Dreaming Treat

Dreaming Treat is a short visual novel styled as an RPG, following the peaceful summer adventures of animal girls Treat, Mochi, and Moxie. Treat begins experiencing strange dreams while Mochi tends to her garden and Moxie takes a job in a nearby witch town, leading to a heartfelt exploration of relationships and personal fears.

Dreaming Treat: When Summer Dreams Sown in Pixels Yield Complex Harvests

Introduction

Beneath the pixelated façade of Dreaming Treat lies an intimate tapestry of queer yearning, pastoral melancholy, and the quiet revolution of representation. As the fifth installment in NomnomNami’s indie Lonely Wolf Treat series—released October 19, 2018—this RPG Maker creation assembles cozy aesthetics into a Trojan horse for themes of polyamory, identity, and trauma. Its thesis? That even in a one-hour visual novel, brevity can deepen emotional resonance when tethered to a richly woven narrative universe. While dismissed by some as “minor” due to its scale, Dreaming Treat exemplifies indie gaming’s potency: minimal mechanics framing maximalist hearts.

Development History & Context

NomnomNami—a solo polymath handling art, writing, and music—crafted Dreaming Treat over nearly a year within RPG Maker MV’s constraints. Emerging in a 2018 landscape dominated by AAA spectacles, this title challenged industry norms: a micro-budget venture prioritizing queer storytelling over commercial scalability. It belonged to an ascendant wave of LGBTQ+-focused indie narratives (Butterfly Soup, Heaven Will Be Mine) yet diverged via its commitment to serialization. Players needed prior familiarity with Wandering Wolf Trick (2017) or Friendly Bunny Mochi; the game refused to dilute its lore for newcomers.

Technologically, RPG Maker’s limitations became strengths. Top-down 2D maps forced economical design—each screen meticulously constructed (a cottage garden, witch town beach) to evoke tranquility. The engine’s visual novel leanings allowed dialogue to dominate, while “exploration” segments acted as narrative punctuation rather than open-world ambition. Financially, NomnomNami leveraged itch.io’s direct-support model, bypassing publishers to retain creative autonomy—a necessity for depicting polyamory and gender fluidity without compromise.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

A Triptych of Voices
The game orbits three anthropomorphic animal girls sharing a cabin on Mount Sorbet:
– Treat: The anxious wolf protagonist, haunted by dreams of her past abandonment by mother figure Trick and pressured by ancestral expectations of monogamy.
– Mochi: A serene rabbit whose gardening rituals mask vulnerability, becoming the emotional anchor of Treat’s confessions.
– Moxie: A fox whose pragmatic job in the witch town catalyzes the plot, pushing Treat toward emotional honesty.

Dreams as Subtext Buried Alive
Treat’s “strange dreams”—a recurring mechanic—unpack layered traumas:
1. A Marriage Nightmare: Her parents demand she choose one partner, mirroring societal heteronormativity; she flees, rejecting compulsory monogamy.
2. A Lost Embrace: Re-enacting the day Trick left, reframing abandonment as self-determination.
3. Erotic Embarrassment: A communal bath dream sequences her attraction to both Mochi and Moxie, climaxing in a blush-inducing awakening.

These dreams aren’t puzzles to solve but psychological artifacts—palimpsests of Treat’s fears. Her ultimate confession to Mochi (“I want both of you”) rejects binary romance, affirming polyamory as healing. Meanwhile, subtle arcs like Dango’s (a non-binary side character confiding gender struggles) expand the game’s LGBTQ+ tapestry without tokenism.

