The night has fallen and your mind is floating in the magical world of dreams. But the Dream Spirits want to have some fun tonight! They are giving their best and the dreams become strange and surreal. Become the dreamer, put on your sleeping mask and try to figure out your dream and which spirits are the Naughty ones. Become a good spirit and help the Dreamer by giving him clues about the dream before the naughty spirits mess it up. Close your eyes and dive in!
When I Dream, there was an alien that gave birth to an ant, the alien had to grab a broom to clean the mess it made, all this took place while someone was eating strawberries. Pretty messed up dream right? Well that’s an example of one of the whacky dreams that was detailed on our play through of this funny and surprisingly simple game.
When I Dream is a great little party game. One player spends two minutes sleeping while wearing a really cool eye mask. The sleeping player has to guess what the other players are describing using only one word. Once the sleeping player has made a guess at the word the players are trying to describe, whether the guess attempt was correct or not, the players draw another card and begin trying to now describe another word to the sleeping player. This sleeping player must guess as many cards as possible in their two minute slumber but the tricky part is they need to try and remember their chosen words. Once the two minute sleep is up, the player while still wearing the eye mask must recite the words that they guessed but try and merge them into some form of whacky dream.
For every correct word the dreamer recites in a story they get a point per word. If they manage to recite all their correct guesses in their dream, they get additional points. Sadly any incorrect guesses they made but recite in their dream don’t rack any points up.
So, that’s the simplistic rules for the player that’s asleep. Each player gets a go at dreaming and reciting their dream at the end of their sleep. Once each player has dreamt the game finishes and the player with the most points is the winner. But that’s just the role of the sleeper. What about the other players around the bed? They play an integral part in this game too due to influencing the dreamers guesses. The catch here is, not everyone is keen for the dreamer to make correct guesses.
Before the player who’s going to sleep first leaves for the land of nod, each player is dealt a card from the very small deck of character cards. There are only 3 unique characters to play as but the deck contains multiple copies of these characters. The characters are The Boogeyman, The Sandman and The Fairy. I mean, 2 out of 3 characters related to sleeping isn’t bad (I don’t see what a fairy has to do with sleep, but that’s just me, perhaps I wasn’t told enough bed time stories as a kid).
These character cards are dealt to players and they aren’t allowed to reveal who they are. The Boogeyman want’s the player who’s sleeping to guess words incorrectly, so when this player uses a word to describe the word on the card for the sleeper to guess, this person will deliberately throw the sleeper of course. The funny thing here is this becomes massively obvious to the players around the bed who The Boogeyman is, but of course, the player who’s sleeping away has no idea. The more incorrect guesses the sleeper makes, the more points they get at the end of the dream reciting phase.
The Sandman is all about equal proportions, they want the dreamer to have an even amount of correct and incorrect guesses. So they’ll sway the player to either correct or incorrect guesses dependant on which side they need more of to get points.
The Fairy is the good person in all this and want’s the sleeping player to guess correctly. So all their influences will be to ensure the sleeper has pleasant and correct dreams. Again each correct guess the sleeper makes results in a point for the Fairy.
And that’s the essentials of the game. It’s incredibly simple to learn, and a heck of a lot of fun to play. As touched upon above, players who are giving clues to the sleeper can be identified as Boogeyman or Fairy pretty easily by the other awake players. Especially The Boogeyman. But this doesn’t impact the fun at all for the player sleeping who will have no idea what’s happening when someone is saying “Hot”, then the next person saying “Cold”. The sleeper has no idea who’s leading them the right or wrong way.
What needs to absolutely be mentioned in this game is how stunning the dream cards are. They are beautifully drawn cards with 2 different words drawn out and they mesh together to make one unique, freaky and stylish card. Just look at these examples below. What is a lovely touch is that the artists are all credited in the games instruction booklet. So if you were into any of the art showcased in this game, you can track down the artist and check out more of their work.
The game is essentially a version of Taboo, but just with enough additional rules to make it just that tad different. It’s ridiculously easy to play and learn, and it’s over all very quickly as each player has a two minute sleep to guess words then however long it takes to recite as many words as they can remember in their dream. All in all it was a surprise hit and has gone down as one of our favourite games as of late. Highly recommend this game, but perhaps don’t leave it till the end of a game night, especially if booze has been involved as the sleeper with that eye mask on might get just a tad too comfy. That said, booze is definitely one ingredient that added to this game could potentially make it hilarious trying to make dreams while half cut.
– Murr
I’ve heard about this one, and now I need to buy it. =-) Great review. Thanks!