There is a particular kind of invitation, rare in a genre that usually hands you a grimdark map and a tragic dad, in waking up because a portal stole your rabbit and discovering that the entire product is a dream that learned to shoot. The slippers are still slippers. The umbrella is still an umbrella. The first creature that tries to teach you a lesson is not a metaphor. Onirism, the third-person action-adventure from Crimson Tales, published by Shoreline Games, is built on that joke, and the joke is louder, brighter, and more useful than an eighteen-dollar bedtime has any right to be.
I played the PC version, the 23 October 2025 1.0 that Crimson Tales and Shoreline Games walked onto Steam after six years of Early Access that started on 26 April 2019. You are Carol. You grab the umbrella. You chase Bunbun through Crearia. Ten chapters and more than twenty levels sit behind that sentence. The English Steam sample is Very Positive, 81 percent of 794, with 1,300 Steam purchaser reviews across languages sitting at 82 percent, which is the honest weather of a long Early Access that finally filed a finished date and not a dare. Great, not glossy, and very much a toybox I would recommend you open if you like a shooter that remembers it is also a recess.
The Portal Does Not Care What Bedtime Was
Most rescue stories begin with a speech. Onirism begins with a stuffed animal leaving the room without permission. Official copy on Steam says a stolen plushie, a mysterious portal, and a girl full of energy and imagination, packed with lots of attitude. Jump into Carol’s slippers and chase the unknown. That is not flavor text. It is the design refusing to pay for a chosen-one prologue when a bedtime theft will do.
You start running because the alternative is becoming a rumor in a place that does not keep rumors. The first stretch is staged like a punchline that remembered to be colorful. A creature comes through a gate. Bunbun goes with it. Carol listens only to her courage, which is a polite way of saying she does not wait for adult supervision, and Crearia is waiting on the other side with monsters, a Corporation, and the creeping sense that something in this land is wrong. The store page writes it with a grin. Both sentences are the rest of the map.
I like a premise that prices curiosity as a playground and then lets you sprint toward it anyway. Official features list candy colored forests, great pyramids, and a mysterious moon base. Shoreline’s page adds the grasslands of Chroma Falls and the icy glaciers of Frosty Peaks. Why is there a Corporation in a dream. What was that portal. The more you explore, the more Crearia answers with another toy and another thing that would like a piece of your stamina. Story is bright and a little stingy, which is the right instinct for a game that wants your hands more than your diary. You are not reading a novel. You are looting a nap that is still happening.
The fantasy is not mastery of a lore bible. The fantasy is competence arriving about half a chapter after you invent a slide around a corner. You will fail in ways that would be funny if the checkpoint were not so sincere. You fall. You come back. You become the kind of person who thinks an umbrella is a personality.
Toys, Hairdryers, and a Loadout of Eight
The loop is the old religion of third-person chaos and Crimson Tales does not pretend otherwise, then it straps a toybox to the religion and asks the religion to giggle. Official copy says you wield over 300 unique weapons and gadgets, an arsenal of blasters, bubble guns, rocket launchers, and more, each with its own explosive personality. That sentence is both a promise and a warning. If you want one serious rifle and a cover tutorial, you will feel underemployed. If you want a week that turns a hairdryer into a strategy, you will feel hired.
Movement is the temperature change. Carol sprints, jumps, dives, slides, wall jumps, and rolls on a stamina bar that can grow up if you keep showing up. Later rooms hand you an air dash and a double jump as if the map finally trusted you with the furniture. The umbrella is melee, a slow descent, and the one object in the whole product that still remembers the bedroom. Early enemies establish that this is not a walking tour with nicer lighting. They will hold a candy hill farther than pride would recommend. A water gun handles the general population. The thing a chapter is named after will empty a health bar if you treat it like scenery.
I have played a lot of games that treat the first firefight as a tutorial and the tenth as a spreadsheet. Onirism is louder than that on purpose and lighter than a sim. You are looking at eight slots, including an infinite-ammo hairdryer that refuses to be embarrassed, and deciding whether you have been useful enough today. The rest of the toys go to the Toybox, which is a polite way of saying the shop will not delete your bad decisions. Four ammo types keep the joke honest: soapy water, energy, foam darts, and fireworks. None of that is a revolution. All of that is the sentence the rest of the dream has to live in.
