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Baku: The Dream Eater is a top-down platform game created by ChrisJeff Games for the Nitrome Jam under the theme "Dreams". The player controls a young dream eater named Baku who goes to a house in midnight to eat dream bubbles while trying not to get caught by any of the sleepers found there.

Controls[]

  • Left Right Up Down Arrow keys - Move
  • Z key Z key - Eat dreams
  • X key X key - Disguise self

Gameplay[]

The player needs to navigate their way around the house while avoiding obstacles. Certain objects respond to Baku's touch and may fill the "Alert" meter on the bottom of the screen. If the meter reaches its peak, a scene plays where a person wakes up and confronts Baku, forcing the player to restart. Once the player has filled their Energy meter, they can disguise Baku in order to reset the Alert meter.

Walkthrough[]

Click [show] to see this video

Ending[]

Penguin 1

This navigational box contains a spoiler. Click [show] to open the box.

When the player collects the last dream bubble, a fanfare plays as an image of a full Baku appears on the screen, with "Game Clear" displayed in colourful letters.
Bakuthedreameater-ending

Interactive objects[]

  • Dream bubbles - Baku can eat dream bubbles to fill the Energy metre on the left side of the game screen.

Hazards[]

  • Noisy objects - Noisy objects are scattered all around the house Baku is in and cause the alert bar to go up in various degrees.
  • Dogs - Like the noisy objects, the dogs can be woken up if Baku is near one of them to cause the alert bart to go up.
  • Rats - Two rats are located near and inside the kitchen and they act like noisy objects.

Glitches[]

  • If Baku gets caught and the player chooses to retry, the music stops playing. This also happens if the player completes the game and returns to the titlescreen.

Development[]

Baku Early Image

A mockup image shared by ChrisJeff Games on September 6th, 2014

Development of Baku: The Dream Eater started late on the Nitrome Jam's time limit.[3] With only having three days to make the game, the team couldn't add all the features that were originally planned.[4] The game was thought as a challenging stealthy top-down game since the beggining[5], and as the game was being developed, more features were slowly being added, like walking around increases the alert bar or the addition of more rooms to the house.[6] Baku was named by Yuya Takeda, one of the team members.[7]

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. Baku: The Dream Eater on chris-jeff.com: "Beautiful vector art (I didn’t do it, so I can say that!) by NCH."
  2. Baku: The Dream Eater on chris-jeff.com: "A lovely soundtrack (Also didn’t do this so I’m allowed) composed by Skybase."
  3. Baku: The Dream Eater's development blog: "So yeah, like I said, we started pretty late to this game jam[...]"
  4. Baku: The Dream Eater's development blog: "Feature wise, there is a tonne of stuff I wanted in here however within the three days, I really just couldn’t get them in there. "
  5. Baku: The Dream Eater's development blog: "From the start, I wanted this to be a top-down exploration game with challenging stealthy stuff thrown in there too."
  6. Baku: The Dream Eater's development blog
  7. Baku: The Dream Eater's development blog: "Yuya actually named the character Baku – I think it means spirit in Japanese and he’s Japanese so y’know. It stuck with us!"


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