Don’t let the dream become a nightmare…

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It’s June 3rd, meaning it’s time for my fifth annual re:Dreamer re:review, after having covered the game in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

For those not familiar with the title, re:Dreamer is a TSF/gender bender visual novel created by CaptainCaption (they/them) and Espeon (she/her). Two long-standing contributors of the TSF community who, in September 2019, joined forces to work on this massive and ambitious dream project. However, the overwhelming majority of the work is done by CaptainCaption, who serves as the writer, editor, programmer, community manager, and more. Basically, everything but the sprite or CG artist and composer. (Though they have dabbled in editing both.) While Espeon is more of an advisor and financier these days, disconnected from most of the development.

For the sake of disclosure, I personally support Dream Team Studio on Patreon, and have for over four years at this point, granting me access to newer builds before the general public. However, I have not used my Sustainer-tier privileges to make any direct requests to the developer, and I am not the Natalie who requested that she be inserted into the game as Britney’s roommate.

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In the past year, progress on re:Dreamer has been… slow, and the only significant new additions or changes were as follows:

• Sprites for Molly in Day 8 of the Britney route
• New alternate scenes in Day 1 of the Mom route
• An expansion of Day 3 content for the Britney route, including a robust sex scene
• A fourth anniversary fourth wall breaking bonus route
• A fully rewritten sento chapter in Day 1 of the Keisuke route

In terms of word count, the changes were pretty significant, about 140k words. Though there’s a few asterisks that need to be applied to that. 60k are devoted to the fourth anniversary side route. Only under 20k are devoted to the Britney expansion. And while the new sento scene has 60k words of writing, a large portion of it is author’s commentary and locked behind highly specific variables. I’d guess that a player going through the scene once with no commentary will only encounter about 30k words.

These additions did not meaningfully affect my thoughts on re:Dreamer— I still love the game— so large swatches of this review will be a lightly edited version of what I wrote last year. The Anniversary Route and CaptainCaption sections are new, while the introduction and Keisuke routes have been partially rewritten.

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re:Dreamer Version 0.18.1 Review
Platforms: PC(Reviewed), Mac, Linux, Android
Developer/Publisher: Dream Team Studio
Itch.io – TFGames.Site – Patreon – Discord – Unofficial Flowchart

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re:Dreamer follows Zach, a 20-year-old college student who sleuths their way into possession of a mobile game by the name of re:Dreamer. A mysterious title that, after some fiddling around in the character creator, transforms Zach’s body from that of a frail young man with a girly face into a beautiful busty young woman. One transformation sequence later, Zach is greeted by Ai, their digital guide to re:Dreamer, who reveals that Zach signed up for a “competitive reality-altering sex game” and is stuck in this body for six months.

Structurally, the game takes the form of a character-driven route-based affair. Zach trying to do their best to win re:Dreamer, while juggling every other aspect of their life. Including their college course load, a dilapidating family life, their first romantic relationship, and all the joys that come with the wet and wonderful world of womanhood.

If you are even modestly versed in the TSF/TG/gender bender genre, this concept should not be too unfamiliar. But despite its mostly vanilla premise, re:Dreamer offers a focused, grounded, and rigorously detailed experience that, despite only being a fraction of its final form, has all the markings of a landmark entry in its genre.

That might sound like some high praise— because it is— but re:Dreamer is a title that does so much, so well, and features so much content in its current state, that I think it’s well earned.

The script is filled with meticulous details and routinely impressed me with its quality. The story neatly balances tones and emotions, seamlessly shifting between goofball antics, tender drama, dread-filled introspections, and erotic fun-time shenanigans. The background for its world and backstory for its characters are incredibly detailed, especially for a project of this scale. The cast is full of assorted quirks and flaws that do a wonderful job of humanizing them. While the sex scenes are integral character defining moments that both enhance and progress the story… for the most part.

re:Dreamer can be funny, it can be heartfelt, it can be methodical, it can be sexy, it can be existential. It hits pretty much every note I want to see not only from a TSF story, but from a story in general. It is the product of someone whose savviness and familiarity with TSF cannot be understated. CaptainCaption, quite simply, gets it. They’ve spent thousands of hours immersed in this stuff, seen what works, internalized their preferences, and understands how to make this subject matter compelling on multiple levels. This is the product of someone who not only loves this stuff, but wants, with every fiber of their being, to make the best damn visual novel they possibly can!

There are a lot of ways that this is evident to me, but let’s start with my favorite aspect of this game, the characters.

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Characters

Ai is an electric pixie who is assigned to help Zach navigate through the fine mess they’ve gotten themselves mixed into. But beneath her cutesy chibi helper guise, she’s a little devil, and I love just about everything about her. Her ability to function as the third wheel in a conversation and butt in only when she is wanted, or unwanted. The unique power play she has as a digital being, as she’s Zach’s only hope of winning or participating in re:Dreamer, yet is unable to control the physical world around her. Meaning she can do nothing when confronted with a strip of gaffer tape. Though what really cinches it is the interpersonal relationship she develops with Zach… almost immediately.