I will not invent a highlight reel with fake timestamps and tidy kill counts. The nights that stay with you are the ones where you thought the arena was finished, then something started occupying a rhythm that was not music, and then you were on the wrong side of your own slide. Enemy variety is not a bestiary novel even though the store page boasts more than 300 unique silhouettes. It does not need to be a novel. Pressure is the variety. A corner that holds is a better reward than a new hat if the hat is just another way to lose three minutes to a sparse checkpoint.
A guard exists. The game is not always in a hurry to tell you. I found it the way you find a spare key in a coat you have been wearing all week. Distance helps. Swapping the right toy helps more. When more than one problem shares a platform, the slide stops being a commute and becomes a confession.
Crearia Keeps Changing the Joke
The world is the other half of the short description and the kinder half of a week. Official features ask you to explore more than twenty unique levels spread over ten chapters, each packed with secrets, puzzles, and bizarre creatures. Some rooms open up and hand you a ride. Some rooms stay linear and ask you to blast a hallway until the hallway admits you were right. Both rooms are the job.
Vehicles are the closest Onirism comes to a power fantasy, and I like them more than a new cutscene. Official copy lists the Buzzard Plane, the Royal Hovercraft, mechs, and over twenty more. In practice the choice is whichever manners the last biome left on a pad and whether you have been paying attention to the map marker, which has a habit of wandering off like a child in a grocery store. A gun motorcycle is a commute. A unicorn that believes in lasers is a thesis. The map does not get smaller because the developers deleted land. It gets smaller because you invented a route.
Presentation is readable, which matters more than prestige. You can tell Chroma Falls from Frosty Peaks from a moon base at a glance. If you cannot read a biome, the hunt dies and the dream becomes homework. These spaces are atmospheric enough to carry a joke and clear enough to carry a plan. You always know where you are. You do not always know why the Corporation already posted a receptionist.
Fashion is the other toybox. Official copy says more than 200 costumes, from space suits to wacky hats. The shop will sell you hair, dye, and the kind of outfit that makes a young girl look like she raided a theater closet and won. I sold myself on a serious look I was sure I needed and then needed a hat, which is the oldest loadout joke in the book and still a good one. Dreamstones sit in the grass for people who like a receipt. None of them change the central truth. You are here to get a rabbit back and then find out what the portal was for.
Local multiplayer is on the sheet with the candor of a shop that grew up on a couch. Shared screen co-op. Shared screen PvP. Remote Play Together. Playground modes wait beside the campaign like a recess the campaign has not cancelled. Online play is advertised, then treated like weather. I will not turn this into a netcode seminar. The voice of the game is the campaign, and the campaign talks in toys, stamina, and the occasional boss that would like a word.
Bosses Who Think They Own the Dream
I should be clearer about the fights, because twenty-plus bosses is not a vibe, it is a contract. Official copy says sentient carnivorous plants and megalomaniac scientists seek to end your journey, and that you will need every ounce of skill to survive. That sentence is both a promise and a warning. If you want a polite parade of larger hats, you should look elsewhere. If you want a chapter that keeps a difficult saint, you are the audience.
Each chapter keeps a boss the way a playground keeps a rumor. I will not spoil the silhouettes. What I can say is that the loop is kinder when a boss asks you to use the kit you actually built, and ruder when it asks you to use a kit you have been treating like scenery. Checkpoints can be sparse in the rooms that most want a second chance. There is no kindly autosave waiting in the wings to pretend you were careful. Weapons and upgrades you just found can go back to being a rumor if you fall off the wrong edge. A bottomless pit will teach you geography until your health bar files a complaint.
AI can be stubborn. It can also get philosophical on a platform, which is a sentence no designer writes for fun. That clunk is real. It is also priced into a combat loop that would rather you hunt, retreat, and come back dressed. Later rooms can swarm in a way that turns a patient fight into a reload. None of that is unique to this dream. All of that is the tax on a Paris shop that wanted an adventure more than a showcase, then discovered the adventure was ten chapters and a Corporation.
Sound is the other weather. The score will hand you a peaceful walk and then a fight song that thinks it was hired by a much meaner studio. I like that nerve. I like it less when the fight song forgets the fight ended, or when a line of Carol’s repeats itself with the enthusiasm of a toy that has one joke. Official copy names AleXa, Anna Lauzeray-Gishi, Bob Lennon, and BenZaie with the pride of a 1.0 that waited six years to hire a voice. The pitch is high. The attitude is higher. You will decide in a chapter whether that is charm or a commute.
