Dream Quest on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Play cards! Kill monsters! Level Up! Dream Quest is a roguelike deckbuilding game inspired by the likes of Ascension, Magic: the Gathering, and Shandalar. Explore randomly generated levels as one of 13 classes in short, 30 minute, sessions.
Dream Quest is a roguelike deckbuilder, rogue-like and deckbuilding game
developed and published by Peter Whalen.
Released on December 08th 2016 is available in English on Windows and MacOS.
It has received 310 reviews of which 277 were positive and 33 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.2 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 9.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Dream Quest into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows XP SP2+
- Processor: 1.3 GHz
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- DirectX: Version 9.0
- Storage: 200 MB available space
MacOS
- OS: OSX 10.8+
- Processor: 1.3 GHz
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Storage: 200 MB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Disclaimer: I have put hundreds of hours into this game on IOS at the time of reviewing. Dream Quest is a game I've been singing the praises of for nearly a decade at this point. I recall stumbling into it around 2016, long before Slay the Spire ever existed. It's a strange game on the face of it, and was especially so back in the days before the "Deckbuilder Roguelike" was a popular concept. You must remember, this game predated (and directly inspired!) Slay the Spire. This is for all intents and purposes, Ground Zero for the hordes of Deckbuilding Rougelikes that infest the shelves of steam. Hell, I originally bought Slay the Spire because I saw it and went "oh, it's like Dream Quest!" And Slay the Spire is an excellent, genre defining title in it's own right. For most games, a game like Slay the Spire would effectively render all that came before it obsolete. And yet, I keep coming back to Dream Quest. Over, and over, and over again. So, why is that? I think it's rather simple; it's just that good. It's also very unique within the genre, at least as far as it handles many of the mechanics that have become it's staples. The common critique of the modern rougelike deckbuilder is that if you've played one, you've played them all. Dream Quest sidesteps this... by having been made before any of these conventions are established. It is a game stuffed with ideas, dreams of a genre that could one day exist. And those dreams come with a lot of different mechanics that have never really been replicated in their entirety since. Let's start with the obvious. The presentation. It's MS Paint art for cards done by a literal child, with all of the dungeon assets done by a middle schooler. Yes, the developers kids did all the art, and it shows. This game's graphics will always look bad by any conventional standard, but outside of that I actually find the presentation really solid. Outside of that, The UI is fairly well arranged (though clearly designed for mobile, it's original platform), and the process of playing cards is mostly snappy. I do wish I could disable the equipment trigger animation though. Which the game does do in certain situations, so I have no idea why it isn't an option. The poor art also does make it fairly easy to identify cards at a glance, and with larger hands, the names of cards are put in the top left where they can be picked out among the visual clutter. When it comes down to the gameplay mechanics, Dream Quest is a game that understands that complexity comes from simple mechanics interacting in nuanced ways. The game has only a few card types. Attacks, Actions, Spells, Mana, Equipment, and a few Reactions and Prayers for good measure. Of the cards I listed, only two of them require an actual resource, with Actions costing... Actions, and Spells requiring mana. Mana and Actions are fairly self explanatory. Mana is a resource you build with cards that persists between turns, and Actions act as Slay the Spire energy, regenerating up to a limit each turn. Whether you will actually be engaging with these resource systems depends heavily on your class, which is where the complexity comes in. There are four starting classes: Warrior, Thief, Priest, and Wizard, i.e. the basic D&D classes. While they technically share cards, the cards they find are heavily biased towards a specific pool of cards, with only minor overlap between each pool. Warriors and Thieves focus on Attacks and Actions, with warriors getting more singular high-impact cards, while Thieves focus on chaining actions that refund their play and draw cost before going for a big finisher, using equipment to supplement their defenses. The Priest and Wizard focus on spells and the mana cards required to play them. Priest spells are defensive and healing focused in nature, while wizard spells are heavily offensive, utilizing four primary elements with their own drawbacks and benefits. Priests also get a few Prayer cards, which reward their defensive play style with payoffs that get bigger the longer it takes to reach them. Each class also comes with their own set of two active abilities that are earned upon level up, which further emphasize their playstyles. They also have one ability they start with that only works on the world map, which is typically used to make the process of pathing more interesting. I'll get to that later. After you play with these basic classes, you'll eventually unlock the advanced classes. Each one takes two of the base classes, and