Dark Horror Platformer Dream Alone Will Spook Its Way Onto Switch Soon

They put out a Switch specific trailer this morning but the one above reveals far more.

Dream Alone - Coming soon to Nintendo Switch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITtQpRw_mRM

The mythical Lady Death? Well, that could certainly stir up some copyright issues...

@ThanosReXXX They can’t mess with your woman like that! Unleash litigation!

This looks terrible... And not in a good way.

@Kid_Sickarus Haha, no, that's not what I meant. It's not Marvel's Death, who IS portrayed as a lady, but she's not Lady Death with two capitals. There's only one of her and she looks a lot better than Marvel's Death.

Google is your friend...

Doesn't look great. If I want to scratch this particular itch, I'll just play Inside.

@RazumikhinPG to be honest I love horror and clicked this article immediately but I feel the same...
It’s taken things from fran bow, limbo, inside and created something that looks really dull, first impression it lacks immersion, but who knows maybe too early to tell?
Not looking very convincing though 😕

On a side note they are finally advertising layers of fear for the switch! Now just waiting on Hollow

I mainly played on a handheld when it came to Nintendo platforms in gen 8. That means that I had almost zero to play in terms of horror games on the 3DS.

I mean there was Resident Evil Revelations (not scary except for the Maydaaaaay! part) & Dementium Remastered (it was OK but a bit too old school to be scary). And I think that was it on the 3DS.

Hopefully we get more quality horror games on Switch.

Story seems chillin and the game mechanic is interesting but until I see more gameplay I'm not impress atm.

It doesn't look much different from other indie 2D platformers so I will have to see how the reviews turn out.

Another so frustratingly hard it's hopefully good platformer. Pass.

This game doesn't look bad but its not something that looks fantastic either.I feel that the character's design doesn't fit the game's tone along with the buzz saw traps which are typical of light hearted platformers like Mario but maybe the gameplay is good so I won't try to write it off this early.

Another Limbo rip-off!

2 Euro from Play Store for Mobile ok. But imo stop porting this stuff.

Seems a little too similar to Limbo. I'm looking forward to seeing some reviews though.

The trailer does not do this game any favor, I guess. The voiceover sounds like a teacher explaining you how to interpret a text. The concept sounds good enough, but there weren't many elements that caught my eye. Looks like it is lacking creativity, but could just be the trailer.

@GC-161 lmao even I backed away from that door when I heard the “maydaaaaay” part 😂
There was corpse party on the 3ds also but other then that 3ds seriously lacked good horror games.
Switch seems to be turning this around as we have already seen many horror titles release or upcoming

Looks pretty stylish and honestly spooky. I wonder why they choose to release now and not around Halloween, but I guess this way they don't have to compete with all the other spooky games that come out around October.

@ThanosReXXX I think they'll be fine. Lady and Death are two very generic words. It can be the same as being called "The Animal Name" or "Captain Adjective", although having the same name as something more famous does hurt your brand recall (and web search returns). Imagine a children's story character being named the same as a porn star, for example. A student of mine suffered that fate, unfortunately. (And she came up with the character name before the porn actress did!)

Google also revealed this, for example:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3033808/Lady-Death-female-sniper-killed-300-Nazis-Russian-Ukrainian-biopic-legendary-sharpshooter-aims-unite-former-allies-despite-ongoing-crisis-torn-apart.html

Legally, it's also more difficult to copyright the name (like apple). Much easier to copyright and protect the likeness and combination of powers of Mr. Pulido's work, though.

If this game's Lady Death is drawn differently and has different powers, I think they're in the clear.

That's why other writers typically make words up, to make them easier to copyright. A combination of words is the common technique (see Lady Stoneheart)

@Deathwalka Ah yes, I forgot about Corpse Party. And I guess the SMT games are on the creepy side too.

But man, if it wasn't for Steam, I would've missed out on a ton of horror games.

I really hope Switch gets a lot of them. I might double dip with Outlast on Switch. And especially if ALIEN ISOLATION gets released on it.

@SomeWriter13 Yeah, I was familiar with that part of the legal rules and possibilities, since as a sales & marketing professional, I sometimes also come across them when coming up with texts/slogans for campaigns and such. I also don't think that Brian Pulido & co are going to make a case of it, even if they knew about this game. (maybe I should email him, just to see what would happen... )

But: the separate words might be very generic/common and used more often, but the same two words in that exact combination, and written with a capital at the beginning of each word, is not that common or generic.

Just take Captain America, another comic. The separate words are (obviously) quite generic, but written as they are in this combination, everybody knows who or what he is, and although the name might be used as a moniker or nickname for some real life war hero, that would not be a breach of copyright, so that would be okay. But Captain America is most definitely a Marvel trademark/copyright.

And suppose that Lady Death actually WAS a Marvel property, then we perhaps WOULD have seen a copyright battle or at least a "friendly" cease and desist, with a summons to change the name.

Funny thing with copyright is, that by simply adding or slightly altering a word, you're home free. So, for example, if the entire name would be stated as "The Lady Death" then adding that single "The" would already be enough to differentiate this Lady Death from the one in the comics.

And even better would be something like "Magical Lady Death", but I suppose you'll get the point...

Having said all that, Brian Pulido's Lady Death IS the first thing you'll see splattered all over the first few pages of Google's search results if you look the name up, so that would indeed not be good if people are looking for that "other" Lady Death.

Experienced Googlers like you and I would probably know that adding "Nintendo Switch" to the search would yield the actual result we would be looking for, but the average parent/kid... ?

@ThanosReXXX glad to see someone in your profession on this site. As can be inferred from my username, I'm in the creative field myself.

You make fantastic points, particularly with the addition of "the" and "magical".

I do believe that names cannot be copywritten though, maybe trademarked yes. (This is most true for book titles with generic words. You can copyright the entire work, but not the title. So the title "A Night in Paris" cannot be copywritten, even by the author of the most popular search result.)

And here my stance gets a bit murky. Since it is a name (or title?) then it makes sense for Dream Alone to spell Lady Death with capital letters. If (hopefully) she isn't a copy or similar immitation of Mr. Pulido's work, then they can be considered two different concepts and distinct, despite sharing an (admittedly) general name.

Would be a shame if heroes with names like The Mistress of Death (and variations) or (god forbid) "Death" become famous and copywritten and we writers all can't use those terms anymore. (The latter of which is actually a Marvel character)

EDIT: I forgot to add my main point haha. You can copyright the Character, but copyrighting the name is another matter (like Thor). As Lady Death here is (hopefully) dissimilar enough to the more famous Lady Death from comics, it should be OK to use the name. The fan fallout and search difficulty is wholly different though.

@SomeWriter13 I'm curious, what is the name of the porn star/character?. For research purposes.

@SomeWriter13 Thank you, and you've made some pretty decent points yourself.

And all true, but then again: I already said that I don't think that anything is going to come from this. As for other comic characters: I do believe having read somewhere that Marvel has locked that down legally by making it a combo of name and likeness, so the names come with a description of their appearance and an appendix of everything attached to them in their own fictional world.

EDIT:
And as you may have noticed from the movies, the names are almost always mentioned as "Marvel's <name superhero>", which clearly points to them being Marvel's version, aka free interpretation of said characters, although obviously, most characters aren't based upon anything real or mythical, so these would never have such issues. But they probably handle them the same anyway, to keep things uniform and clear for all parties involved.

Obviously no one can bag a copyright on the "real" mythical God of Thunder from the Norse sagas...

@Richnj Nice try, man. Nice try...

@ThanosReXXX cheers man.
Yeah I did notice that trend with the names, too!

@Richnj haha. XD