Like Dreamer

HISTORY

Like Dreamer (ライクドリーマー) is a shmup by Outside Sotonohito released on July 21 2021 for PC/STEAM and later released for Nintendo Switch in March 30 2023 by the publisher Waku Waku Games. It is highly inspired in Touhou and CAVE games.

The game uses free royalty music from Dova Syndrome.

For replay videos, visit the Video Index.

Gameplay Overview

The player has the main shot and the focus shot, and bombs as well. Killing enemies will drop stars or hearts (depending on the item design chosen), which fill up the Mental Level gauge. Mental Level is basically the bomb stock (3 slots) and can also be used for auto-shield (depending on the Ability type chosen). Attacking and grazing bullets will increase the follower count.

When the player has a full Fever gauge, the player can press the bomb button to activate Fever. Fever consists as a Hyper system that increases shot power and when attacking enemies, stars/hearts will appear. When Fever wears off, bullets will be turned into stars/hearts

Control types

Consumer:

Has 4 buttons. To move slowly, the player has to hold down the Slow button

Arcade

Has 3 buttons. To move slowly, the player has to hold down the Shot button.

Scoring

Your total score is referred to as "Likes", and your current item value is referred to as "Follower".

Killing enemies will give item value depending on the proximity, as well as the "follower drop count" of a specific enemy. If an enemy has a follower drop count of 5, such as the very first enemies in Stage 1; and you kill the enemy pointblank: you will be awarded 50 item value (5 * 10).

Every enemy (and boss patterns) will drop score items when killed. The score item that drop depend on the enemy itself, but usually small enemies drop small score items, medium drop medium, and vice versa. Small score items are worth Item Value * 1; Mediums are Item Value * 5, and Large is Item Value * 10.

Using a bomb will cancel all bullets which the bomb itself touches. All bullets will cancel into a small score item, while also giving 1 item value to the player.

Using a hyper will cancel all bullets on screen, with the same function as a bomb (+1 item value per bullet & score item). During a hyper, score items dropped from enemies will be doubled, score items will spawn while shooting enemies; with a higher drop rate up close. When an enemy is killed with bullets around its' proximity, the bullets will cancel, giving 1 IV per bullet and a score item. When the hyper runs out, the screen will cancel in the same way as it did when you activated the hyper.

Certain enemies will cancel all bullets onscreen into score items.

Shooting bosses will give item value depending on your proximity to the boss, at a random drop rate.

Killing a bosses' phase will cancel all bullets onscreen into score items.

Grazing increases item value by 1 per bullet.

Suicide bullets spawned from Counter Mode will also award 1 IV per attempted bullet spawn, if a hyper is active, you also are given the small hearts that would have been dropped as well.

NMNB'ing a boss phase will give more score items than just NB'ing it, which gives more than scraping by.

Modes and difficulties

-Game Start: The standard game mode in which stages are freely selectable.

-Trial: An arcade styled mode which offers different courses:

Tour: A 5 stage course. 2nd stage offers stage 2 and 3, 3rd stage offers stages 4 and 5, and 4th stage offers stages 6 and 7.

All tour: A course in which all stages are played in order.

Boss rush: A mode where the player faces only the bosses in order.

Speedrun: A special mode where the player attempts to clear all stages within the fastest time possible. Killing enemy groups will speed up the scroll speed of a stage.

Extra: A special Extra Stage where the player fights Hinako Tenmabashi.

-Difficulties:

Casual

Maniac

Expert

Nightmare

Chaos

Characters and weapon styles

The player has 3 characters, Vanilla Alice, Yuricocoa and Ujako.

The 3 girls have different weapon sets each.

Vanilla Alice:

-Shot A (Wide form): Options aim in a wide direction.

-Shot B (Homing form): Options fire star shots that will chase down enemies.

-Missile/Focus A (Lock-on form): Options aim against any enemy and fire at it.

-Missile/Focus B (Focus form): Options aim forwardly.

-Bomb A (Carrot blaster): Releases a group of carrots that release napalm explosions.

-Bomb B (Vivid grenade): Releases a powerful explosion that covers the screen.

Yuricocoa:

-Shot A (Front form): Options aim in a frontal direction.

-Shot B (Slide form): Options move left and right responding to player`s movement.

-Missile/Focus A (Focus form): Options aim forwardly.

-Missile/Focus B (Homing form): Options fire star cat paw shots that will chase down enemies.

