Room Escape Artist

Dream Team is a remote team building experience in a point-and-click style, designed for corporate groups, and created by Amplio Games.

Format

Style of Play:

• Point-and-click

Who is it For?

This game was designed for corporate team building, but there was not enough content to justify it as a standalone game. There was definitely an effort at story and there were puzzles, but they felt like exercises strung together rather than a cohesive experience.

Required Equipment: computer with an internet connection, voice conferencing connection such as Zoom or Google Meet

Recommended Team Size: 2-4

Play Time: about 40 minutes

Price: $249 per team, geared toward corporate team building

Booking: purchase and play at your leisure

Description

Using a web-based interface, and a separate video calling platform, your team progresses through the world of Dream Team, entering a character’s dreams to… save her in some way?

This game is designed to be played in a web browser, and everyone is playing in the same instance of the game. The inventory is not shared, but the progress is. Some puzzles require interaction and information sharing.

Brett Kuehner’s Reaction

• + Early puzzles required teamwork and communication, or at least benefitted from them
• – Teamwork seemed limited or less valuable in much of the later part of the game
• – Several choices were required, but it was not clear either before or after what our choices meant
• + The game voting mechanism was more systematic than voice-only voting
• + Some variety of puzzle types, including a light logic puzzle
• – None of the puzzles was very deep or satisfying
• – Final sequence was very confusing, and it was unclear if it was possible to complete
• – Ending seemed sudden and especially unsatisfying
• – Game felt short overall, given the price and lack of live host
• ? The analysis goals are good, but the results don’t seem justified by the gameplay. They drew conclusions from what feels like insufficient data.

Theresa Piazza’s Reaction

Disappointingly incomplete. While I’ve had positive experiences with Amplio’s other games, unfortunately Dream Team is more like a Nightmare Scenario. Save your money and skip this experience. During our team’s play through, we encountered a game-breaking bug. Unable to progress at the time, we came back some time later and played through the remainder of this game, only to remark “that’s all that was left?” From the puzzles to its copy editing, the game felt underbaked.

Tammy McLeod’s Reaction

Having played previous offerings from Amplio, I came into Dream Team expecting a game-like experience followed by insightful analysis and actionable feedback, which is a structure I’ve enjoyed in the past. The concept here is strong, and the idea of using gameplay for team analysis is an appealing one.

That said, I found the user interface less intuitive than expected, and the pacing made it tricky to get fully engaged before each stage ended. The amount of game and puzzle content felt brief compared to the length and detail of the post-game report, which made the analysis feel somewhat disconnected from the experience.

On the technical side, we encountered a bug that required rescheduling our session, and some small polish issues such as typos. These didn’t prevent play entirely the second time around, but they did affect the overall impression.

With additional refinement to the game flow, clearer UI guidance, and more thorough quality assurance, I think Dream Team could fully deliver on its promising premise for its corporate customers.

Disclosure: Amplio provided the Hivemind reviewers with a complimentary play.