She teases Zach, coaxes them into doing things they don’t openly want to, but never comes across as truly malicious, or even all that mean. She wants Zach to have a good time and not make an absolute mess out of their life, but she also recognizes them as a boundless bin of entertainment. Zach realizes this, and is assertive enough to not let a piece of technology boss them around, though their interdependence forces them to at least try to get along.

Britney is Zach’s high school friend, whose general character is built around being more than she initially seems to be. She’s a curvy blonde girl with a fondness for breezy clothing— cultural shorthand for a ditz. But she’s pretty darn smart socially, academically, and creatively. She’s a Catholic from Texas with more than a morsel of pride for her homeland. Yet she’s incredibly progressive, on top of being a lesbian. She’s a theater major with grand artistic inspirations and killer tailoring skills. While also having the debate skills, legal comprehension, and political knowledge to be a helluva lawyer.

She’s a crafty woman in more ways than one, and this can be seen in how she engineers her relationship with Zach. She is more than willing to help them, but she recognizes the scale of this request, and demands something in return. This might sound sinister, but the two clearly care about each other. It’s just that their relationship is more of a… partnership than anything else. Britney helps Zach’s life from crumbling after their transformation. Zach helps Britney by posing as her boyfriend and helping out in the dysfunctional theater department. And both get to reap the benefits of a secret sapphic relationship.

Keisuke, meanwhile, serves the role of the best friend and primary male love interest of re:Dreamer, and he plays that role to a tee. He’s a tall, strong, and overall manly athlete, with a history of saving women from distress, only to screw up the relationship a few weeks— or days— later. He has a good heart, a good sense of justice, knows his way around people, and is proficient at diffusing conflicts before things get too intense. Well, most conflicts anyway. While he has some smarts and a good moral compass, he’s a bit of a himbo, and can be as thick-headed as any two-bit shonen protagonist.

He’s a familiar enough character type to be predictable, detailed and consistent enough to feel like a person, but where he really shines is when bouncing off of Zach. The two have a well-worn dynamic that makes them feel like friends from minute one, and whenever one of them is struggling, the other has their back. Zach overthinks and fails to notice basic social cues, while Keisuke rushes forward like a cannon and navigates some social situations smoothly. Alone, they’re the results of min-maxing, but together, they’re a mostly balanced duo.

Samantha, Zach’s mother, is mentally ill polymath whose character could have been easily fumbled in the hands of a less deft writer, but is brought to life through an exceptional level of detail and humanity. She is simultaneously a crushing, sometimes callous, mother who treats Zach like an extension of herself. And a genuinely sympathetic woman who underwent a life full of tragedy, unrequited ambitions, and scant bits of euphoria that give her cause to get up in the morning. Every one of her boons is matched with a bane, and the more I got to know her, the more she became.

Samantha is the source of many of Zach’s quirks and anxieties, but if Zach’s a 5 on that scale, Samantha’s a gosh darn 11. She’s a controlling tiger mom with high standards and higher demands. Her emotions are directed and intense to the point where it almost seems like she has psychic powers. She takes extreme pride in her intelligence and skills, and will flaunt them when the opportunity arises. She is a sensual woman who loves to be loved (by her husband). But she’s also an awkward dork who crumbles at the hands of her husband. She’s a semi-idealized genius who is also a wet, hot mess, and I love her.

Last but not least, there is no greater accomplishment in all of re:Dreamer than the character of Zach. While lots of visual novels go for a reserved or milquetoast protagonist, re:Dreamer takes the almost complete opposite approach and presents an excessively detailed person. They’re a dork with a penchant for obscure knowledge, a habit of spacing out, a strong technical skillset, very apparent gender issues, and a storage unit’s worth of densely packed emotional baggage.

re:Dreamer is ultimately Zach’s story, and much of its appeal is seeing Zach gradually lay out their issues, present their plethora of quirks, and adapt to new situations while reassessing and reasserting who they are as a person. And ‘person’ really is the best word for them here, as it is rare to find a fictional character as detailed and realized as Zach. They’re a character with so many quirks and traits bolted onto each other that it actually winds up making them more relatable than a more plain character. In part due to how often the player gets to peer into their head.

Some might find their awkwardness, routine narration, and rambling introspections to be a bit tiresome. Personally, I consider these things to be an accurate reflection of what it’s like to be around someone like them or get inside their head. Whether the player likes Zach will ultimately come down to preference, but… if you’re familiar with my work, you can probably imagine how I feel about them.

Zach is a frail neurodivergent kid with a gender bender fetish, a sloshy bucket of gender dysphoria, and a scattering of academic honors, who starts this story feeling lost in the world. Hell, they’ve even got crappy handwriting and lifelong speech issues. There are, naturally, many differences that I could also name, but it’s rare to find a fictional character who I can relate to in so many different ways.

…But even if I couldn’t relate to them on such a personal level, they are still a downright adorable little dork.

