I wrote about ENA: Dream BBQ. Long.

[ChromeCheese]

This will be all over the place with thoughts about a few different things. It’s not constructed with any flow, just tossed what I wanted to say on here. I don’t know everything about ENA.

Dream bbq has been something I've been waiting for along with many many others to come out. It finally did and I wanted to talk about it.

First off if you haven't played it but don't have the time to, watch someone play it. If you're thinking of getting the game, it's free on steam for all PCs.

This game is an experience. I've 100% the game, bought the supporter edition after playing the free game for an hour. I've explored the game so much that I started to try speedrunning chapter one while we wait for the next chapter.

The ENA animation series is made by Joel G.

The Dream BBQ game and the ENA animation series barely have anything to do with each other story wise but it's clear they are connected in some ways. When you play the game you can see the areas for Auction day and Extinction Party in the game! Those might just be for the purpose of being an Easter eggs but it could be something more.

So ENA: Dream BBQ has been in the making for four years with one year being added for delays. It's no surprise a game with this much creativity needed extra time, passion and love to be made. The music is something you could listen to for hours. My personal favorite being Graveyard by Oliver Buckland and Purge by METAROOM. Both of those artists have had their music used in the ENA animations.

The art style in the game varies but nothing is out of place. The 2d sprites in the overworld are always animated in a way that draws your eye. The 3d models are always fun to watch to see how they move around. There's a few characters that stand out above the rest like The Saleswoman in the maze and Genie but everyone who plays the games will have a favorite. I won't go spoiling where to find anyone.

You’re ENA. Not just ENA but from what information we have from the series, you’re one of many ENA. The ENA you are playing as is white and red with the personality of a salesman(red side) and short tempered(white side). You are looking for ‘The Boss’. Someone no one has seen yet but everyone knows. Froggy, a friend of the player, tells you what to do.

The gameplay is walking, running, crouching, jumping and interacting with entities(I think that's what everyone calls each other from what I can read in game.) It's simple but you can jump on almost anything to parkour above things. I even found a few places to surf off of during speedruns to cut down my time.

When you first open the game, you will hear a man ask you to fix your ears and eyes. It's just adjusting the brightness and volume to your liking but it's a neat way of introducing to players how creative this game can get.



After the player adjusts things to their liking, you see a pair of white and red arms rip through the darkness to a world with red skies and black houses. You can walk around this world, get a feel for the controls and watch as a huge person swims across the red sky, not giving the player any mind. After a while, lanterns start to appear on the houses, then a blue bed shows up. Interacting with that bed takes you to the main hub of the game. An island surrounded by red water and legs in the water.


The game opens up here. Different characters, all speaking different languages but everyone understands each other. Almost everyone seems to know the player (a white and red ENA) but no one explains how or why. The sky is full of fireworks with one lone huge eye looking down on the world.

After talking with a few people, you're told to use the Lonely Door.



At this point, I’m not going to go into detail about what you do in the game, I’m hoping to encourage you to play or watch the game to see the game for yourself. There’s two routes you can take in the game but both come to the same ending. You reach where you need to go, getting what you need to get done, and you’re back at the hub.

Four years for amazing art, music, the voice acting, a world to explore for hidden details and more was worth it. Every new playthrough something is different! Even today I’m finding glitches to show friends.

There's a lot about this game that words being typed down can't convey. There's a lot many game developers can learn from everything surrounding this game. Triple A studios have the budget for sure but they don't give the time to their teams to do things as creative as Dream BBQ. A lot of big game developers are forced to do time crunches along with low pay too. Joel G made sure that the ENA team could rest during the making of Dream BBQ. Burn out can ruin anyone. With the prices of games going up and a lot of that money not going to the people who game the damn AAA games, it is discouraging when you want to make games for a career so people try to make their own games! Freedom to get as creative as you like with your own game right?

Even with creativity, it's getting worrying. Dream BBQ came out when generative AI games started to pop up online, even Steam!. If you need AI to make your game, it's never going to be worth playing. For one, asking an AI to make art for you is awful due to how much energy it wastes and it steals from a real artist's work but to use it to make a game? What about the coding? What if a bug pops up that gives the player a memory leak? What if you can't figure out how to fix that bug? What if the AI doesn't know how to fix that bug? Learn to code. Learn to make models. Learn the process of making a game. It's worth it.

Dream BBQ gives people like me hope that no matter how much time it takes, it's worth making with your own hands. It might take years but like so many long living games, it's worth the wait.

Even if it's a browser game, like another one of my favorite free games, Corru.Observer, it's worth it!


In the game, it's dream-like logic. Everything you do isn't connected by much but it makes sense of why they all. The bed is a door? Sleep on it to go through. Got a spare body? Plant it. Some walls don't go all the way up? See what's up with that.

I've heard the "what were they on" "they took some good stuff to come up with this" jokes but its

Just not funny or true. It's just creative minds making something fun for the sake of art.There is a story in the game from what I can see but I want to play the other chapters before I say what I think the story is. I might just be pulling ♥♥♥♥ out my ass in the end!

So why did I want to share my thoughts about Dream BBQ? Because I’m in love with the game. It’s something I never knew I wanted. There’s definitely more I would love to write about but I’m going insane thinking about the game. So I have to stop here. Play the game!

[cachorro motorista]

I'm so obsessed with this game too, its so nice to see people appreciating the story and the love they put into every detail of the game, and not just summarising it to a acid trip or whatever lol