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The Brief Reverie That Is Legacy of Epstein
May 28, 2025
Every now and then I'll find myself digging through some small spaces that focus on games, looking for something I've never seen before. Many years ago, I came across a Let's Play of Phucker In The Woods. It was uploaded by Saint, who is like me: a fan of all games considered bizarre or obscure. Many know Saint from his notable and very public leak of Horror Tour 3: Labyrinthe, the lost final entry into the Zeddas trilogy, against the wishes of the original sharer. Ever since seeing his playthrough, I decided to keep tabs on the developer of Phucker In The Woods, who releases his games under the banner of GZ Storm.
Years later, Phucker In The Ashes would go on to be played by OneyPlays, opening up the wider world to this man's work and significantly boosting the game's popularity. However, GZ Storm has released many other titles before and since that time. The one that really caught my attention in the past few months was Legacy of Epstein: Foul Dreamer.
Foul Dreamer is the second and latest installment in an ongoing series of Legacy of Epstein games, with the first being Bad Omen. Like most of GZ Storm's output, Foul Dreamer is tongue-in-cheek but wears its humor with a tactless, matter-of-fact tone. Set in a sandbox environment of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, you're met with the task of navigating the city to find your epic gamer buddy Lenny. It is essentially an exploration game, brimming of the type of post-ironic jokes you'd see in an old cboyardee video or in some corners of image-boards. Some of these jokes are delivered by the environment, but mostly as dry quips delivered by the player character, who is a parody of a basement-dwelling NEET often portrayed and represented in extremely online spaces.
Everything about Foul Dreamer seems almost designed to be as ridiculous as possible, creating a strange and vaguely pleasant world in which playing as a weird degenerate has no true consequence. You arrive on a bus because you had to steal money for bus fare from your grandmother, and you're dropped into a city that is obviously far too big to be the actual place it claims to be. Throughout the game, you find small amounts of money in hidden places you use to buy ordinary items, that you need in order to progress to a specific area or interact with a specific NPC or so on. Upon finding a single dollar, your character will comment as though he's just won a small fortune for himself. Of the many billboards and fake ad posters throughout the city, which are mostly jokes, the player will comment on each and every one, adding another joke to the pile. He'll examine a sign at a porn shop that says "18+ ONLY, NO CHILDREN ALLOWED" and throw his on-brand libertarian jab "Hmm, but what if the child consents?" only to be met by a booing audience track.
Many of the NPCs present are shady, ridiculous, or straight fantasy characters of some kind. If you take down the missing girl posters around town, the nervous clerk at the auto shop will give you a key to his outside storage container, containing a skeleton of the girl and a large amount of money. The player is oblivious and comments only on the money. If you speak with the large-breasted, lingerie-clad demon girl at the church, she'll coyly tell you "You know, I think about you a lot..." to which the player yells "YES!!!!!!!"; she then vanishes into thin air and the player screams again "FUCK!!!!!!!". One that made me laugh until my stomach hurt was stealing the dollar from the busking musician's trumpet case, and in response he stops playing and will stare at you for the rest of the game.
Overall, the game is very short and will last around 2 hours or so, given that you take your time exploring all the corners of the city. The ending, which I won't spoil, leaves off on a cliffhanger, setting up the third game which has yet to be released as of writing. I really enjoyed my time with Foul Dreamer, and for $3.00, it's worth your money as a silly little daydream world you could soak up and laugh at. As always, I highly reccommend looking into GZ Storm's other titles if you haven't, and his output is quite frequent for a one-man developer. Tell him I sent you, because you know it's right. Semper Games.
about
I am a man that dwells online. I like Persian and Thai food. I collect games, make music, and am currently creating my first TF2 map.