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Introduction Route

re:Dreamer is a long game, so I view the introduction to be a vitally important part of the experience. It needs to engross the reader into the life of Zach, while not getting too lost in the weeds, or dawdling about. This was a major problem with the game during its early years. Fortunately, the introduction was reworked in October 2022 and given a slight abridgement since I last played it.

It opens with a day in the life of Zach as they go through their college routine. See how they view their classes, learn a shallow sampling of their boundless quirks, get glimpses of characters who will be relevant in the main routes, while introducing the game’s core theme. The boundless messiness that surrounds personality, intelligence, and a person’s very identity.

After returning to their dorm room, the story smoothly moves over to show how Zach learned about and pirated the titular re:Dreamer app, and goes about using it to make a ‘character.’ This is then followed by a meticulously detailed and overall excellent transformation sequence. A genuine bit of post-transformation panic. An introduction to the game of re:Dreamer by the truly lovely Ai. An equally excellent masturbation sequence that manages to be both awkward and shit and hot as hell. And an impromptu therapy session that probably screwed with the heads of some readers. All while establishing a natural divergence point for the main routes.

It’s a good introduction that sets up a lot, and does so in a relatively short amount of time. Starting a new game with default C.H.E.A.T.S. values— more on those later— at casual reading speed (75 text speed and auto play speed of 4), it only took 31 minutes to get to the transformation sequence. And 67 minutes to get to the branching point. That being said, it would take a dedicated player more time to read everything. The author’s notes, World Information, and optional loosely related lecture can easily double that depending on how deep the player gets.

My only grievance with the introduction is that could stand to do a better job of visually introducing Samantha and Keisuke. In a character-driven visual novel like this, seeing characters does a lot to boost player’s engagement and helps them decide which route they want to start with. Sure, they could go through the World Information section and see what they look like there, but I think this should be thrown in players’ faces. And one can easily do that in a diegetic way. Just have Zach look at their pictures when in the contacts list on his phone.

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Keisuke Route

The Keisuke route sees Zach reconnect with their childhood friend after the two drifted apart during their adolescence. A few hours after reuniting, their relationship mutates into something else, with Zach and Keisuke getting distracted by Zach’s body, and… one thing leads to another. This rapidly shifts their relationship from a brotherly one into a romantic one, or as romantic as you can get with a pair as awkward as this.

…At least that’s the general synopsis. In execution, it takes a while before the story gets to that point, as Zach needs to first convince Keisuke who he is. It’s a lengthy sequence, one peppered with humor, intriguing insights, and some delightful character dynamics. It’s good writing, just long-winded… which admittedly applies to most of re:Dreamer. However, it is well worth it when getting to the evening of the first day, where things get really good.

Things diverge with a number of branching paths, complete with custom CGs and their own unique tangents, making them a section with high replayability. But no matter which route the player chooses, they all develop Zach and Keisuke right after establishing them. Advance and transform their relationship while setting a new baseline. And manage to be both hot as hell and silly as shit. They have the deft touch of a connoisseur of the erotic ephemera and someone who is fully aware they’re writing a weird game for weird people.

Since I last covered the game, the following chapter, which sees Zach and Keisuke bathe together in a sento, was fully rewritten from scratch. It kept the same basic structure while refining everything with four years of experience writing these characters.

Zach and Keisuke far better match where their personalities drift to in later writings. The comedic antics they get up to while trying to wash themselves are funnier. Zach has a lot more heady, pertinent, introspections about their sexuality— among other things— driven by a disgusting amount of variables. And the carousel of gated ‘first draft’ sex scenes were consolidated to something more relevant to the characters.

That might make it sound like content was cut— and it technically was— but the framing, tension, and erotic absurdity all make it feel like the right decision. Once again, CaptainCaption took something that I thought was already really good, and made it way better. The mad fool even included a semi-animated sex scene!

After this lengthy yet eventful introduction, things simmer down over the next few days of the story, focusing on the two as they try to establish things for the next six months of their lives. An adorable shopping trip that flows well, not getting too bogged down on any single tangent or distraction, and shows the two acting like a couple. Their first proper ‘date’ as they try to rekindle the friendship they had in their childhood, only to realize how different they are now. And a frat party that serves as a nifty play place of permutations that offer a look at Zach in a more social setting. Or I suppose it could be seen as the first time ‘Zoey’ has really had an opportunity to interact with her peers.

Day four establishes the sorts of struggles that Zach will need to go through in order to manage their school life and their… let’s call it ‘Zoey life.’ Currently, the route contains a sort of ‘preview’ of a core element of this route. Zach and Keisuke developing a workout routine, in order to achieve three central goals. Prevent Zach from ruining their new body, allow Zach to develop some of the athleticism they always envied, and facilitate a number of kinky exhibitionist or ‘gym-themed’ sexual encounters. …What? They gotta get points if they want to win re:Dreamer, and kinky’s better than regular!

It’s all pretty great, but due to the nature of the game’s ongoing development, there are gaps strewn throughout the available content and sections that need to be revised in response to other revisions. Still, there is more than enough content, narrative progression, and enjoyable scenes to make the route feel significant.

