Marcheurs de rêves [The Dreamwalkers]

Puzzles 🧩: 8/10 Set/Wow Factor ✨: 8/10 Story/Immersion 🔮: 8.5/10 Fun Factor 🤘: 8/10 We stopped by Cabinet Mysteriis to play The Dreamwalkers [Marcheurs de rêves], which landed at #47 on the global TERPECA list in 2020. The game is story-driven and its handmade craft helps immerse you into its dreamlike atmosphere. The room features a mix of mechanical locks alongside a good variety of satisfying diegetic puzzles, and makes use of a clever clue delivery system. We had a fantastic game master who explained different parts of the game afterwards. A few elements are showing wear, and some puzzle mechanisms had us checking with the game master to confirm we'd actually solved them. We still recommend this game if you are in the area!

An incredibly ambitious game that really starts to “click” halfway through. So charming and funny. The in-game hint system is adorable compared to just being given a walkie talkie. This was their hardest game in my opinion, difficulty coming from really needing to understand the story and structure of the experience. And due to that, I really appreciated what they did with this and highly recommend it.

This was a puzzle-heavy, multi-linear game with some very cool concepts and creative, challenging puzzles that revolved around a child's nightmares. Even though there was some wear and tear with age, it was still a strong set that balanced childlike cuteness with darker, gorier themes. The signposting and flow was not perfect, and with several different strands to tackle, it wasn't always clear what we had to do next. But the game had a great hint system and we used it when needed to prevent frustration, allowing us to escape with only about 6 minutes to spare.

A visually stunning and very charming game.

We enjoyed this room, but I'd say it's an OK game with a really good one struggling to come out. The sets are good but rough-- if you've done Escaparium rooms in Montreal, lower your expectations a couple of pegs. The lighting in the main space was needlessly dim. The game is mostly undermined by some weak signposting and poor feedback. There were steps needed that went either completely unclued or were clued too vaguely. We solved a puzzle correctly, but there's an intentional 10 second delay before anything happens, merely to stymie brute-force attempts. But as players we didn't know that, so we thought we'd gotten it wrong and were frustrated and moved on to other things. There's a puzzle with a tantalizing setup that turned out to have a disappointingly straightforward yet weakly-clued solution. We had items for another puzzle in the right places but not fully socketed, but since there was no feedback we didn't know that. There are no mechanisms for directing the player's attention to what's important (or what's important NOW), relying instead on vocal clues from the GM. If they made a pass through this space to correct these problems, This would be a much stronger and more satisfying game. As it is, it's something of a diamond in the rough.

Amazing set design and story line. Such a fun theme, very immersive, and great use of live actor!

Dreamwalkers had such a fun and unique storyline with a fun twist and unique puzzles and set design. Even if fantasy/adventure isn't your favorite, you can appreciate this. The hint system was adorable too. There were 1-2 puzzles that seemed far-fetched.

The Dreamwalkers feels like the most ambitious of Cabinet Mysteriis' games, and I really liked the story and structure. However, some elements had me scratching my head, and it felt kind of bumpy, and I'd be a bit reluctant to recommend it to non-enthusiasts. For those who are prepared to overlook some of the flaws, however, this is a great game. The set was great and my favorite part of the game. The GM interaction (which doubles as the hint mechanism) was also fun. There were a number of memorable interactions, though I think some were not well signposted. Puzzles were a mixed bag. Most were reasonable, though there were some leaps I'm not sure how we were supposed to reasonably intuit. We accidentally got access to a cubby way before we were supposed to, and misunderstanding what we were supposed to be doing, we accidentally locked ourselves out of important items. The GM was unable to override this (although did later when we would have appropriately solved it for real, perhaps overriding it would have messed up other game state).

Fun story and vibe, but flow could use more guidance about what to work on when