Dreams... usually when an adventure starts "You awaken..." it's usually to an unpleasant situation you have to resolve, in Rêve it's the normal state of affairs, and the dreamlike-quality of the game is evident from the outset as the characters find that they just ARE where it is that they need to be for events to begin. Who ever expected a dream to make total sense?

Giant statues of snails having haunted their dreams, they awake to find a road lined with... giant statues of snails. In the normal bizarre logic of dreams, it becomes obvious that they ought to follow this road..

As you might expect, the town they eventually find is obsessed with snails, which they breed and race with a passion. Although life proceeds normally here, with a major event in the snail-racing calendar approaching rapidly, all is not well - there's a murderer on the loose. Perhaps the characters will find the murderer by interpreting their dreams and asking in the right places, or they may prefer to get a snail and enter the races for the prize that featured in the dream they had at the beginning.

The translation catches the whimsey of the original, yet flows as smoothly as if it was written in English, complete - or is that replete - with snail puns.

That's it, delightful, gentle, dreamy... completely suited to the consensual hallucination that is this game, an evening of pure slightly crazy delight for your players. Just don't eat the snails!

Return to For Want of a Snail page.

Reviewed: 30 March 2011