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Britney Route

The Britney route has Zach finally talk to his high school friend after avoiding her for the first month of the semester, as getting help from a girl their age seems like a good idea. She takes the ‘my best friend turned into a girl’ news in a realistic way— thinking they’re just trans— and after learning the circumstances behind Zach’s transformation, she agrees to help. …But only if Zach helps her with the things that have been bogging down her life. Thus turning a solid friendship into a loving partnership.

From a writing standpoint, there is a lot to like here. Day 1 does a great job of introducing and establishing Britney as a shrewd, competitive, but ultimately considerate person, and gets things rolling with a welcomed level of expedience. It wastes precious little time before getting to the action, and starts off the route on a particularly strong note. …Barring the missing day one night content.

Day 2 serves as an excellent demonstration of how well the two characters get along with each other, and it is delightful seeing them adapt to a changing relationship dynamic. Their antics are cute, their banter is funny, it’s filled with all sorts of insights into who these characters are, and I have nothing but good things to say about it. …Except for the mini-game-filled arcade section. A bit of utterly maddening content designed for and by the sort of freaks who enjoy speedrunning and it drove me half-insane back in 2022. But in the current year, players only need to tolerate these games once, and then they can skip them and choose their desired outcome.

While Day 3… is basically a novel-length haul that reads like an unabridged depiction of a person’s day, complete with a 40 minute long phone call, and… I actually kind of love it. That might sound odd considering how I emphasize the importance of brevity in intros, but this comes several hours into the route, and despite its ‘word girth’ it follows one of my personal rules for storytelling. So long as things are happening, so long as the audience is being given engaging information and/or compelling dialogue, and isn’t waiting for a promised outcome, you can ramble on and on. It’s a bunch of succinct little subchapters that all add or develop something, and lay a strong foundation for what’s to come.

Day 3 was also expanded further with the addition of a new evening chapter, seeing Zach and Britney get dinner, chat, before prepping up for sex… when Britney finds Zach’s stash of physical TSF doujins. This leads to an amazing sex scene, filled with teasing and light ‘gender bender’ roleplay as Britney nudges Zach into enjoying their body and situation. She’s assertive yet gentle, clearly wanting to get off and get Zach to be more accepting to try more things, while knowing that force breeds resentment. Zach is at peak adorableness as they try to defend their interest and crumble when met with even a gesture of dominance. The CG work is truly excellent, capturing the mood and expressions in a way that clearly took days to get right. And while it’s a bit wordy for a sex scene, it never gets too distracted and maintains its focus.

Following that, the incomplete Day 4 is largely a remix of the same one introduced in the Keisuke route, but with some fun extra scenes that really make me wonder how much these routes can have in common. Day 8 introduces Zach to the theater club and the primary ‘project’ that this route will focus on. It stands as a strong introduction to a new supporting cast, and it’s even stronger now that the pillar of the production, Molly, finally has sprites. There’s a lot of depth and background to her and her brother, Patrick, and with it a lot to enjoy. …Assuming one likes reading phonetically written accents and doesn’t get overwhelmed by the amount of variables and micro choices that go into the ‘convincing scene.’ Oh, the joys of flowchart production…

Beyond that, what’s there is only an introductory chapter, and I cannot say that much more. A lot of lore about them was published across various Patreon posts, but I try to not let planned content cloud my judgment too much.

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Alone Route

The Alone route is some of the earliest content added to re:Dreamer, and I still find it the most conceptually interesting route, if only due to how odd it is next to the rest of the game. The route sees Zach ‘calm their nerves’ with a bottle of Chinese nightmare liquor laced with LSD which sends Zach into a dream-based hellscape. Here, their very sense of self is threatened as their mind’s self-defense mechanisms kick in, threatening to unexist them before they are saved by the repressed female side of their psyche.

It is dope, I love it, and the presentation still impresses me to this day. The warping backgrounds of one scene are genuinely disorientating and appropriately dreamlike. Zach’s rambling tangents and obliviousness really do make it feel like an unfiltered glimpse into their psyche. The repurposing of the unused ‘hot Zach’ sprites at the end of the route is still kind of brilliant. And I think it manages to push their character into a direction that the other routes still haven’t reached yet.

…However, aside from TLC and polish passes, it’s been four years since this route has been expanded. As such, I can’t help but wonder when/if it is going to get cut and relegated to the extras section as a remnant of unrequited ambitions. CaptainCaption wants to continue this, and turn it into a split route where Zach meets up with both Britney and Keisuke, but who knows if they’ll get to that.

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Mom Route

The Mom route sees Zach make the genius decision to ask their hyper-intelligent and mentally ill mother, Samantha, to be their buddy in this reality-altering competitive sex game. …Somehow that sounded even lewder than I intended. While she is disgusted by how much of a degenerate her child is, she begrudgingly agrees to help them out of this mess. …Only to immediately screw things up and botch the game of re:Dreamer. With Zach’s hope shattered into a hundred tiny pieces, the route sees Samantha as she tries to remedy this fine mess, while Zach comes to terms with how their life, as they knew it, is over.

