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The Sailor's Dream (for iPhone) Review

4.0
Excellent
By Max Eddy
Updated April 20, 2015

The Bottom Line

The Sailor's Dream is less of a game and more of a narrative experiment. If you're okay with that, you'll certainly enjoy yourself.

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Pros

  • Lavish, gorgeous art.
  • Unique play.
  • Genuinely enjoyable music.

Cons

  • Not exactly a game.
  • Lengthy time investment.

Developer Simogo has brought forth some of the most enchanting and interesting iPhone games I've ever seen, starting with the mythic horror of Year Walk($3.99 at Apple.com) and the avant-garde spy drama Device 6($3.99 at Apple.com). With The Sailor's Dream, Simogo ignores the usual clever puzzles and instead takes the player on a journey across a sea of memories. It's certainly not for everyone, but it's a remarkable work from a developer keen on doing more than merely making addictive mobile games.

During my testing, I played The Sailors' Dream on several devices, including the iPhone 4s, iPhone 5c, and iPhone 6( at Amazon). None of them had any trouble with the game, though the newer devices obviously deliver more pep. On the Apple App store, the game is listed as being compatible with the iPad, but it's optimized for the iPhone 5 and later.

Sail These Seas
Each session of The Sailor's Dream begins the same way: a slow fade-in on the title while a whistling shanty plays. Swiping left or right moves you across a seascape, aligning you with various whimsical islands like the Secret Lighthouse, the Seven Songs Cottage, and the Celestial Sanctuary. Swiping down steers you closer to the islands and lets you land on them.

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Each Island is an empty ruin; but the mood is melancholy rather than spooky. Navigation is similar to that in Simogo's Device 6, but, instead of following text, you follow paths between interactive vignettes that represent rooms, stairways, and other pieces of the world. The visuals of the game are gorgeous and strange—lavish in a way that you simply don't see in more intense games.

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Within each of these strange ruins are objects and bits of text that reveal the sad story of the game's three main characters: The Woman, the Sailor, and the Girl. These characters are absent, and you unravel their tale by picking up clues and bits of story along the way. You can also find other objects, such as jars of fireflies or an orrery. Some of these are little music-making toys, playing tones when tapped or making melodies while spinning.

The Sailors DreamWhen you reach the top of each structure, you're presented with text that makes up a single scene. It's generally a tragic tableau, building in intensity along with the sound of a roaring sea, until you reach the top and escape. When you complete a trip through an island, a star appears over the location.

If that were the whole game, you could see it all in less than two hours. And indeed, a determined player can reach the game's initial ending very quickly. But the game's true end—and indeed, the bulk of the game—is played out over the course of many days. That's a pretty hefty time investment, but after your initial exploration, you can find the rest of the game's hidden gems in just a few minutes each day.

The game also doubles as a surprisingly good album. In addition to incidental music and excellent ambient sounds, it also features seven tunes from Jonathon Eng, who also performed a song in Device 6, as sung by Stephanie Hladowski.

Is This a Game?
In the strictest sense, yes, The Sailor's Dream is a game. There are rules, enforced by the game's programming, and there's an ending state. But there are no levels, no stages, no score, no real puzzles to solve, and you can chose to disengage at any point.

This last point is familiar to fans of developer Simogo's Device 6, which examined how the player (or in that case, reader) moved the narrative forward and made them somewhat culpable for the outcome. If you walk away from The Sailor's Dream after exploring all the islands, you'll have completed the game. But the rest of the experience is just that: an experience.

Note: What follows involves some mild spoiling of the game.

All clear? Ok.

The Sailors DreamThe real bulk of the game is told through songs stored in bottles by the Woman, which arrive daily. The Sailor's story is told through radio transmissions that arrive every hour in a 12-hour cycle. These messages tell a tale of longing and regret. I believe that the game is designed to inflict that same experience on the player.

Like the Woman waiting each day for The Sailor to return, I checked the game each day for the songs she tossed into the sea. Like the Sailor at his radio set, I huddled close to my phone late into the night, waiting for his transmissions to start. The game is intended to make you wait and, like the star-crossed protagonists who wondered after each other's fates, to long for a message.

Un-Game
The Sailor's Dream is is some ways less a game than it is a novel. The story is the most important piece, and experience of completing it is meant to make you, as the player, feel what the characters feel. Though there aren't really puzzles per say, you have to put forth significant effort—if not emotional bandwidth—to actually finish.

As a work of art, The Sailor's Dream is an achievement. The visuals, the sounds, the songs, are all exemplary. But the nature of the work is also one of its limitations. This game dropped months ago, and despite getting it on the day it was released, I only recently finished it. On the one hand, that's a major drawback. But on the other, even the time I spent frustrated with the game seems in keeping with its theme.

In the end, the Sailor's Dream succeeded in tricking me into experiencing its story in a very real way, which is more than I can say for anything I've yet seen on a phone.

The Sailor's Dream (for iPhone)
4.0
Pros
  • Lavish, gorgeous art.
  • Unique play.
  • Genuinely enjoyable music.
Cons
  • Not exactly a game.
  • Lengthy time investment.
The Bottom Line

The Sailor's Dream is less of a game and more of a narrative experiment. If you're okay with that, you'll certainly enjoy yourself.

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About Max Eddy

Lead Security Analyst

Since my start in 2008, I've covered a wide variety of topics from space missions to fax service reviews. At PCMag, much of my work has been focused on security and privacy services, as well as a video game or two. I also write the occasional security columns, focused on making information security practical for normal people. I helped organize the Ziff Davis Creators Guild union and currently serve as its Unit Chair.

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The Sailor's Dream (for iPhone) $3.99 at Apple.com
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