Intertextual Echoes
Cameos from adjacent NomnomNami worlds—CiCi (Mermaid Splash!), Mell and Captain Issa (Disaster Log C)—build narrative continuity. Spinoff material bleeds into main canon: allusions to the 18+ comic Delicacy reframe Moxie and Treat’s intimacy as established history, deepening their shared tension with Mochi. The destroyed garden cliffhanger isn’t mere melodrama; it’s generational echo—Trick’s sabotage of Treat’s childhood garden, now recurring as cyclical trauma.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

Structurally, Dreaming Treat straddles genres:
– Visual Novel Dominance: Dialogue trees govern emotional outcomes; small choices (e.g., comforting Moxie post-work) build character dynamics but don’t alter the ending. Branching exists only in optional vignettes (e.g., fetching cornstarch for Gumdrop).
– RPG Maker Façade: Exploration deceives—walking cobblestone paths in quaint towns evoking Stardew Valley’s aesthetic evokes immersion without its mechanics. Interaction is diluted: examining objects garners flavor text (“Mochi’s sprouts look fragile”), not systemic impact.
– UI as Subtle Narrator: Protagonist-styled menus (Treat’s pawprint icons) and dream sequences framed as diegetic journal entries blur UI boundaries. Minimalist design avoids clutter but risks underutilization—lockers in the hot springs function purely as lore vessels.

Critically, gameplay serves narrative, not vice versa. Combat is nonexistent; progression relies on emotional beats, not XP. This prioritization alienates RPG purists but resonates with story-centric players. The 60-minute playtime underscores intentional succinctness—a testament to “small games philosophy.”

World-Building, Art & Sound

Mount Sorbet as Queer Arcadia
Framing fantastical animal societies within rural mountain settings disguises radical normalcy: a world devoid of homophobia, where witch towns boast queer unions (e.g., Angelica seeking lost girlfriends) without didacticism. This utopian acceptance becomes revolutionary mundanity—an argument for LGBTQ+ stories untethered from trauma tropes.

Pixel Poetry
NomnomNami’s anime-inflected sprites radiate warmth: Moxie’s mischievous smirk, Mochi’s garden dirt-smudged apron, Treat’s ears flattening in embarrassment. Environmental art brims with hygge—dappled sunlight on forest trails, candlelit shops selling seeds and spells. The palette favors pastels (mint greens, apricot skies), contrasting with later nightmare sequences’ cold blues.

Soundscapes of Melancholy and Comfort
Original acoustic tracks pivot gracefully between twinkling arpeggios (gardening scenes) and melancholic piano (dreams). Audio motifs reference prior games—rearranged themes from Wandering Wolf Trick tie Treat’s memories to sound. Silence proves equally potent; the post-cliffhanger garden destruction unfolds sans music, amplifying dread through stillness.

Reception & Legacy

At launch, Dreaming Treat faced obscurity—no Metacritic aggregation, zero critic reviews on MobyGames. Yet player sentiment (RAWG: 3.7/5 avg. from 29 ratings) celebrated its tenderness. Steam reviews praised it as “the cosiest angst,” while discourse centered on its polyamory normalization and Dango’s gender narrative—rare in 2018 mainstream games.

Its legacy manifests multipliciously:
1. Indie Representation Catalyst: Alongside Butterfly Soup, it validated micro-budget LGBTQ+ games as commercially viable, inspiring successors like Arcade Spirits and Monster Tribe.
2. RPG Maker Renaissance: Demonstrated the engine’s power for narrative-focused projects, revitalizing interest in visual-novel hybrids.
3. Serialized Storytelling: Proved episodic formats foster deep audience investment (evident in Patreon-backed sequels like Mochi in Frosting).
4. Modding & Expanded Canon: Fan wikis meticulously catalog cross-game lore; the Fandom wiki’s documentation of “Complete Series” edits reveals communal curation.

Commercial data remains elusive—its itch.io revenue undisclosed—but its cult status propelled NomnomNami’s career, earning collaborations and commissions.

Conclusion

Dreaming Treat is neither triumph nor trifle—it’s a quiet insurrection. Against AAA’s bombast, it wields meteorological poetry: microwave heat radiating from sunbakeds dirt, dream logic as psychological armor, the precariousness of Mochi’s razed garden symbolizing how safety is always fractioned. Its constraints (formulaic exploration, rigid endings) fade against achievements: a polyamorous confession treated not as shock tactic but earned catharsis; Dango’s quiet gender affirmation; world-building where queerness simply is. For reinventing RPG Maker as a vessel for radical tenderness—and proving that “small” games house vast interiors—Dreaming Treat secures its niche in gaming history: a hearth fire glowing in the margins.