Much of the route is spent establishing just how strained and broken the relationship between the two are. Digging through the repressed history of Zach’s family as they try to come up with a solid cover story for how ‘transformed Zach’ just sprang into existence. Zach learning more about their complex and important family history. And attempts by Samantha to help Zach acclimate to their life as a woman.

It’s tangent-riddled, as Samantha is almost as bad at these things as Zach. The fixation on backstory leads to an extreme amount of exposition, both in universe and in the World Information section. But the characters play off each other well, the dialogue neatly meshes snark with insights, and I found myself absorbed by the discoveries and banter they shared. …Right until getting to the big revelation of this route, where it splits off into four variants that change the relationship of the two.

Of these, only the acceptance branch is expanded past an initial conversation, and it’s so good that it, in conjunction with the corresponding World Information, gave me a panic attack when I first played it. With a year of distance from it, I still think it is a viscerally powerful section that speaks to the strength of the characters, their writing, and CaptainCaption’s grasp of the murky subject matter. That’s not to say the other branches aren’t good. They’re heartfelt, depressing, and filled with their own bombshell revelations. They just didn’t hit so close to home that they left me hyperventilating as I tried to sleep.

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The C.H.E.A.T.S. System

…Okay, that’s enough gushing about the story, let’s talk about my least favorite part of re:Dreamer. The part that makes it more than a novel with choices and audiovisual elements, and the part that makes the game impossible to translate.

The C.H.E.A.T.S. system is a series of customizable variables that influences how Zach behaves throughout the game, with certain dialogue lines, choices, and scenes being locked behind variable checks. Its purpose is to add variety and replayability to the game, in addition to attuning Zach closer to the player’s preference. It’s a nifty idea, though I have a few problems with it.

No matter if Zach has all max stats or all min stats, they’re always going to be Zach. They might be better at hiding certain elements of their persona/identity, or more disposed to certain things, but they are the same person. And I’m not sure if giving an incredibly complex character this level of variability is a good thing.

Regardless of how much variety this system adds to the game, it still constitutes a lot of work from the development end. Rather than just locking dialogue lines or mini-branches behind variable checks, re:Dreamer has variables to change specific words in sentences. It’s a level of granularity that does add uniqueness to every different playthrough and arrangement of C.H.E.A.T.S. …But this is a VN with over half a million words in its script, and I’m pretty sure thousands of lines are locked behind or modified by these variables. All of which need to be written, proofed, coded, and edited while striving for consistency. Just thinking about it makes my head hurt…

This time around, I didn’t replay the entire game with different variables just to test how they affect the script, and instead played through the game with all variables set to 5. Doing so makes Zach their most extreme, and I believe offers more dialogue and flavor text. I did wind up skipping out on some alternate scenes this way, but there is already so much to dig into with re:Dreamer that I don’t think it needs that much replay value. A good story is all the replay value that a visual novel needs, and it’s why I’ve had such a good time replaying this game every year.

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Alternate Universe & Lore

re:Dreamer takes place in an alternate universe 2022 where Japan defeated America in WWII, claimed the Pacific Northwest as their own nation, and became the superpower of Eastern and Southeastern Asia. Technology advanced far faster, social issues are 15-20 years behind where they are in real life, Chicago is the new capital of America, and anime is everywhere.

It’s a highly ambitious alternate universe that aspires to rewrite 80 years of contemporary history, chronicled in the ‘World Information’ section. An in-game resource frothing with information on relevant characters, locations, concepts, and historical events that all try to make the world of re:Dreamer feel more like an actual world. I say ‘try’ because, despite being full of meticulous detail and an incredible amount of thought, re:Dreamer is trying to accomplish something exceedingly difficult and raises a million different questions.

How did the culture around science fiction remain so similar when humanity still hasn’t reached the moon in the year 2022? How did Nixon become president in a vastly different political climate? Did the CIA still fund wars in Latin America while fighting Japan? Did the Gulf War happen? Did 9/11 happen? Did the Feds kill Malcolm X and MLK after they pivoted to socialism? Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill JFK? If some in-game music is diegetic, then does that mean that Daft Punk, Jurassic 5, and Avril Lavigne still exist in this timeline? How is there a game that’s basically Katamari Damacy when that game only exists due to specific programs hosted by Namco in the early 2000s?

This is all before getting into the myriad questions and complexities raised by the ‘secret lore’ only accessible to players who have been given a certain key phrase by CaptainCaption. I was one of the lucky few and… it dramatically changed the way I viewed the game, its world, and its characters for the better. It’s a truly bonkers revelation that both ties things together, and adds an entirely new layer of depth that left me convulsing with joy the first time I discovered it. I would like to throw in some teaser, especially since re:Dreamer now encrypts its script files, so Unren doesn’t work anymore. I’ll just say that the lineage of ‘Zachary’ lies in an earlier deviance deeper, and when in doubt, turn to nihilism.

