LSD: Dream Emulator

About LSD: Dream Emulator

LSD: Dream Emulator is an exploration game that has been described as a "playable dream" in which the player explores surrealistic environments without any overarching goals. Gameplay takes place in a first-person perspective in a 3D environment with the player's control limited to moving frontward and backward, turning, strafing, running, and looking behind. The game is played in levels or "dreams" lasting up to ten minutes. The player begins each dream in a random area where they can begin exploring. By walking into any object or walking through certain tunnels, the player will be transported to another setting. LSD has several static and defined environments to explore including a Japanese village, a field, a city, houses, and a factory, among others. While the environments are static, the default textures are sometimes swapped and they may also be populated with random objects, animals, and characters roaming about to add variety. Each dream ends after ten minutes in which the character wakes up, or ends early if the player interacts with certain objects or dies.

After each dream, one day passes in the game, and the dream the player just experienced is marked on a graph. The graph rates dreams in relation to being an "Upper", "Downer", "Static", or "Dynamic" dream. As a player plays through more and more dreams, the game adds more variety to the dreams by changing textures more often. This results in the environments becoming more surreal and psychedelic over time. Sometimes when starting a new dream, a video is played or a short poem is shown instead of a playable dream. After a number of in-game days, a "flashback" option appears on the main menu which allows the player to experience an abbreviated version of the last dream they played. There is a humanoid figure, also known as the Gray or Shadow Man, which may appear in some dreams that, if touched by the player, prevents them from using the flashback option and undoes any progress made in the current dream.