The Smurfs – Dreams (Xbox Series) Review

That bizarrely balding baddie Gargamel is up to his tricks as usual. Still trying to capture the Smurfs and squeeze all the magic he can out of them, he concocts a new plan to poison their food supply with a sleeping agent. When the Smurfs gorge out during a feast, only Papa Smurf – and you – are left awake to save them. To do this, you must ingest a magical smurfcoction of your own, smurf into the dreams of your fellow Smurfs, and wake them up before Gargamel finds the village with the use of a magical Dreamcatcher.

Of course, saving your friends isn’t going to be a smurf in the park. You’re going to have to jump into worlds inspired by their personalities and help them overcome their insecurities and nightmares to wake them up before Gargamel pinpoints the village. You’ll do this in the tried and tested format of themed platforming-focused worlds. From a sumptuous pastry filled world to a thriving jungle paradise, The Smurfs – Dreams is packed with classic 3D platforming goodness.

The most obvious (and recent) inspiration for The Smurfs – Dreams are the Super Mario 3D World and Super Mario 3D Land series. From the bite sized approach to level design to the distant camera perspective, developer Ocellus Studio has taken inspiration from the best in the genre to craft its own charming little platformer.

The Smurfs – Dreams is heavily geared towards a younger audience, preferably those who are fans of the little blue heroes. There’s just enough of a difficulty curve to make sure that there’s a challenge to overcome, but it rarely gets tough enough to frustrate.

For seasoned platformer veterans, The Smurfs – Dreams will be far too easy, but it more than makes up for that by being (mostly) a joy to play and it includes a two-player couch co-op mode that’s increasingly rare these days. So, if you’re feeling lonely while bouncing your way to freedom, you can bring someone along for the ride. And, for those with younger gamers in the household, you can drop in to help them out on their journey.

Gameplay is as traditional as it gets, though the developers inject some variety with a few novel mechanics for each dream world. While there isn’t a classic double-jump, you can hover in the air to cover extra distance or pop a bubble around yourself to both drift a little further while floating in the air for a short time. Most enemies can be jumped onto to defeat them but, occasionally, you’ll need to use environmental items to take out those that are spiky.

Unique gear is provided in specific stages, such as a goo gun that gunks up enemies and gears, or a hammer to smash crates and enemies or lets you stack crates to get to higher areas. Taken as a whole, the Smurfs move set is rather limited, but the stages are designed to cater to that – but it’s worth pointing out that bashing enemies always takes a backseat to the platforming, which is chock full of moving and disappearing platforms, and rotating gears or cylinders.

There are two entertaining freefalling sections: one in which you have to avoid debris on the way down, while the other sees you smurfing into Tetris inspired shapes, rotating as you try to pass through the correct holes. By far the most inventive and pleasurable stage design was found in the Vanity Smurf stages, in which you make use of mirrors and reflections to platform around, along with a lantern that makes platforms appear and disappear.

Most stages demonstrate inspired use of the limited mechanics, but less successful and more annoying was a stealth section. Your Smurf moves ridiculously slow, whereas the NPC awareness meters fill up in a flash. It was the one area in the game that did manage to test my patience.

Not every Smurf is represented equally though. Vanity Smurf and Smurfette, for instance, have larger dreams to wade through than other familiar Smurfs, such as Brainy. Each dream is broken up into chapters, with each chapter’s dream world broken down into smaller zones to work through. There’s no loading between these zones, just a quick rail-grind, but it still makes each section feel like a self-contained slice you can tackle at your own pace.

To encourage light exploration, there are some collectibles to be picked up in the form of berries and sewing kits, which are used to buy new outfits to look your smurfing best in. The only collectible you have to hunt for are blue mushrooms that you need specific amounts of them to open up new levels.

Visually, The Smurfs – Dreams is absolutely gorgeous, featuring some wonderful material work and stage design that looks both epic and slightly mystical. From the pastry filled world of Chef Smurf, to Smurfette’s island paradise and Vanity Smurfs heaven-like towers, it’s a beautiful game all the way through. Even the frustrating stealth sections showcase some gorgeous nighttime visuals and lighting. As a kid friendly game, enemy designs aren’t frightening, but are filled with character, just like the Smurfs themselves – even though the only word anyone says throughout is “Hey!”. The games visuals do a fantastic job of bringing the world to platforming life and the soundtrack is catchy too.

While the game is relatively short by modern expectations, some of the chapters manage to run on for far too long, even when tackled in bite-sized chunks. This would usually not be an issue, but game only auto-saves at the end of a chapter, which can hamper the quick pick-up-and-play feel they seem to be going for. If you have to take a break for whatever reason – and can’t suspend the console – you’re going to have to replay an entire chapter if you clock out before the end. I would have preferred if the game saved between zones, which would make more sense given the approach to level design.

To wrap up, The Smurfs – Dreams will hardly be a challenge to seasoned gamers, but the perfectly tailored jumps and timed sequences are a perfect fit for the younger generation. Instead of going for brutal complexity, the developers have crafted a game that is both fun to play and gorgeous to look at, regardless of your age or knowledge of our little blue friends.

The Smurfs – Dreams was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One, PS4/5, and Nintendo Switch.