Tracker Tokens to the following values:
    • Experience: 6, Creativity: 0, Hope: 0
    • Direction: Clockwise
  • The Player Figures start on the top space of Consciousness Fragments Card 1.
  • Starting with the first player and continuing clockwise, each player selects a Dream from the Dreamscape and pays the Experience needed to catch it. New Dreams are drawn to replace Dreams as they are caught. Caught Dreams are placed to the left of each player’s player board. This space is your Dream Catcher.

Gameplay

Gameplay takes place over a series of rounds, where each player will move around the Collective Consciousness (set of four Consciousness Fragments Cards that make up the 8 location spaces) and then take the action they end their movement on.
Players will use their Experience to catch Dreams and move them into their Dream Catcher, then use their Hope and Creativity to weave the Dreams into a full Dream Sequence.
Starting with the first player, on their turn each player completes the following two actions.

  • Move: A player must move at least one space around the Collective Consciousness in the direction indicated on their player board.
    • Players move by spending resources, as shown below:

Dreams of Tomorrow Move Table

  • Take Action: When landing on an action space, the Active Player must take the action on the space. There could also be an effect on the lower half of the space, called the Shared Effect, which benefits all other players (but not the Active Player).
    • The Shared Effect gives the players resources related to the Active Player’s chosen action.

Types of spaces in the Collective Consciousness

The Collective Consciousness is an area where all the Dream Engineers work together with the goal of constructing Dream Sequences. In this area, each player’s actions can affect their fellow Dream Engineers by giving them more resources or by manipulating how the spaces within the Collective Consciousness are arranged.
There are four Consciousness Fragments cards that make up the Collective Consciousness. All of these cards have two spaces, for a total of eight different spaces. Four are based on gathering resources and four are associated with actions for Dreams Fragments and your Dream Sequence.
Players move and take one action per turn, unless they land on the Activate space. In this case, they could activate an Ability that allows them to move to another space

Resource Action Spaces

  • Hope: Gain a large amount of Hope and all other players gain a small amount of Hope.
  • Experience: Gain a large amount of Experience and all other players gain a small amount of Experience.
  • Creativity: Gain a large amount of Creativity and all other players gain a small amount of Creativity.
  • Resources of Choice: Gain a large amount of resources of your choice and all other players gain a small amount of Creativity. These resources can be any combination of Experience, Creativity, and Hope.

Dream Action Spaces

  • Catch a Dream: Pay the Experience listed on a Dream in the Dreamscape to add the Dream to your Dream Catcher, located to the left of your player board. All other players gain Experience.
    • Before selecting a Dream, you may pay two resources of your choice to clear the Dreamscape of all the Dreams, placing them into the Dream discard pile, and drawing a new set of Dreams to replace them. You may do this as many times as you can afford to do so.
    • There is no limit to the number of Dreams that you may have in your Dream Catcher.
    • Reveal a new Dream every time one is caught. If there are no Dreams available, shuffle the Dream discard pile to reform the Dream Deck.
  • Weave a Dream Sequence: Select a Dream in your Dream Catcher, pay the amount of Creativity and Hope listed on the card and either begin your Dream Sequence or add the Dream to the beginning or the end of your Dream Sequence, which is located below your player board. All other players gain Hope.

Activate a Dream

  • Owned by the Player: Use the Ability of a Dream either on the player’s Dream Catcher or at the end of their Dream Sequence. Other players do not receive any benefits. There is no cost to Activate a Dream, unless the Ability states a cost.
    • Only one Dream can be activated when a player lands on the Activate space. If the Dream’s Ability allows the player to move to a different space, they may move to an Activate space again to activate the same or a different Dream.
    • You may not spend resources to move additional spaces when using an Ability

Game End

The game end is triggered when a player completes their Dream Sequence by adding the fifth Dream or the fourth Dream for a 6-player game. Players complete the round and the game ends after all players get an equal number of turns.
In very rare circumstances, the game will end immediately if all of the Dreams are caught.
Players score dream points for each Dream in their Dream Sequence; The player with the most dream points wins!

Dreams of Tomorrow
Dreams of Tomorrow Box Art and Components

Dreams of Tomorrow is a whole lot of game in a small box; but that is how Weird Giraffe Games does it. They have an uncanny knack of making smaller games, that have a complexity, elegance and yet explain it a way that it is simple to teach, learn and play. As you can see from the above rules, there seems to be quite a lot going on and just glancing at them can seem like this is a touting game; but it really isn’t. Weird Giraffe Games go into great detail in their rules, which allows for players to simply read the rules and make them so understandable. I think this is why they are able to make a small box game so complex, with so many different, weird and wonderful gameplay elements and it flows so well.
Dreams of Tomorrow is another winner for me, I know I said it in a previous review that Weird Giraffe Games are a publisher/ designer that you need to watch. I can now say after this game, I have never been more right!
I played Dreams of Tomorrow with 3 friends and also played solo. Normally I don’t play the solo variance of games as I feel like games are to be enjoyed with the masses. Yet as I only got to play 6 games with friends, so thought I’d take it for a spin myself. It was so much fun! You play against a robot, which give the felling of playing against someone, not to mention I found the idea of playing a game where you create dreams, against a robot quite amusing.
At last weekends game night, I sat down with Ron and his 2 housemates. Ron loves his board games and is slowly guiding his 2 housemates into his passion. I say guiding, more like introducing them to the world of Kickstarter and pushing them in the meeple and dice filled hole of board games.
Ron, I knew would be fine playing this game, but his housemate I thought may take a little more coaching. We read through the rules set up the game and by the time we all had a single turn; we knew exactly how to play. As I said before, a game like this should really have a medium level learning curve, but because the team at Weird Giraffe Games go so in-depth with their rules, it allows a more complex game to be learnt so easily.
Ron’s housemates love this game, Ron not so much. Well he didn’t not enjoy the game; Ron loved it, but because Ron finished last in every single game, while his 2 housemates finished first or second in the 6 games we played. Which they have reminded him about all week and plan to buy Dreams of Tomorrow as he promised to play any Kickstarter they get with them.
After playing 2 games, the same person one twice pretty much playing the exact game twice. I noticed and decided to play the exact same way, but was a little disappointed at first. As I thought Carla and the team at Weird Giraffe Game had missed something; but they never miss anything. They are one company that always focuses on the small details. By the time 3rd game; Ron’s other housemate had taken out the win, playing completely different style of play, then several games later, a third emerged. We found it didn’t matter which strategy you used but more how you play.
Dreams of Tomorrow
Dreams of Tomorrow Cards

The art for Dream of Tomorrow is stunning, I expected a more whimsical dream art style. Instead, Weird Giraffe Games went with a more utopian sci-fi style art that adds something special. Not sure why I didn’t expect that from the name of the game, but I was pleasantly surprised by it. The use of blended, bright vibrate colours and silhouettes; is such a simple yet effective art style but really pops on the table.
I feel like Weird Giraffe games goes from strength to strength, Dreams of Tomorrow is leading the way for them. From the relatable theme, the stunningly elegant utopian sci-fi art and complex; yet well explained gameplay makes this one of my favourite game from them

If you would like to get your copy of Dream of Tomorrow head over to there Kickstarter here!