-Bomb A (Stinging words): Fires a stream of needles that contain insults

-Bomb B (Dark rampage): Temporarily enchances the shot power of Yuri.

Ujako:

-Shot A (Slide form): Options move left and right responding to player`s movement.

-Shot B (Frontal form): Options aim in a frontal direction.

-Missile/Focus A (Fix form): If using the slide form shot, the aiming of the options will freeze. If using the frontal form options, the attack width will tighten.

-Missile/Focus B (Standby form): Positions the options to stay in a place determined.

-Bomb A (Flaming hack): Releases a series of explosions arount the screen.

-Bomb B (Cheat Barrier): Generates a force field that protects Ujako, damages enemies and exterminates bullets.

Styles (Applies to all 3 characters):

-Style A (Shield+): When getting hit, a Mental Level star gets consumed by one for auto-shield activation.

-Style B (Shot+): Enhances the power of the main shot. However, it will consume all Mental Level stars when getting hit for auto-shield.

-Style C (Missile+): Enhances the power of the focus shot. However, it will consume all Mental Level stars when getting hit for auto-shield.

-Style D (Double+): Enhances the power of both main shot and focus shot. However, auto-shield cannot be used.

Items

Gadgets display

By beating once a trial course, the player will unlock gadgets that help displaying the i-frames left, graze count, stage frame, bullet count, distance proximity, being shot count and control input display.

Stage 9 / True last stage requierement

In Trial mode, in order to get to Stage 9 (the true last stage) and the TLB (Absolute winner Melona), the player must beat Stage 8 with the least amount of misses (being hit). If done succesfully, the player won`t fight the FLB and go to Stage 9. If the requirement is not met, the player will face the FLB.

Stage 9 consists of fighting enemies from previous stages and reborn version of previous bosses (known as Hack Boss units), in which they only have 1 phase and 1 attack set.

On Chaos difficuty, the TLB will be alternated into a harder version of Absolute winner Melona known as True absolute winner Melona, which has different patterns compared to the original absolute winner Melona.

Beating Stage 9 in Trial mode results in an ALL+ clear.

However, in Speedrun course, the true last stage and the TLB do no appear despite if the player has a low "being hit" count, so the FLB always shows up.

List of Hack Boss units:

Alpha (Nene-chan`s giant teddy)

Beta (Madoka`s flying cake)

Gamma (Ririka`s copter)

Delta (Mizuki`s jellyfish)

Epsilon (Eko`s flying castle)

Zeta (Mu`s mecha Sun)

About FLB and TLB

Both FLB and TLB have bomber-proof shields.

Story

The game`s story takes place on a danmaku social network known as Bulletolk, in which many users compete to get likes. The user with the most likes and followers is called the "queen" and is very popular. Melona is known as the queen of Bulletolk, having lots of likes and followers

However, 3 girls called Alice, Yuri and Ujako are jealous of Melona being the queen. So they decide to post insulting words and fake accusations.

When Melona notices this, she makes Alice, Yuri and Ujako her major targets and commands the other users to go after them.

Alice, Yuri and Ujako are set to go after the queen and claim their title.

Trivia

Alice`s Carrot Blaster bomb is a refernce to Ketsui`s napalm bomb.

The Stage 2 Boss Madoka previously appeared in Nightmare Trip.

The Stage 4 Boss Mizuki previously appeared in Nightmare Trip.

The Stage 6 Boss Dreaming Mu originates from Cosmo Dreamer.

Alice`s lock-on form weapon is a reference to Ketsui`s Lock-on shot.

Ujako`s Cheat Barrier bomb is a reference to the D.F.S. from Karous and the ABS Net from Radirgy.

The Alice, Yuri and Ujako fakes in Stage 8 are a refence to the Tiger Schwert and Panzer Jagger fakes from Ketsui.

True absolute winner Melona (the Chaos difficulty TLB) is mostly a tribute and reference to Inbachi from SaiDaiOuJou.

The giant Hinako Tenmabashi has pins that feature characters from Redneg as cameos. The characters are Suisei, Yozuki, Merika, Rose, Nitro, Eris, Kaiun, Uranus, Pluto, Ikazuchimaru, Bell, Yumaki, Kotori, Neptune, Fia, Suminoe, Felice, Wadatsumi, Sanderia, Sirius, Hajime, Boo.

The Extra Stage Boss summons two bosses that imitate patterns from DoDonPachi. The frog boss imitates Raikou, while the giant fox boss imitates Rankou.