Initially release about six years ago, Alice Dreams Tournament is a Bomberman homage for the Dreamcast from developers Julien Desquenne and Nicolas Pochet. It has just been re-released by indie publisher Wave Game Studios and the new print can be ordered from the website now.
Alice Dreams Tournament is a spin-off game to the main Alice series and has its root in an end-of-level minigame that was turned into a full game called Dynamite Dreams released in 2008. The game centres around dropping bombs to take out your enemies on a grid of squares. But there are also extra gameplay modes such as capture the flag and other multiplayer staples.
If you don’t have four other humans to play with, the CPU provides enough challenge and there are plenty of modes to get through. The most fun is the High Score challenge that continues endlessly until you lose all your lives. There are also different tournaments to finish, each with its own difficulty.
As well as the obvious bombs, Alice Drea, Tournament has several power-ups that give extra damage, speed or multi-bombs. It controls well and the frantic gameplay is fun, especially when considering the number of different games to be played.
There is great variety in the settings each game area has from schools to villages and big tops to ancient ruins. There is also a large number of different avatars to unlock and you can choose different outfits for most of them.
The graphics are decent in places but don’t the Dreamcast, the music is great though and has some catchy tunes throughout. While it may be best played as a multiplayer game with your friends on a Friday night, Alice Dreams Tournament is still fun with one player and has enough modes to last quite a while.
