Bygone Dreams: Prophecy takes players into a surreal, dreamlike world caught between beauty and darkness. Read on to learn everything we know, our review of the prologue, and more.

Everything We Know About Bygone Dreams: Prophecy

Bygone Dreams: Prophecy Plot

The world of Lume, once under the protection of its matron deity, now faces a dire threat from a consuming Nightmare. Players embody Wa, a spirit and the last hope for Lume's salvation. To combat the spreading corruption, Wa must seek out the Guardians—powerful beings once revered in ancient times, now fallen under the Nightmare's influence.

Bygone Dreams: Prophecy Gameplay

The game offers a mix of exploration, puzzle-solving, and action combat. Players journey through different dreamlike realms, each with its own distinct aesthetic and theme, facing puzzles and battling nightmare creatures.

Bygone Dreams: Prophecy Release Date

Bygone Dreams: Prophecy released on May 6, 2025. The main game is expected to release in June 2025.

Digital Storefronts
Steam
Price		Free-to-Play

Bygone Dreams: Prophecy Review (Prologue)

Soulless... But At Least It Looks Pretty

Dreams are supposed to be a place of endless possibilities—a place where reality bends, and imagination runs free. Unfortunately, Bygone Dreams: Prophecy feels more like a dream that keeps tripping over itself, caught between the promise of a mesmerizing world and the weight of its own flaws. Developed as the prologue chapter of an upcoming larger experience, this action-adventure game with light RPG elements takes you into a surreal, dreamlike world plagued by Nightmares. You, the chosen one—whoever you are—are tasked with talking to Guardians and clearing these Nightmares, to fulfill the dying wish of the world’s Matron, a mysterious figure who supposedly saved you. Sounds intriguing? Well, that’s where the intrigue ends.

For a game banking on dreamlike aesthetics, Bygone Dreams: Prophecy undeniably has its moments. There’s a clear artistic vision at play, and visually, the game can be stunning. From the gardens and crystal-lit caverns to themed dream worlds, each area is designed with a unique atmosphere that tries to captivate you. It’s clear that a lot of effort was placed in creating these worlds. The lighting is soft and moody, the colors are vibrant, and the environments have that painterly, almost ethereal quality that you’d expect from something designed to feel like a dream.

There’s no denying that Bygone Dreams: Prophecy is visually striking—at first glance. But the beauty is a shallow layer, easily shattered by the awkward mechanics and rough edges hiding underneath. And as we peel back that layer, we’ll see that visuals are just one part of this messy dream.

A Dream Turned Nightmare

If you’ve ever woken up from a dream struggling to piece together the scattered fragments, you already know what it’s like to experience the story of Bygone Dreams: Prophecy. It’s a tangled, meandering tale that throws you headfirst into a world without so much as a lifeline. You’ve just been saved by the matron deity, but who you are, why you needed saving, and why you’re suddenly tasked with purging Nightmares is left hanging in the mist.

That’s not just a problem—it’s the problem. The prologue, meant to be an introduction to the world and its rules, feels like a fever dream of half-explained concepts and names tossed around without context. You’re tasked with clearing Nightmares, but nobody explains what they truly are or why they’re a threat. The story jumps from one scene to another without a clear line connecting them. It’s almost as if the game assumes you’ve read a lore book that doesn’t exist.

Worse still, the narrative doesn’t just lack clarity—it lacks direction. The prologue skips any meaningful setup and dives straight into a series of disconnected tasks. You’re told to meet the Guardians, a group of beings who seem important but are never properly introduced. Are they gods? Ancient warriors? Dream spirits? The game never cares to say. And when you do meet them, they speak to you with the same cryptic, disjointed dialogue that leaves you guessing rather than engaging.

And speaking of dialogue, Bygone Dreams: Prophecy’s voice performances range from passable to awkward, with some lines delivered in a tone that sounds completely out of place. One moment, a character is warning you of a great danger in a monotone that could put you to sleep, and the next, they’re spouting emotional lines that sound like they’re reading off a script for the first time. The disconnect is so jarring that I caught myself giggling during what were clearly meant to be serious moments. Imagine a Guardian trying to instill fear in you, but their voice is so devoid of emotion that it feels like a joke.

