Commander Keen: Keen Dreams

The Good
This game was meant as a follow up to "invasion of the Vorticons" (parts 1-3) which was published by Apogee. This game was published by Softdisk. However former Softdisk employees founded the company Id software who also made the first trilogy. They were, however, still obligated to create some games for Softdisk. This is one of them. It fits between part 3 and 4 and is often called the "lost episode or episode 3.5. Probably because of this reason Keen Dreams doesn't fit well in the series because it's not space and alien related. Instead, Keen walks trough a dreamworld full of monstrous vegetables. He needs to save other kids from the dream machine and defeat the potato king called Boobus Tuber. The game's graphics are not yet as good as Keen 4's but still way better than the first trilogy. However some things are nice such as keen walking in pajama's making him fit well with the game's theme and there's those poles you can climb also seen in keen 4. I found that sound effects are working well which is at least better than the first trilogy. In those games you didn't have sound card support.

The Bad
The levels are fun but a lot of them are short and very easy and you usually can skip lots of rooms if you want to reach the end of a bigger level. There should be music only in the registered version but it didn't work on my PC. And as I said the story is not bad but it just doesn't make sense if all the other games are more space and alien related. What I missed most is the pogo-stick and the gun. You now only have some silly bombs that transform your enemies in flowers for just a short time which is a bit disappointing.

The Bottom Line
A fun game but if you want the ultimate Keen experience, play part 4,5 or 6.