Even taking the secret lore revelations into consideration, there is a lot to nitpick about the world building of re:Dreamer. If you want to fixate on what isn’t there, then you’re asking for a one-way ticket to insanity. …But the fourth anniversary route establishes that there is a god figure in this universe and lets the player choose if they want to treat their presence as canon. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned by writing 1.4 million words in a shared multiverse, it’s that god figures are the easiest answer to every irregularity.

Besides, for as robust as the lore is, re:Dreamer is ultimately a character-driven story. And arguably, the most interesting bits of the World Information are not even about the world, but the complex and rich backstories that turned the cast into the people they are today. Still, the World Information is an excellent companion piece to things only touched upon in the main story, and it demonstrates the exceptional care and dedication CaptainCaption puts into this game.

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Presentation

Despite being a relatively scrappy project without a dedicated artist to call its own, re:Dreamer has continued to impress me with its presentation in pretty much every way. So, let’s go through them one by one, because I like to view things as teensy little pieces.

The character sprites impress me with their thoughtful designs, gorgeous outfits, and general artistry. But what really brings them to life is their variety of expressions, giving the characters the power to convey a wide spectrum of emotions that they take full advantage of. CGs, both hentai and normal, are composed with a deliberateness and attention to detail that, combined with their numerous variants, makes them truly feel like key events in the game. Backgrounds range from (bad) commissioned 3D renders, high quality royalty-free asset packs purchased from DLSite, and the occasional doctored photo/render. There’s enough variance so that things never look completely right, but they do the job, keep the budget in the green, and I have a certain fondness for backgrounds that look like whatever this is. It keeps me wondering…

Animations are used to add liveliness to certain scenes and characters while being reserved enough that characters feel natural when they… stand around in a room and talk. Just like real people do. Zach’s phone has a lavish level of detail with its custom UI screen and a clock that not only moves forward as characters speak, but a battery that drains over time. And there are a lot of little flourishes that I appreciated. Such as having characters navigate in the 3D space of backgrounds. Making characters shake and jump when the time calls for it. Or even the simple tilting and swinging of character sprites to accentuate a certain action.

Auditorily, the first thing to note is the game’s robust soundtrack, which features over 200 unlicensed songs from a wide variety of sources, mostly ranging from video games and anime. F-Zero GX, Umineko, No More Heroes, Jet Set Radio, Samurai Champloo, Panty & Stocking, and Cowboy Bebop just to name a few.

It’s not the most professional approach for assembling the soundtrack of a commercial visual novel, but it’s pretty much perfect as far as I’m concerned. The tracks are incorporated into the game well, can be hilarious in their application, add another dimension of the game for me to enjoy, and do a lot to enhance certain scenes.

From excellent choices like the use of Clam Casino’s Cold Feet in the freshly remade sento scene, illustrating Zach’s uncertainty over this situation as they look over their best friend’s kielbasa. To the ‘I don’t know why but it works’ of using Toda Pasión from the Gitaroo Man as the theme for a Catholic priest. Or the straight-up good call to a character jam out to Jurassic 5 to show they have good taste in hip-hop. It all works so well that I struggle to imagine a better soundtrack for this game.

Unfortunately, licensing all of this would be impossible, so all of this is just placeholder. …And fortunately, CaptainCaption has said that replacing the soundtrack will be “the very, very last thing I ever do for this game for full commercial release,” and the process will “destroy [their] soul.”

But even if the music changes, re:Dreamer still boasts some truly impressive sound design for a visual novel. A lot of it is simple stuff that you might take for granted, such as the sound of someone grabbing something, a door opening, outdoor ambiance, footsteps, genital squishing, and so forth.

There are also some inspired choices, such as representing the inner workings of Zach’s mind using the sound of gears and mechanical tools. The audio clips used to represent Zach’s voice are both adjusted for consistency and do a lot to boost their presence in-game. Sound effects are even altered to better fit their environment, such as adding an echo effect when walking through an empty theater.

I also appreciated the way it used its soundtrack by looping sections of tracks, dividing them up into sections, and using them to enhance a certain thing. It seems so obvious to use the chimes from the opening of Aerodynamic by Daft Punk to instill a sense of dread before jumping into the rest of the track, but goldarn it, it works!

Needless to say, I appreciate all the work that has gone into crafting the soundscape, as this is the sort of thing I would only expect from a project with a dedicated sound person on staff. Instead… CaptainCaption just figured this shit out and became their own sound person!

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The Fourth Anniversary Route

The fourth anniversary route is… a heavy one. The route starts as an extension of the Friday Updates that CaptainCaption hosts on the Dream Team Studios Patreon. Novella-length essays where they go into great detail about the game’s development, their crumbling life situation, and work through their own mental health issues by writing.