But the real issue isn’t just the voice acting—it’s the writing itself. Lines are written to sound mysterious but end up being confusing. Conversations don’t flow naturally; they stumble from one vague hint to another without ever giving you something concrete to hold onto. It’s storytelling without a foundation, a narrative that wants to be profound but ends up feeling like a collection of fortune cookie quotes strung together without any real purpose.

In a game where dreams and nightmares are supposed to collide, the story should have been its strongest pillar—something to ground the player in this strange, beautiful world. Instead, it’s a confusing, awkward mess that only serves to distance you from whatever magic the visuals are trying to create.

Beauty Trapped in a Frustrating Loop

Beneath the dreamlike beauty of Bygone Dreams: Prophecy lies the core of the experience—its gameplay. And this is where the dream truly begins to fall apart. What should have been an exciting journey across surreal worlds, each with its own wonders and challenges, quickly becomes a repetitive, frustrating loop where every step forward is met with a new annoyance.

It all begins in the Homestead, or The Garden, the supposed safe haven and central hub of your adventure. In theory, it’s a magical place—a tranquil garden where you access the various dreams or Chapters, each a fragment of this fractured dreamworld. It’s also where you’ll clear Nightmares, which in turn unlock the game’s core systems: magic, equipment leveling, alchemy, crafting, and a few others.

Wandering between the Chapters, or Dreams, is supposed to be the heart of your journey—exploring surreal landscapes, encountering strange beings, and solving puzzles to progress. And to give credit where it’s due, the game does have some moments of genuine intrigue. Puzzles scattered across the Chapters are one of the few aspects where the game’s creativity shines. One of the best examples of this is the light puzzle in Chapter 1, where you manipulate towers to correctly reflect beams of light. It’s a rare moment where you’re actually asked to think, and solving it feels satisfying. But these moments are too few, buried beneath a sea of uninspired design.

Because outside of these puzzles, the Chapters feel like empty, disconnected spaces. Exploration is little more than wandering through a series of linear paths, occasionally interrupted by combat encounters that you’d quickly wish you could avoid (trust me, we’ll get to that disaster in a moment). There’s no sense of discovery, no reward for curiosity. You simply follow the path, fight whatever appears, and move on. Even the few branching paths you encounter are usually dead ends, sometimes holding a chest that gives you an item you’ll probably forget you have.

But the most damning part of Bygone Dreams: Prophecy’s gameplay loop is its brutal disregard for player progress. Dying in a Dream respawns you in the last save state, which in itself is fine—standard for many games. But here, dying also means you lose all progress within that Chapter. Any puzzles you solved? Reset. Any enemies you defeated? They’re back. But the items you collected? Gone forever. It’s a cruel, punishing system where failure doesn’t just mean starting over—it means starting over empty-handed.

And it doesn’t stop there. Even if you leave a Chapter intentionally—maybe to regroup, restock, or just take a break—returning means facing the exact same situation. Puzzles reset, enemies respawn, but any loot you’ve collected remains gone. It’s a system so hostile that it borders on absurdity. Imagine spending 20 minutes carefully navigating a Chapter, solving puzzles, collecting items, and making your way to the boss. Then you die. Now you get to do it all over again, but this time without the benefit of any consumables you picked up. In a game about exploring a dreamworld, the only thing that feels like a nightmare is your own wasted time.

And we haven’t even touched on the worst part yet—the combat. The very thing that should have been the heartbeat of the game is instead a broken, frustrating mess that only serves to drag the entire experience down.

A Battle Against the Game Itself

But all of the Homestead’s confusing systems and the endless reset of progress would be tolerable—maybe even forgivable—if the game’s combat offered any kind of redemption. It doesn’t. Instead, combat in Bygone Dreams: Prophecy is the cruel joke at the heart of this dream, truly a test of patience and frustration disguised as a challenge.

It all starts innocently enough. You’re armed with your standard light and heavy attacks, a dodge roll meant to save you from danger, and a variety of magical abilities you can unlock. In theory, it’s a familiar setup—a straightforward action combat system where timing, positioning, and skill should be the keys to victory. But the moment you step into your first real battle, the illusion shatters.

Take the first boss fight, for instance—a towering, mushroom creature with sweeping area attacks. This particular enemy doesn’t really move, so it’s hard to tell when you’ll get hit by one of their attacks. But, the game does give you a tool to avoid these attacks: faint, ghostly markers on the ground meant to show where the strikes will land. The problem with these markers is that they are so washed out, so faint against the environment, that you practically need to squint at the ground to see them. In the middle of a tense fight, where you should be focusing on the enemy, you’re instead staring at the floor, desperately trying to catch the faint shimmer of danger.

