“You do not get over grief. You can only learn to walk alongside it.”

There are quite a few video games that cover the topic of grief. Games like GRIS (a personal favorite), What Remains of Edith Finch, and Spiritfarer present this complex feeling beautifully in many instances. Real talk – I teared up at the end of GRIS. In late November 2025, Strayflux, in conjunction with publisher Soft Source, provided another entry into this video game theme. A puzzle-platformer called As I Began to Dream.

As I Began to Dream dropped to both PC and Nintendo Switch on November 20th. Full transparency, this is a title that I had been looking forward to since I tried a demo version of the game at PAX East 2025. It was unique, endearing, and just the right balance of somber and cozy. So when we received the launch date announcement back in early November 2025, I was even more excited.

Gamer Social Club was granted an early access copy of As I Began to Dream from Soft Source just prior to the launch date announcement. Seriously – the folks over at Soft Source are awesome – both myself, as well as fellow writers/editors Stephanie “Candyxbomb” Richards and Harry Glynn Jones (Harry, where is the darn link to your vignette) have had the chance to meet some of their team in person.

Disclaimer: As I Began to Dream, as I mentioned above, covers the topics of grief and loss. Take the breaks that you need if you play this game, and practice your self-care.

The World and Story

The World

As I Began to Dream takes place in what can be described as a dream/metaphorical world created by our protagonist, Lily. Lily journeys through five separate regions in this setting, which if you can guess, represent the five stages of grief. Each of these “levels” within the game have their own nuances and mirror those “stages” of grief:

• Denial – The environment here is warm and calm – like nothing is actually wrong. But is there something lurking underneath?
• Anger – A desert that has been ravaged by rageful sandstorms, set under a vast red sky.
• Bargaining – A complex and impersonal region set in what can only be described as a corporate hellscape.
• Depression – Dark, somber, and frightening.
• Acceptance – The long journey has brought Lily to this golden (and hopeful) land.

Scattered throughout the levels, Lily will encounter memories of her life, along with representations of events in her life, and what may have led to where Lily currently finds herself.

The Story

As I noted, As I Began to Dream follows Lily, a young girl who is trying to find out what happened to her parents. Yeah – you can guess where this is going. Early in the game, Lily encounters Flippy – a spectral turtle companion who accompanies Lily on her journey. While Flippy doesn’t actually do anything, he is there to help guide Lily along (as well as serving as comic relief at points).

In each region of Lily’s dream, she must resolve a certain dilemma to progress further along. Don’t worry – by simply following the paths laid before you, each of these dilemmas gets resolved in a fairly linear manner.

While I’m certain that you can take a few guesses as to where Lily’s story goes, I do want to leave that to the reader to discover. But rest assured – you will follow Lily’s progress through those stages to a bittersweet resolution.

The Gameplay

The main gameplay concept of As I Began to Dream is environmental manipulation. Lily, through her…powers (they never actually really explain where they come from) is able to access “nodes” that can rotate and move components of the environment.

Like any puzzle-platformer, the start is easy and the difficulty gradually ramps up. Additionally, each of the regions have their own unique “assets” that must be factored into solving the puzzles. Things like bouncy mushrooms, enemies that can carry puzzle keys, pressure plates that access other platforms, lasers, portals, and so much more. Each provides their own unique spin on puzzle resolving.

And that pretty much summarizes the actual gameplay itself – which I do think is a point in the game’s favor. If anything, I think bogging down the gameplay with more mechanics would have actually detracted from the story being told.

The Good

Visual Aesthetics & Sound Design

One of the first things that caught my eye about As I Began to Dream was the style of the game itself. While it’s simple in nature, it’s…something that just drew me in. What grabbed me even more, though, was the different styles that were used in the cutscenes versus the actual gameplay itself.

It’s cozy, while at the same time being almost haunting and surreal. It’s a vibe, that’s one thing for sure.

The other facet that worked well with the visual designs was the scoring of the game. I have really come to appreciate games that take on a more minimal approach when it comes to sound design. I don’t need every single moment to have music. Sometimes, Lily’s echoing footsteps were the only thing in my ears – and it truly worked in setting the mood.

The Story

Apparently I’m the reviewer at Gamer Social Club now that takes on games that just opt to rip your heart out and sprinkle some salt on the wound for good measure. While it can be emotionally draining, to put it simply, there is a lot of beauty and depth in these stories about the darker sides of the human condition. Transparency – my other job is in the world of mental health. And while grief is definitely more…complex…than you can guess, the game itself does present the journey in a digestible form. More games are doing this – the concentration of some of those deeper emotions and feelings into the world of video games. And I love that this is something that is more prevalent in the gaming sphere now.

Puzzle Mechanics

The puzzles definitely were a pleasant brain scratch for me. And while I’ll be transparent in saying that I definitely got stuck a few times, there were many instances in which the solution was much more simple than I realized. I find this to be something that truly sets this apart – puzzles that, while appearing difficult, sometimes had a very basic “answer”.

The Bad

Enemy Glitches

While this wasn’t a constant hiccup that occurred throughout As I Began to Dream, there were quite a few instances where in the process of manipulating the environment, enemies would just get…stuck. Sometimes to the benefit of me solving the puzzle. Sometimes to my detriment and having to reset the puzzle. There was one specific scenario that occurred in Chapter 3 (Bargaining) where for some odd reason, manipulating the environment also wildly slung an enemy into a different area of the map – in many instances slamming right into Lily. Contact with monsters in a no-no in this game (obviously). And while I did eventually pass this puzzle, it was not through my actual solving it – it was by exploiting this unusual glitch.

This next nitpicking segment does contain some story spoilers – skip over if you want to stay in the dark!

Precision Platforming Sections

Toward the latter end of the game, Lily encounters the shadow version of herself, who she must “save”. And thus ensues what was probably one of the most frustrating segments of As I Began to Dream. I’m all for having a game that has precision platforming as a part of the gameplay. HOWEVER. I feel like you need to introduce somewhat more gently into the game, as opposed to ramping it up to 100 right away.

This segment of the game. I cannot count the number of times I died. The added frustration was being yanked back to much earlier checkpoints (a usual aspect of a precision platformer). And the icing on the cake – what was essentially a boss fight. Something that had not been presented prior in the game. It was a tonal shift that, while I understand from a story perspective, limited my enjoyment of the story itself.

Could you argue that I’m not “gamer” enough? Sure! But that being said though, I don’t expect a puzzle-platformer to abruptly shift to a precision platformer, and to such a degree that it did.

The Overall

Overall, I found As I Began to Dream a well-grounded and enjoyable entry into the puzzle-platformer genre, despite some of the gameplay shifts and handful of technical hiccups. The story the game presents, while tragic and heart-breaking, provides hope that there is a brighter corner around the murky beast that is grief. Strayflux provided a wonderful portrayal of such a complex emotion that is grief in the unique medium that is video gaming.

Gamer Social Club was provided an early-access code for the purposes of this review by Soft Source. This review was played on PC (Steam).