This visual novel essay covers a lot of the struggles CaptainCaption had gone through in 2023, which was… not a good year for them. They realized that their gender identity was messier than just being a ‘cis dude’ and began undergoing what has been a lengthy identity crisis that has currently led them to become genderfluid. They were betrayed by close friends and moderators of their Discord server, who turned the community against Cap for having the audacity to not be a binary trans woman. These people eventually burned bridges with CaptainCaption, taking a good chunk of the community they fostered over the years, rather than… just accepting them for who they are. You know, the underlying principle that all queer people should not only preach, but practice.

While this experience left Cap deeply bitter, they use this opportunity to reflect on the importance of identity. How diversity is a core strength of humans as a collective. And how nobody should be denied the opportunity to discover who they are for themself, at their own pace. It’s a beautiful sentiment interwoven into a rambly, scattered, yet compelling tangent that is written with an earnestness that makes it feel as if Cap is speaking from the heart, holding nothing back.

…That accounts for the first half of the route, while the second half is where things get really interesting. Using a magical clipboard that Cap used to code re:Dreamer— it’s a macguffin, just roll with it— Cap isekais themself into the world of re:Dreamer, specifically in Zach’s house during the morning of the first day. And because they’re a gender bender writer, their body is naturally transformed into that of their character sprite— an edited version of Samantha’s sprite.

Stranded, they meet Samantha, and what follows is a prolonged interrogation and discussion between the two. Samantha sleuths what a red-headed clone of herself is doing here, putting her cunning and reasoning skills to the test. Cap is forced to confront and confess things to a person they wrote to be smarter and more analytical than them. And before too long, Cap admits the truth to Samantha. That this screwed up lonely writer who stole her body is responsible not only for her existence, but every miserable event that played out in her life.

On one hand, this is an excellent showcase of Samantha as a character, showing who she is when driven to an extreme, when she is not around Zach. The route easily gave me a new sympathy and understanding of her character. …But the real main character of this route is Cap.

The story is about them dealing with the weight of their own creation, dealing with their own dwindling mortality, and working through their messy identity by confiding in their ‘envy character.’ I don’t want to go over everything this route touches on, as it is a lot and Cap tells it far better than I could manage, but I think it is an incredible piece of writing in its own right. It’s raw, honest, and emotionally vulnerable. A story about how someone is struggling to find who they are, while stripping apart every scrap of their identity in hopes of finding stability, in a life where it feels like everything is crumbling down.

Which… is as good a segue into the next section as any.

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CaptainCaption

Throughout this review, I have been largely referring to re:Dreamer as the creation of CaptainCaption. The reason for that is that Espeon is no longer actively involved in the game’s development, and pretty much every duty has fallen onto CaptainCaption. This includes, writing, programming, image editing, promotion, community management, issuing updates, general directing and producing, art directing, sound design, animating, and more. This is an insane amount for one person to take on, even as their primary job, but CaptainCaption has proven themself to be nothing if not competent.

They are amazingly capable at learning new skills, managing a large number of tasks, and excel in pretty much every field she throws herself in. In fact, I would say that they are someone who could do and learn just about anything if they put their mind to it… and can find the necessary resources.

I say this based on the author’s notes feature, that’s effectively a director’s commentary mode. One filled with insights, tangents, and instances of CaptainCaption flexing their muscles as a creator as they explain the WORK they put into making this blasted game. Along with the various Patreon updates, where they demonstrate their immense level of passion for what they are creating. They are trying to make the best damn visual novel they can make, and the end result is something that is truly and deeply special.

As they said in an author’s note, “I’m pretty sure [re:Dreamer will] be a one-of-a-kind VN as there’s no way this game could exist as it does if I had any real oversight from a producer.” Which… it absolutely is. The game’s strengths all stem from the fact that it is from such a focused and dedicated individual with a heck of an imagination. …But it’s also the game’s biggest weakness. CaptainCaption, as skilled as they are, are just one person and… I need to talk about what they’ve been through the past year.

There was a 7 month delay between Version 0.17.0, released 10/21/23, and Version 0.18.0 of re:Dreamer, released 5/8/24. An update merely introduced the revised Keisuke onsen chapter in addition to a few minor revisions. This was an extreme delay that raised many questions about the future of this project, and concern over what, specifically, caused the delay. An explanation did not arrive until May 30, 2024, with a Patreon update, entitled Some Goddamn Accountability.

I deliberately held off writing this section until I could read this post. Like most of Cap’s Patreon updates, it’s long, tangent-riddled, and filled with personal details. But it addresses the situation and answers the question of what caused this half year hiatus. The long and short is that CaptainCaption’s life situation is just fucked.

Let me start with the medical history. CaptainCaption has their own slurry of health issues and a medical situation so complex that it’s hard for me to fully comprehend them. They have a lot of pain issues, the giant breasts they developed from HRT makes it hard for them to sleep, and they are highly dependent on their medication. But the big medical issue with them is that… they have a neurodegenerative disease that is going to kill them in, approximately, six years.

