Is there anything more tedious than people explaining their dreams? In conversation, perhaps not. But what if they could craft their dreams in 3D, and take you on a journey into those worlds?

Media Molecule (MM), the studio behind Little Big Planet and Tearaway, wants to make that possible. Their next project for PS4, titled (straightforwardly), Dreams, is essentially a crafting tool to let players suck out their subconscious for the rest of the world to explore.

A series of enigmatic announcement videos have previously hinted at what Dreams wants to be, but at Paris Games Week MM revealed some of the first real details about how the game works, and how it will encourage players to build their own worlds, games, movies and experiences.


Media Molecule

"Dreams is very hard to describe, because it is evolving, a mashup of personalities" Media Molecule's Alex Evans says. "The levels we're showing are an expression of what we were thinking about in our studio of 30 or 40 people. But once it's a beta trial of millions, hopefully, we will be able to have a massive variety." "I want to make someone out of spoons," Evans adds, joking -- but half serious. "You can use all these mechanics and combine them. There is no other game that does this."

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Craft your dreams (and nightmares)

Most of Dreams, as shown so far, takes place inside the worlds MM and its players create: you will travel with an 'imp', able to possess any number of AI characters or puppets, and use those abilities to solve puzzles and play different types of games. Much of this platform-style action was shown onstage at Sony's Paris Games Week press conference.

But behind this, the heart of Dreams will be a sculpting system that gives players tactile, intuitive motion-based or gamepad tools to create almost anything from templates or 3D shapes. Think AutoCAD but for normal, impatient human beings: you can start with a sphere, pop holes for eyes with the corner of a cube, and carve out a grinning mouth yourself, or you can drop pre-made trees, houses, jetpacks or thousands of other objects directly into the scene -- at any scale. Animating your world is straightforward too -- press record and move your objects, and their movement will be recorded. Similarly intuitive controls will let players create logical rules and boundaries, so that when uploaded their dreams will form self-contained, shareable game worlds.


Media Molecule

MM recognises that not everyone will leap into sculpting their visions -- it will have to help unlock creativity in its players. "One of the nice ideas of Dreams is to make creativity playful," Evans said. "Along the way you'll meet a character who will say 'do you mind mowing the lawn please', and at the end of it you've cut the grass. Then she says 'hey you just made something, why don't you share it?'... It's this idea of being playful." "It's just a sandbox you can have a really good time in," Evans said. "The openness of it is what makes it unique."

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Video games have always been likened to dreams, and there is some evidence that playing them does similar things to your brain; studies have indicated that gamers are able to control their dreams more than non-gamers, and that playing games can change the types of dreams you have. Watching Dreams in action, it's obvious that the ease of use will open up immediate creative possibilities -- and might lead to a community with a genuinely hallucinatory and unique creative energy.


A racing game set on a mechanical panda with a mushroom hat, topped with a forest and a ruined castle filled with rolling dark clouds? Doable. A mystical library populated by flying books, curated by a giant mouse in a dusty suit? Easy. A staircase made of cakes and a doorway, leading into the mouth of a space whale?

Media Molecule

You get the idea. MM says that the thousands of characters in its game already were all made on the PS4 -- not in a separate development tool. Its artists and designers used the same system players will use to make everything seen in the gameplay demos so far. The ambition is to literally allow players to represent their deepest, strangest ideas in glorious, easy-to-build 3D and take one of the most tedious things in life -- people explaining their dreams -- and turn it into one of the most compelling new ideas in gaming.

Virtual reality?

All of this will rely on the creativity of Dreams players, of course. But crucially, MM says, their work won't be stuck in their walled garden. Everything players make in Dreams can be exported -- to the game development platform Unity, for instance, or to 3D printers. If this works, Dreams (and the PS4) could instantly become one of the most creative tools in digital arts. If hints at other companion software, perhaps for Apple's iPad, are realised, Dreams might be much more than a video game. Full-length animated movies, for instance, could be created in Dreams -- and MM really hopes that artists will pick up that challenge.


Media Molecule

There are also implications for virtual reality. MM recently gained the talents of Anton Mikhailov, previously one of the creative minds behind PlayStation VR at Sony, so it seems obvious there will be a crossover at some stage -- though the company is remaining (relatively) tight lipped for now. "Let's just say there are dev kits on our desks," Evans said. "We haven't actually focused on it yet, so I can't announce VR in Dreams, but we joke that it could be the defining game in VR. When we're feeling bold. I do think that sculpting and creating in VR is just the most empowering feeling. You're in this world, immersed, and can create and change it. We're got to try it."

The Dreams beta will be released for PS4 in 2016.