combines their card pool along with a few new abilities to make something wholly unique. The Necromancer combines the divine and arcane spell pools to make an entirely mana focused character. The Samurai fuses the warrior's powerful attacks with the wizards focus on mana-based burst damage with a unique active ability that converts all of your MP into one giant burst of unblockable damage. Seriously, the class design in this game is genius; despite sharing card pools, they all play incredibly differently. That is a hard feat to pull off, and is honestly a bit more interesting to me than just giving every class their own entirely unique card pool. Pathing is also a lot more interesting than most games in the genre. You don't path from encounter to encounter, but explore a dungeon map to try and find as much information as you can, and then choose which monsters you fight in whatever order you can wring out. This is incredibly important for survival, as leveling up fully restores your HP in addition to make you stronger. Most of the classes have some sort of overworld movement ability to elaborate on this, such as smashing walls or moving enemies out of the way. This combined with the incredibly potent combat abilities that recharge after a certain number of fights makes dream quest a game of risk taking. You try to figure out which encounters are dangerous and need abilities, then take those out while weaving in weaker monsters you can steamroll in order to recharge your health and abilities for the next tough fight, culminating in a boss. This is helped extremely by the monster design; each monster usually has a few specific gimmicks it can do and not much else, so judging what you can handle is generally not too difficult once you have a handle on things. It's a very strong gameplay loop, and one who's pacing is very unique to the genre. With that said, it does come with some problems. As the genre has evolved, it's generally tended towards a more skill based, highly synergistic approach. Slay the Spire is known for it's top players having incredibly high win rates on the highest difficulty. The same is not true for Dream Quest. This is mostly because of the amount of hard counters in this game; many of the monsters counter certain deck types and playstyles about as hard as Time Eater counters a shiv deck in spire. It can be frustrating, and there are definetly times when a game just feels straight out impossible, especially with some of the more arcane boss gimmicks. But hey, that's the fun of Rougelikes. A run of Dream Quest is fairly short, 30 minutes at most. If you fail once, just jump right back in and see what the game gives you. It'll probably be something you haven't quite seen before. There's other flaws as well; there's some cards that just kind of suck, and a few cards that are outright broken on both the enemy and player side. I also find the Lord of the Dream (the game's Heart equivalent) to be a rather unfun fight because of just how overwhelmingly powerful he is. It's clearly taking inspiration from the final boss of the old MTG: Shandalar PC game where it's more about how much damage you can deal before dying rather than an actual fight you're supposed to win. You need very specific strategies to do this. But outside of that? It's a damn fine game, and one that still brings it's own unique ideas to the table. If you like this genre but are bored of it's conventions, give this game a shot.
Expand the review
Dream Quest is one of those rare games whose modest exterior hides a surprisingly intricate and influential design. At first glance, the game looks almost shockingly simple — stick-figure characters, bare-bones environments, and a user interface that appears lifted straight from an early mobile prototype. Yet beneath that unassuming surface lies a roguelike deckbuilder that helped shape an entire subgenre, offering a level of mechanical depth and replayability that belies its presentation. It is a game that asks you to ignore its crude visuals and instead sink your attention into its systems, its unpredictability, and the strategic creativity it demands from the player. At the center of Dream Quest is a robust merging of dungeon crawling and card-based combat. Each run begins with a class selection, and each class dramatically alters your starting deck, your long-term strategy, and the types of synergies you will pursue. Once you enter the procedurally generated dungeon, every floor becomes a series of decisions — which enemies to engage, which shops to visit, whether to risk taking on a tough enemy for rare rewards, or when to retreat and regroup. This decision-making forms the backbone of the experience. Nothing is guaranteed, and the randomness of card offerings, enemy placement, and special events ensures that no two runs unfold the same way. Success requires adapting quickly, building a deck that fits the opportunities you’re given, and learning to anticipate which battles your current build can handle. Combat itself is a tightly constructed puzzle. You draw hands of cards representing attacks, defenses, spells, dodges, and utility abilities, all governed by stamina or mana costs. Many cards interact with one another in surprising ways, rewarding players who experiment with combinations rather than sticking rigidly to basic tactics. As you progress, you constantly tweak your deck — replacing weaker cards, adding specialized abilities, and removing harmful or redundant options. Over several runs, you begin to understand each class’s personality: the Warrior’s brute force and