Six Years of Fingerprints on a Finished Door
I should be clear about the friction, because it is real and it is not a footnote you hide after the score. Onirism looks like a game that was built by a small shop of friends who met during their studies, then discovered the dream was a whole decade of their lives. Landscapes can be handsome. Animations can be stubborn. A slide can arrive a half-second late to its own impact. Performance can sulk when a late chapter decides to remember itself. I will not invent a frame census. I will say Crearia sometimes forgets to stock the smoothness you need and then shrugs like weather.
Technical manners on a desktop build can stutter when a point of interest decides to be a theology problem. Pop-in happens. Loads last longer than a 60 GB install on a fast drive would prefer. Objective markers vanish with the confidence of a feature that has already lost the argument with a compass. Tutorials will show a keyboard while the sheet lists partial controller support, which is a polite way of saying the pad was invited but not always briefed. Buttons can go quiet. Sensitivity can refuse to be a setting. None of that is unique to this nap. All of that is the tax on an Early Access that launched in April 2019, left in October 2025, and is still hiring manners in 2026.
Steam achievements are still a rumor the shop has not filed. The developers wrote the 1.0 terms with the candor of a shop that finished the date and then kept updating anyway. Playground Chaos still arrived in 2026. Multiplayer still wants a bigger table. If you want a polished fight with no fingerprints, you should wait. If you want a place that is already a place, you are the audience.
English and French carry full audio. Spanish, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese let a wider audience in the door. I will not turn this into a localization seminar. The voice of the game is Crearia, and Crearia talks in foam darts, weather, and the occasional mechanical knock from a Corporation that does not belong in a bedtime.
I have a rule for mid-priced colorful shooters. If a game is worse with a personality than with a checklist, it is broken. If it is only good with a personality, it is honest. Onirism is honest, and that honesty should sit next to the price.
A checklist night is a competent weekend. You punch the room, you invent the loadout, you lose a pit, you walk back, you put a better slide on the joke. A personality night is the version the systems were quietly designed around. Someone farms Dreamstones. Someone dresses Carol like a theater fire. Someone learns, too late, that a carnivorous plant does not respect fashion.
The Steam sample around a game this loud is always going to look like weather. Very Positive is the official report, 82 percent of 1,300 purchaser voices, 81 percent of 794 English ones, and that split is fair. Players who wanted a tighter pad, a prettier frame rate, or a checkpoint that never hides the fall bounce off. Players who wanted a third-person adventure with a rabbit and a bad idea about hairdryers stay. I am in the second camp with caveats, which is the only honest place to stand.
Compared with the giants of the colorful-shooter business, Onirism is not trying to be a career you finish this week. It is trying to be a recess you keep returning to. Some nights the marker is a myth and the doorway is a theology problem. Both nights are Onirism.
Still Looking for Bunbun After the Credits
Onirism is a rare mid-priced action-adventure that understands its own joke and then has the nerve to make the joke a bedtime. Crimson Tales built a girl about courage, a world about recess, and a toybox that looks a little homemade and plays a lot more sincerely than that sentence suggests. Shoreline Games walked it onto Steam at $17.99 and let the dream keep a finished door. The loop is the hook. The toys are the spine. The walk from a stolen plushie to a moon base is the grin.
It is better with a personality than with a checklist. The late rooms can clunk in the way a six-year Early Access is clunky. Performance can sulk. The presentation has indie fingerprints, from the stubborn tutorials to the story that would rather be a chase than a novel. All of that is true, and all of that is already priced in at $17.99 on Steam. You are not buying a decade. You are buying a season that already spent a decade becoming itself, or being the person who has to explain the season to a Toybox.
I am scoring it 8.5, Great, because the identity is this clear and the limitations are the limitations of a focused 1.0 with fingerprints, not an empty one. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a slide that has weight and a map that is allowed to be rude. Distinctive dream weather, a loadout that shrinks a chapter, a rabbit that turns blasting into conversation, and a price that respects a long week are a lot of game for the ask. The systems repeat their manners. The manners are still useful.
Crearia is still out there, still hiring a night shift, still asking what the portal wanted with a stuffed rabbit. After a few chapters, you will understand why the job is not finished, and why you keep grabbing the umbrella anyway.
We prepared this review with a digital copy of Onirism for the PC version provided by Pressengine.