But just as you think you’ve adjusted to this bizarre system, the game decides to switch things up. Another boss awaits, and this time, there are no markers at all. Instead, you’re meant to rely on the boss’s movement tells—those subtle animations that should warn you of incoming attacks. But here, those tells are as inconsistent as the game’s design. One moment, a slight twitch means a devastating lunge; the next, a wide, dramatic wind-up leads to nothing. It’s like trying to read the mood of a cat—unpredictable, and often, you’re the one who ends up getting scratched.

And the problems don’t end there. Dodging becomes a cruel game of chance. At first, I thought I had figured it out: wait for the projectile, dodge, close the gap, attack. But then I noticed that dodging wasn’t working the way it should. The projectiles seemed to follow me, slightly adjusting to my position. Sometimes, dodging would take me straight into the attack’s path because the boss aimed at where I was going, not where I was. It stopped being a fight and became a game of second-guessing my own movements. It’s as if the game is laughing at you—punishing you for daring to use its own mechanics. Sure, I could have dodged a fraction of a second later, but when the same problem happens again and again, even with perfect timing, the blame stops being mine.

But the real betrayal comes in the form of the game’s combo locking. You press the attack button, and your character launches into a stylish series of strikes—a light flurry or a heavy, powerful blow. But once you’re committed, you’re trapped. You can’t dodge, you can’t cancel, you can’t even reposition. So if an enemy decides to launch an attack while you’re mid-combo, you’re stuck there, a sitting duck waiting to be punished. It’s a cruel joke, your greatest weapon, your only means of fighting back, is also your greatest weakness.

Closing the Book on a Broken Dream… For Now

As I step back from the swirling mists of Bygone Dreams: Prophecy, I’m left with a strange, bittersweet feeling. Here is a game that is undeniably beautiful—a world of surreal landscapes, dreamlike architecture, and great atmospheres that manage to feel ethereal. Every world you explore, every Chapter you cross, is a piece of a grand, fragmented dream, each with its own theme, music, and artistry. For a moment, it’s enchanting. For a moment, you can believe you’re wandering through a lost dream, a place where magic and mystery lurk around every corner.

But then the moment shatters. Because for all its visual splendor, Bygone Dreams: Prophecy is a game whose beauty is only skin-deep. Beneath the gorgeous scenery and the surreal imagery lies a mess of conflicting systems, clunky mechanics, and crushingly frustrating design choices. The narrative, which should have been the emotional anchor of this dreamworld, is instead a confusing, directionless sequence of tasks—important characters with little introduction, vague objectives with no clear purpose, and a story that seems to float aimlessly rather than guide you.

Combat, which should have been the beating heart of the adventure, is instead a broken, punishing exercise in patience. Attack markers you can barely see, inconsistent attack tells, a dodging mechanic that seems to punish you, and combo locking that turns your own moves into a death sentence. What should be an exciting clash of skill and reflex is instead a maddening test of endurance.

And the game’s progression system, with its cruel disregard for player progress, is the final nail in the coffin. Losing everything you’ve gained in a Chapter upon death, puzzles resetting, enemies respawning, but loot staying gone—it’s a system that seems designed to punish curiosity and exploration. It’s a game that asks you to push forward but slams you backward for every misstep.

As it stands, this prologue chapter feels like a rough draft—a glimpse of a dream that hasn’t found its form yet. Would I recommend it? Not in its current state. For those who are drawn to the aesthetics, who love to wander surreal landscapes, there might be something here to enjoy. But for anyone looking for a balanced, engaging gameplay experience, or a story worth getting lost in, I can only suggest waiting—waiting for the main release to see if the developers can turn this dream into something more than a beautiful nightmare.

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Bygone Dreams: Prophecy Product Information

Title	BYGONE DREAMS: PROPHECY
Release Date	May 6, 2025
Developer	Prime Time
Publisher	Prime Time, GrabTheGames
Supported Platforms	PC
Genre	Action, Adventure
Number of Players	1
ESRB Rating	N/A
Official Website	Bygone Dreams Official Website

Allisandra Reyes

I find joy in the adrenaline rush of horror games, but my thrill-seeking doesn't stop there. Beyond the digital realm, I like to take on the role of designated GM in TTRPGs.