Leading up to this, admittedly loose, figure, they will lose their mobility, ability to communicate, type, or even read. It’s something that would deeply mess up anybody, especially a 30-year-old. And knowing their life is so finite, Cap has been routinely throwing themselves into this project, as they recognize it will be one of the only things they could be remembered for. Cap has made this fact publicly known for several, but this past year their health worsened and their life expectancy was significantly reduced.

Ever since February 2022, Cap’s gender identity has been thrown through the fucking wringer. People they trusted pushed them into being a binary trans woman, only for their identity to collapse into a genderfluid mess. The process of accepting and learning to live with this has been debilitating to their daily life and introduced an internal conflict that has plagued them for months. During which their very sense of self has been compromised, leaving them unable to write in an effective and consistent manner, as they lacked a stable identity.

Their home life, which has… always been fraught with abuse from their increasingly unstable parents, has only grown more extreme and violent. It was never great, with Cap having shared stories about their mother destroying their GameBoy Advance as a child, or locking the fridge to deprive them of food as a form of punishment. However, this past month it reached new extremes that, frankly, make it surprising that these last two updates even got published.

I won’t divulge all details, it’s better to hear it from Cap than from me, but the ‘highlights’ are as follows: Cap’s father beat and verbally abused them in a transphobic rage, all for having the audacity to sleep in an unoccupied basement. In response, Cap’s mother, who has routinely chosen to ignore her child’s medical issues, forced them to take sleeping pills that, with their asthma, they should not have taken.

Cap’s parents then… locked them inside the basement. If Cap fell asleep, if they didn’t have ‘terror adrenaline’ rushing through their body, they would have died in that basement. Their parents… not only did they not care that they nearly killed their child, they decided to renovate the basement right after Cap moved their things inside there. A move that not only robbed Cap of much needed stability, but meant that, while working on re:Dreamer and just exist, Cap was only a few meters away from the man who just beat them.

…Thank FUCK they are moving out a few days after this review goes live. And thank GOD that, for all the blatantly awful shit they’ve been subjected to, they managed to luck out and find a friend who gets them.

I originally wanted to reprise what I said last year. That CaptainCaption is hotheaded, stubborn, aggressive, overly dramatic, and when taken out of context, you can easily frame them as an utter asshole. How their ambitions and fixation on minor details has repeatedly gotten in the way of them finishing this damn game. Seriously, they provided me with the script files, and the code is filled with so many minor variables to change a few words it’s goldarn maddening.

These things are true. However, considering the immense levels of bullshit they have been subjected to, how many people they trusted have turned on them, and the utter lack of support they have, I’ve… just accepted it. Its a damn miracle they haven’t “fucked off into some remote state park to die.” I remember them saying that, “[f]ractions of what [they] go through would have broken or killed most people by now” and… yeah, that’s no exaggeration.

Now, you might be wondering what does this have to do with re:Dreamer? To which I say… re:Dreamer is Cap’s game. Cap has overshared and put so much of themself into this game that it’s impossible for me to separate the two from each other, and the more one understands about them, the more one understands about re:Dreamer. The more sense it all makes.

Why does Zach have a tragic backstory where their beloved grandpa was taken away from them at a young age? Because Cap’s famous grandfather died before they could meet him and his shadow has loomed over them all their life. Why is Zach an engineering student who highly values their own intelligence and has an identity wrapped within a layered locked enigma? Because that’s basically Cap when they were Zach’s age. Why are so many of the characters mentally ill? Because Cap’s super mentally ill and comes from a family of mentally ill people.

Why is so much of the story about characters striving to achieve their full potential, only for their goals to be unrequited? Because Cap thought they were going to be a historically important person at a young age, only to have illness shatter their dreams. Why is Zach’s mom a neutoric controlling mess with a positively fucked childhood and demonic vibe? Because she is, in many ways, an idealized and less malicious version of Cap’s own mother.

The more Cap shares details about themself through Patreon posts and author’s notes— the more I read and re-read through them— the more apparent these overlaps become. It is through this background, through these paratextual additions, that re:Dreamer becomes that much of a richer, well rounded, experience. And knowing all this, knowing the background, it makes re:Dreamer something dearly unique.

I’m thankful for everything they’ve done to make this game what it is. And, above all else, I want to thank them for sharing themself with so many people.

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Conclusion

As I stated at the start of this review, the past year has brought relatively little new content to re:Dreamer. The additions that were added were overwhelmingly positive, but the slow pace is worthy of criticism, even bearing in mind the incredibly strong reasons CaptainCaption was unable to work on the game at their previous capacity. I have doubts surrounding the future of the game, worries that the game might never be finished. But… I still adore re:Dreamer. It’s still the game that broke me emotionally, sent me into a panic attack, and touched me on a level that I didn’t know existed a year ago.

It’s not perfect, and its story is very much unfinished, but the experience of re:Dreamer is a substantial one, filled with dizzying highs and passion sewn throughout every facet. From the characters to the presentation to the background and lore, everything is rendered with meticulous detail and an abundant personality that makes it a truly special game. re:Dreamer is great, and if you are a TSF/TG/gender bender enthusiast, I implore you to experience it for yourself.