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Tachyon Dreams Anthology review: ’80s-inspired space questing that channels Sierra’s heydayAlmost like the adventures of Roger Wilco, but not quite

Almost like the adventures of Roger Wilco, but not quite

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Cosmic Void

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Cosmic Void

A screenshot from Tachyon Dreams Anthology showing Dodger standing in a forest in front of a large statue of a woman in a yoga pose.

Here’s Dodger’s pad. The salary for a space dishwasher must be pretty high. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Cosmic Void

Dodger stands in a colourful bedroom in Tachyon Dreams Anthology. There’s a large window overlooking a cloud-covered cityspace behind him.

Expect to come across a wide variety of nicely-illustrated AGI-style environments, from space craters to beaches overlooking alien vistas. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Cosmic Void

Dodger stands by a giant crater on a moon-like surface in Tachyon Dreams Anthology. A crystal, a pizza box, and the glittering cosmos can be seen around him.

A screenshot from Tachyon Dreams Anthology, showing Dodger standing atop a twisted blue platform in space bordered by two pillars.

Dodger and another character stand by a bench overlooking an ocean full of twisty rock formations in Tachyon Dreams Anthology.

Dodger stands before a structure in Tachyon Dreams Anthology that looks vaguely like an Asian pagoda.

Visuals aside, this is a parser game where you control Dodger with the arrow keys and type in commands to get him to do stuff. It takes a certain type of adventure gamer to appreciate this control scheme, but as someone who spent countless hours as a kid trying to figure out which Sierra games recognised what dirty words, I dig it. “Pick up berries.” “Use computer.” “Take off pants.” (The last one doesn’t work.) Tachyon Dreams Anthology recognises a fair number of verbs, though on some occasions you’ll run into an infernal puzzle that requires a very specific combination of commands. But getting stuck is par the course for a Sierra-inspired adventure game, and on the one occasion when I couldn’t figure out how to progress, Cosmic Void was kind enough to answer my query via Twitter/X.

There are two minigames which break up the exploration and verb-typing. One of them’s a mandatory “move the coloured thingies around until they match” exercise, which I could have done without, because I hate it when an adventure game forces you to sit down and solve a Rubik’s Cube before progressing. At least there’s nothing as annoying as Space Quest III’s mandatory Astro Chicken game to contend with here, thank goodness.

Tachyon Dreams Anthology offers you two time-wasting minigames. Move the balls and break the blocks. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Cosmic Void

One of the minigames in Tachyon Dreams Anthology - a puzzle that asks the players to move multicoloured gems into the right order.

One of the minigames in Tachyon Dreams Anthology - a Breakout-style ball-bouncing game.

There’s also no deaths or dead ends in Tachyon Dreams Anthology, which is a page taken from the LucasArts playbook rather than the Sierra one. I’m of two minds when it comes to no deaths in adventure games - I appreciate the lack of danger, but back when I was playing the Space Quests, a perverse part of my soul delighted in seeing Roger Wilco perish in all manner of hilarious ways. I kinda wanted Dodger to suffer ridiculous demises as well, especially when progressing through that aforementioned end-of-game stretch that involves a trip to the loo.

Aside from lacking goofy deaths, Tachyon Dreams Anthology also lacks a truly cohesive story, which I hinted at before. The game’s original episodes -Tachyon Dreams I: The Radiant Fish of the Apocalypse,Tachyon Dreams II: The Bloated Can of Space Root Beer, andTachyon Dreams III: The Rancid Buttermilk- have been bundled with a smattering of extra screens, puzzles, and text descriptions that attempt to string them together. But the resulting product feels disjointed, like you’re clearly hopping from what was intended to be a standalone bite-sized game to another standalone bite-sized game that misremembered the plot of the first. The snappy computer that Dodger speaks with in Part I sadly disappears in Part II, for instance, and a sudden deep dive into Dodger’s history with his ex in Part III comes out of nowhere. It was probably easier to excuse these holes when the episodes were released separately on Itch, but when melded together, the framework feels flimsy.

Tachyon Dreams Anthology does offer up giggles when it wants to, though a good portion of the humour is of the potty variety. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Cosmic Void

A screenshot from the opening of Tachyon Dreams Anthology. The text reads: “You’re in the main control room of the Penrose Interstellar Space Station. PISS, for short."

Some potty humour in Tachyon Dreams Anthology as Dodger goes to the toilet. The text reads: “In the nick of time, you stick your rear over the seat and let things run their course."

Humour is at least interspersed among the flimsy, although it’s not as funny as it initially lets on. Tachyon Dreams Anthology can be very amusing, straddling the line between toilet humor and referring to Canada as a mysterious foreign country that makes arthouse films, but large portions of the game are actually quite somber. In fact, much of Tachyon Dreams has a lonely, introspective feel, with Dodger exploring mostly-empty locales and reflecting on the nature of being a solo person stuck in the void of space, following the faded footsteps of long-departed aliens. The Space Quests also had their surprisingly serious moments, especially inSpace Quest IV: The Time Rippers, my personal favourite which saw Roger Wilco travelling through past, present, and future. ButSpace Quest IVstill offered levity through colourful item descriptions and kooky narration courtesy of the late, great Gary Owens. Tachyon Dreams Anthology doesn’t have this, which isn’t a bad thing, but results in a game that is far more philosophical and quieter than its promotional materials - which promise a rollicking ’80s-style comedy - would suggest.

Aside from Dodger, there are only a handful of other characters you can interact with. It’s a lonely space quest! |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Cosmic Void

Dodger climbs down a rope in Tachyon Dreams Anthology into a deep cave. A figure is bent over a crystal ball and there’s a glinting machine in the background.