Bad Dream: Fever

About Bad Dream: Fever

Bad Dream: Fever was made and published by Desert Fox, the studio behind Bad Dream: Coma, and released on Steam for Windows and Mac on 15 November 2018. A Nintendo Switch version followed on 14 March 2019, published by Forever Entertainment. It is free to play on Steam and sold on GOG and the Nintendo eShop.

The world is covered in strange ink, and an unknown plague has gathered its cruel harvest. The city seems completely empty and dead, but in every corner there are manifestations of fear, sorrow, frustration, loneliness and suffering. Its last living resident, a girl in a plague doctor's mask, ropes you into looking for a cure. The store asks you to act with caution, to expect an enemy where you least expect one, and to try to save at least one person, warning that sometimes full effort is still not enough.

You play in first person by clicking through still scenes and travelling between places on a map: an abandoned public restroom scrawled with 'not ready yet', shuttered shop fronts, a back alley, a park, a school, a construction site and a cluttered toy shop. You pick up items and use them from the inventory, and solve riddles the makers say need an unconventional approach: Rely on Horror mentions gathering the parts of a potato-powered clock, hunting the city for hidden coins, word association and memory games. The ink is not only scenery: it spreads to cover more of the city as you go and closes off places you could visit before.

The art is sepia pen and ink, with dark blue ink dripping from rooftops and seeping out of the dead. Colour is used sparingly, mostly to mark violence and suffering, and the music often falls away to silence. Fever is more structured than Coma, with a real map and more detailed places, though Adventure Gamers notes it turns into a meta head trip before the end. You do not need to have played Coma first; a few of its places and faces return.

It suits patient players who like slow, sad, surreal point-and-click horror and obtuse puzzles, in the line of Fran Bow or Rusty Lake, rather than chases or jump scares. Expect to get stuck: reviewers say some puzzles are hard to pass without help.

How to play Bad Dream: Fever

1. Install it free from Steam, or buy it on GOG or the Nintendo eShop.
2. Click on objects and exits in each scene to examine them, and use the map to travel between places in the city.
3. Pick up items, then use them from the inventory bar on the world to solve the riddles in your way.
4. Watch how each location changes as the ink spreads, and come back to places when something new appears.

Tips

• When stuck, revisit earlier scenes; the ink changes them and new things become usable.
• Keep an eye out for odd items while exploring: some puzzles only need you to remember where you saw something.
• Some puzzles need a loose connection or an unusual idea rather than a hidden item, so think about what an object stands for, not only what it does.
• Read the scrawled messages on the walls; they are part of the clues and the mood.
• If a puzzle has stopped you for a long time, the Steam discussions are where other players compare notes; reviewers say some puzzles are very hard to pass alone.

Questions