Overview

Sunday Dreams is an action platformer with perma-death and procedural generation set in the disturbed dreams of Sunday, the game’s protagonist. Each playthrough, players will collect and upgrade a unique set of abilities that they must master on the fly in order to survive.

Key Features:

• Near limitless ability/upgrade combinations keep each playthrough fresh
• Fantastical settings – explore an offbeat, degraded city, the inside of a monster’s mouth, and more
• Fight, befriend, and barter with quirky NPCs while learning about Sunday’s past
• Dynamic difficulty rewards player skill

Combat

Active Abilities are your typical damage-dealing abilities that work in real-time. Examples include Dancing Spears and Eye Shot. The bulk of most combative encounters will require players to weave through enemy attack patterns and projectiles while chipping away at enemies’ health with active abilities.

[Spear Dance and Eye Shot.  Plain-looking now, but check out the upgraded Spear Dance below]

Lucid Abilities, such as Teleport and Slow,are limited-use abilities that allow players to gain a tactical advantage over their foes. While casting Lucid Abilities, the game is paused so players can take their time while strategizing.

[Slow and Land Mine are used in conjunction to weaken a pair of Boxers]

Clever use of Active and Lucid ability combinations is crucial to surviving the more difficult encounters in Sunday Dreams.

Collecting/upgrading abilities

Ability collection: While players will start each playthrough with only one Active and one Lucid Ability, players will be able to collect more abilities as loot from chests, enemies, and NPCs. Due to the random nature of loot, players will have to come up with different strategies for effectively using the abilities they encounter on any given playthrough.

Risk/reward upgrade system: Players can use scrolls to enhance their abilities with randomly-generated upgrades.  While generic upgrades like damage increases do exist, many upgrades will drastically alter how an ability functions or looks.  Each successful upgrade reduces the success rate of the next upgrade. When an upgrade fails, the ability is destroyed.

[Spear Dance upgraded to summon lightning and spawn spears in both directions]

Difficulty and progression

Limited permanent progression: Though Sunday Dreams features permadeath, Memory Orbs are kept between playthroughs. Memory Orbs drop from bosses, chests, and doors (explained below), and can be used to purchase certain story-altering items and to unlock abilities for use as starter abilities.

Dynamic difficulty that rewards skill: By entering Nightmare Doors instead of regular doors, players will receive bonus Memory Orbs. However, every Nightmare door entered will noticeably increase the difficulty of that playthrough. Enemies will grow in strength and number, and certain rare enemies might appear that players would not normally encounter.

[Killing regular doors nets bonus Memory Orbs, but it also forces the player to enter Nightmare Doors.]

This system hopes to address a problem many roguelikes face - namely that individual playthroughs are often too difficult or too easy depending on the player’s luck. With nightmare doors available, players can keep the game challenging even when everything seems to be going their way. On the flip side, newer players can enjoy the full game and story by ignoring Nightmare doors. When only traversing through regular doors, Sunday Dreams will not be as brutal in difficulty as many other modern roguelikes.

Story and characters

The protagonist of Sunday Dreams is Sunday, a young girl who suffers from debilitating insomnia. Players must safely guide her through her strange dreams in order to avoid an abrupt awakening. The story is non-linear; players will piece together Sunday’s backstory by exploring her dreams and interacting with quirky NPCs. As seen in the trailer, interactions in Sunday Dreams are often darkly humorous, which is representative of Sunday’s subconscious state.

[Sunday and Walter strike a deal]

Enemies

The baddies that lurk in Sunday’s dreams come in all shapes and sizes. Note that they deal no touch damage to the player. Rather, enemies have specific attack cues that players must learn to recognize.

 [A Poker and a Boxer showing off some of their attacks]

Art Design

Sunday Dreams features a minimalistic black & white design that favors frame-by-frame animation over skeletal/rig-based animation. While skeletal animation is admittedly very fast and flexible, frame-by-frame animation allows for characters that squash and stretch in lively ways.

[An Angry Box, likely interrupted from its rest] 

Keep in mind that Sunday Dreams' art style/design is not yet finalized.  For example, both adding color and changing Sunday's design are currently being considered.  To have a say in the matter, vote on the polls at the top of this page!

About – Team and Development

Sunday Dreams is being made by developer Milo Han, a current college student based in California. A huge fan of modern roguelikes, Milo’s goal in creating Sunday Dreams is to make a game that has as much depth, replay value, and dynamism as classics like The Binding of Isaac.

Sunday Dreams has been in development for around 10 months. So far, the game's engine has been fully built (using Java) and all major gameplay features have been implemented. What lies ahead is mostly content creation, e.g. adding many more enemies, environments, abilities, upgrades, stat-enhancing items, NPCs, etc.

Why the Collective?

Simply put, the Collective is a great way for Sunday Dreams to get publicity and, more importantly, feedback. Feedback is crucial at this early stage in development, as much of the game can still be tweaked.

Staying in touch

In addition to voting and/or leaving feedback below, you can join the Sunday Dreams mailing list for important updates/announcements and beta invites (you won't get spammed, promise!).  For more frequent development updates (and lots of GIFs!), follow @GamesByMilo on Twitter.

You can also check out Sunday Dreams' website.