Alundra

The game's protagonist is a young man named Alundra, who learns that he has the power to enter people's dreams. The narrative becomes gradually darker and more twisted as the game progresses, dealing with mature themes such as death, clinical depression, fate, religion, and the essence of human existence. The gameplay involves extensive exploration of the island and various dungeons, with an emphasis on challenging puzzle solving, real-time action combat, and platforming, as well as interaction with non-player characters in the village of Inoa. The main gameplay innovation is a dream walking mechanic, where Alundra can enter people's dreams, with each of the dream levels having its own unique twist based upon the dreamer's personality and traits. Upon release, Alundra earned critical acclaim as well as some initial commercial success. It was praised for its well-written story and characterization, smooth game mechanics and platforming, challenging gameplay and puzzles, and expansive overworld exploration.

• Developer — Matrix Software • Director — Yasuhiro Ohori • Producer — Takahiro Kaneko Hideaki Kikukawa Akira Sato • Designer — Yasunaga Oyama • Writer — Ichiro Tezuka • Composer — Kōhei Tanaka • Platforms — PlayStation • Genre — Action-adventure • Modes — Single-player • Title — Alundra

The gameplay style is top-down action-adventure, with a heavy emphasis on puzzle solving. A range of terrain and surfaces affect the player character, from sand, which causes the player character to move more slowly, to lava, which damages the player character. Upgrades throughout the game can help the player overcome many of these obstacles, encouraging exploration.

Alundra, the silent protagonist and player character, is an elf from the clan of Elna, the Dreamwalkers. He set out for a place called Inoa because of a recurring dream in which a mysterious figure who calls Alundra "Releaser" tells him that he must save the villagers from the evil of Melzas. The ship carrying Alundra is caught in a storm and is broken in half, leaving most of the crew dead and Alundra drifting unconscious. Alundra is next seen washed ashore to an unknown beach, where a man named Jess finds and rescues him. Jess carries Alundra to his house at the village of Inoa and lets him sleep in his guest room. In the village, Alundra discovers he is a Dreamwalker, which means he has an ability to enter other peoples' dreams, and helps the villagers get rid of the nightmares that have been possessing them. Since Alundra's arrival, bad things begin to happen in the village, with various villagers being murdered in their dreams, which leaves them dead outside of their dreams as well. Some of the villagers eventually start blaming Alundra for what is happening. Another dreamwalker, Meia, from the clan Elna arrives to the city and helps Alundra fight off the nightmares of the villagers. Later in the game, it is revealed that the demon, Melzas, has disguised himself as a god, and he is the source of all the nightmares of the village. His goal is to make the villagers pray for their god, and thus make Melzas himself gain power from their prayers. Ronan, the priest of the village, was also on the side of Melzas and helped him to deceive the villagers, and keep them praying for Melzas, the false god. Once Alundra discovers the truth, he gathers the information and items needed to access Melzas' palace to defeat the demon. After Melzas is destroyed, Alundra and Meia bid farewell to the villagers and depart together, before going their separate ways.

Alundra is considered a spiritual sequel to Climax Entertainment's Landstalker on the Sega Genesis, particularly because several members of the game's programming and design team had worked on Landstalker. Alundra producer Yasuhiro Ohori previously worked on Landstalker, while map designer Kenji Orimo previously worked on the Shining Force series. The game began development before the PlayStation launched in 1994 and took three years to complete. It originally began development as an action role-playing game. According to Ohori, the team decided there would be "no experience points" but instead "the player accumulates experience" themselves so that by "the end of the game, even someone who sucked at the outset will find they’ve gotten way better at the action." Alundras game world contains over 7,000 screens. The music for Alundra was composed by Kohei Tanaka.

The game was published by Sony in Japan, Working Designs in North America, and Psygnosis in Europe. Later, Alundra was released as a downloadable game on the PSone Classics service for the PlayStation 3.

The game was followed up by Alundra 2 in 1999. The sequel uses 3D graphics and has little in common with the original game.