armor stacking, the Wizard’s powerful but fragile spell chains, the Thief’s emphasis on tempo and advantage, and the Priest’s delicate balance of defense and sustain. This character-driven deckbuilding gives every run a distinct flavor. One of Dream Quest’s most impressive qualities is how much design foresight it exhibits. Long before games like Slay the Spire and Monster Train popularized the roguelike deckbuilder formula, Dream Quest had already laid out many of the core principles: multiple classes with unique mechanics, hundreds of cards, evolving builds, unpredictable events, and a clear emphasis on risk-reward tension. Each layer ties into the others — the dungeon design influences deck decisions, the deck influences which fights you attempt, and progression across runs unlocks new cards and classes that expand your strategic options. In retrospect, it becomes obvious how foundational Dream Quest was in demonstrating what this hybrid genre could become. But for all its brilliance, Dream Quest is not without its caveats. The visuals are so stripped down that they can be off-putting to players expecting a polished experience. The crude art becomes part of its charm over time, but there is no denying that it forms a barrier to entry. Likewise, the same unpredictability that makes each run exciting can also lead to frustration — unlucky card draws or lopsided enemy encounters can end a promising run abruptly. Because death sends you back to the start, those unlucky moments can sting, especially during longer sessions. The PC version, ported from mobile, also retains some interface quirks that feel dated compared to modern UI standards. Yet even with these limitations, Dream Quest endures because its core is so strong. The game rewards experimentation, persistence, and strategic creativity in a way few titles manage. When you finally assemble a deck that clicks — when every card supports every other card and the build feels like an elegant machine — the sense of satisfaction is enormous. When you finally defeat a particularly brutal boss or clear a high-level floor after several failed attempts, the victory feels earned in a way only roguelikes can deliver. In many ways, Dream Quest feels like a blueprint: unvarnished, raw, but deeply insightful. It shows how much depth a developer can achieve when they strip away everything but the essentials of good design. For players willing to look past the surface and embrace a game that prioritizes mechanical excellence over aesthetics, Dream Quest offers a challenging, rewarding, and historically important experience. It may not be pretty, but it remains one of the most engaging and creatively ambitious deckbuilding roguelikes ever made. Rating: 8/10
Expand the review
You probably know this if you're on this game's store page but this game is the grandfather of all modern deckbuilder roguelikes. Richard Garfield himself thought this game was revolutionary when it came out, lol. Is it imbalanced as hell? yes. Is it a pain to grind? yes. Does that really matter? No. It's a really important but overlooked part of gaming history that is still really fun to mess around with.
Expand the review
I've played THIS version only 10 hours but I've played other versions (eg: iOS) for hundreds of hours. It's easy to judge this book by it's cover. The art is often literally stick figures but what is easy to overlook unless you give it a chance, is the amazing and solid gameplay. There's a challenging and steady amount of items to unlock that keep you coming back, a great variety of characters and one of the best card game designs for a rogue-like dungeon diver like this. Just wait until you get to the professor and can start stealing abilities from enemies and building killer decks. I've been a hardcore magic player (commander in particular) so here me when I say, this gameplay is amazing. Really worth checking out. I just wish I could sync progress from PC to Tablet, etc.
Expand the review
I played this game years ago, and now I purchase it on Steam to support the developer. A true masterpiece—no further explanation needed.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Dream Quest is currently priced at 9.99€ on Steam.
Dream Quest is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 9.99€ on Steam.
Dream Quest received 277 positive votes out of a total of 310 achieving a rating of 8.24.
😎
Dream Quest was developed and published by Peter Whalen.
Dream Quest is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Dream Quest is playable and fully supported on MacOS.
Dream Quest is not playable on Linux.
Dream Quest is a single-player game.
Dream Quest does not currently offer any DLC.
Dream Quest does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Dream Quest does not support Steam Remote Play.
Dream Quest is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Dream Quest.
Data sources
The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.
Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 22 January 2026 07:11 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 24 January 2026 21:47 |
| Steam price | 29 January 2026 04:42 |
| Steam reviews | 27 January 2026 19:50 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Dream Quest, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Dream Quest
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Dream Quest concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Dream Quest compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
2
Developer
Peter Whalen
Publisher
Peter Whalen
Release
08 Dec 2016
Platforms