It’s time to pop on your Phrygian caps and blue yourself for a new Smurfs adventure. The Smurfs – Dreams takes the top-down 3D platformer and runs with it in ways that show that Ocellus Studio (previously responsible for the excellent Marsupilami tie-in game) have totally understood the assignment. Dreams is not quite at the level of the recent Astro Bot or Nintendo’s best, but it is a great alternative if you’ve played those already.
You play as a generic Smurf, though in contrast to my youth, you do get to choose between a boy and a girl character. Compared to when there was only ever Smurfette to represent an entire gender, it seems there are more female Smurfs nowadays and you do get to rescue a fairly equal number of each throughout your somnolent adventure. There are a number of costumes available to lock with some exclusively present as DLC for the diehard Smurf fans. Many of these surprisingly give you the chance to change the iconic blue skin to other shades, which just feels wrong to me.
As you begin the game the sneaky Gargamel has found a way to poison the Smurfs’ favourite berries with a sleeping potion, leaving the entire village helpless against him. What follows is a race against time as you must venture into their dreams and awaken them before Gargamel finds the hidden village and captures everybody. This mechanic enables a range of different platforming environments and mechanics to roughly match the character of each sleeping Smurf.
Most of your time in Dreams will be spent jumping and collecting items whilst avoiding or defeating enemies. The perspective and platforming approaches are very reminiscent of Super Mario 3D World and some levels do reach for the heights of that game. As a whole, however, Smurfs Dreams lacks the variety and magic spark of Mario’s adventure, though it does have some tricks of its own. Across your playtime you’ll be tasked with using hammers, magical lanterns and a strange gunge firing gun to successfully rescue your pals.
Early levels here are pretty simple affairs and you’d be forgiven for thinking that you were playing a very easy kid’s game. Don’t be lulled into this sense of security, though, as The Smurfs – Dreams does throw a lot of strong design decisions and even some surprisingly challenging platforming sections towards the end. The highlight here is a level featured in the demo which makes innovative use of mirrors to confuse and disorientate you and offers some genuinely original and innovative moments. Equally, trying to locate all of the collectables will offer up a decent challenge, albeit not on the scale of something like Astro Bot.
Every main level is separated into individual chapters, a welcome move when it comes to replaying parts to track down missing collectables. There are yarn bobbins unlocked by finding cunningly camouflaged Smurfs, blue mushrooms that are generally in obscure or hidden areas, and lots of berries used to unlock costumes. You’ll find enough of the latter so that you won’t ever need to grind, even if you make your way through finding most rarer collectables. The game as a whole does respect your time and doesn’t overstay its welcome.