To be honest, I can't remember how long it has been since I encountered a mobile puzzle game that made me sit down and play it quietly. "Dream Twins" is a little unexpected surprise. I'm not bragging, it gives me the same feeling as those well-designed Java mini-games I played on Symbian back in the day, pure and solid, without so many fancy business routines. 😌
The gameplay of the game is classic platform jumping and puzzle solving, and the core mechanism is the switching between the inner and outer worlds. You control the girl Retna to do certain actions in one world, which will affect the environment of the other world. This kind of interactive design between two worlds is actually not new, but this game makes the "switching" action very smooth, and the layers of puzzles are solid enough. In the later stages, many levels really require you to stop and draw two strokes on a scratch paper to figure it out. This kind of satisfaction in thinking is precisely what many so-called "puzzle games" on the market today cannot provide. Those games often just let you click and watch advertisements.
Talking about the game itself, I still want to talk about the industry development trends I have observed. I used to often see people saying that mobile games are gradually turning into fast food culture. In fact, this is quite helpless. But in the past two years, it is obvious that some teams are beginning to appear on the market that are willing to compete in core gameplay. For example, they are making some independent game concepts that are not so heavy, using pixel style presentation, focusing on narrative atmosphere, and starting to make some works similar to the temperament of console games. "Twins in Fantasy" is a very representative product of this trend. It uses a relatively lightweight body to carry a warm plot, and also makes puzzle-solving logic that does not shrink, which is very admirable.
Let's talk about the developer again, Shenzhen Yunbu Interactive Entertainment. To be honest, I didn't know much about this company before, but to be able to produce such a work, it can be seen that they have a love for the game itself behind them. The fact that it is free to download is quite surprising. You must know that this set of level design and art rendering is in the hands of many publishers, and they have to establish a buyout system or in-app purchase threshold. Such a pricing strategy at least shows that this team wants to build word-of-mouth first and is not thinking about short-term harvest.
The design of the memory fragments in the game also touches people of my age. Who doesn't have a few words of regret in their youth that they want to make up for? Pixel style may be just a sentiment in the eyes of many people, but in fact, the teams that use pixels today are people who really want to achieve this expression to the extreme. The characters are delicately drawn and the emotions are very gripping. I actually felt a little sore when I finished the game. I may be old, haha. 👴
I'm not going to brag about it, but if you are even remotely interested in puzzle games, or want to know how serious mobile game developers can be these days, I highly recommend you give “Dream Twins” a try. This is not to say that it is perfect, the tutorial guidance is a bit bland, and some people may find the later difficulty curve to be steep, but these small flaws do not prevent it from becoming one of the most recommended works on my mobile phone since 2024.
Finally, I hope that more production teams like this will appear in the future. On the road of mobile games, players will vote with their feet if they dare to go slower and deeper. If you have played it or are currently playing it, you are welcome to come here and chat about your experience. Whether it is complaints about the puzzles or feelings about the ending, I would like to hear it. 🤝