Gameshow Dream Diary
By Tired Twilso
As someone who spends most of their waking hours thinking about gameshows, it would make sense that I spend my sleeping hours dreaming about them. And I do. Fairly regularly, in fact. Sometimes snippets, sometimes full episodes, sometimes they mix and muddle, sometimes I dream about gameshows that don't exist. So I decided to make a record of them, so they're not lost to memory.
09/02/2025 – Introducing Golden Rings, a space-fantasy gameshow set on a planet surrounded by the titular golden rings. The show reminded me a lot of Legends of the Hidden Temple – it had a big, continuous indoor-outdoor set that was structured similarly, and it balanced the same line of acknowledging it was a gameshow but insisting the setting was real.
Some of the set design reminded me of the more technicolour jungle from the earlier series of Jungle Run, the more sci-fi parts were similar to Planet Susan from Incredible Games, and some aspects seemed reminiscent of the little entertainment centre Crystal Mazes that only seem to exist abandoned in urban exploration videos. All of that, added to a strong fantasy aesthetic. Essentially, it was very obviously a set, but in a quaint, retro way that added character.
The host was Arkil, as in the winner of Raven: The Dragon’s Eye, but as an adult. Same bunches and blue tunic and everything though. I have been rewatching R:TDE recently, so that probably explains it. She held court over the proceedings from a raised square platform, that looked a little bit like wooden scaffolding.
I remember only a little of the gameplay. The contestants had to solve riddles to figure out the correct actions to progress through the fantasy-alien citadel. It was known for being super hard, but it turned out it was only hard because the riddles were really, really bad.
I also think the contestants encountered some of the residents of the planet, but I have even less details of them. They weren’t hostile to the players, but they weren’t exactly nice either.
I remember really enjoying the gameshow in the dream and wanting to watch more episodes when I woke up (not realising, of course, that the fact it was a dream meant the gameshow didn’t exist). At least a record of it now exists somewhere.
Undated Dream Fragments
- The Scary Crystal Maze - The Crystal Maze but there are zone specific monsters trying to kill you: robot knights in Futuristic, drowned zombies in old-timey diver's helmets in Ocean, etc. All the zones were much more run down, and spookily lit. The Ocean Zone set was partially flooded. There were hide-and-seek mechanics, if you messed up certain challenges in the Futuristic zone the whole team would have to go and complete a challenge to stop the engines exploding which would eat into actual play time, there was hanged man imagery. Honestly really enjoyed the dream, it's sort of been the catalyst of my current tendancy to want to make gamshows scarier.
- Scary Last Commanders - A rebooted and reformatted Last Commanders made much scarier by a drastic change. No more Freedom Fighters, instead the Commanders are in the missions in person (The two-fold barrier to tension the Freedom Fighters caused is one of my few issues with the series). Really fun, but it was the same show in name only.
- Itopia Series 3 but Bad - A dream from within the gap between series 2-3, where series 3 was released and it was really boring. There was also a coresponding dream where series 3 was released and it was really good though. (I actually like the real Itopia series 3 by the way)
- Trapped! in Reverse - Trapped!, except you play from the bottom to the top. I wasn't chosen as saboteur once, my opponents were Star Wars characters and The Whinging Werewolf showed up in two challenges, neither of which were Extraction.