Dreams off the planet It gives you everything you need to succeed, if you really want it. Help is just a push of a button away at (almost) any time. So it feels uniquely accessible for what it is: an “invisible puzzle platformer” designed to trip you up again and again until you've learned enough from your mistakes to move on. Depending on how you approach it, Dreams off the planet It's either a nightmarish cycle of trial and error or a relatively uneventful platforming adventure. Or something between the two. I died 274 times in my first playthrough, if that's any indication of how challenging it can be.
Dreams off the planet presents you (playing as a dough) with a grate and some floating doors, and says, essentially, “okay, now find the exit.” There are platforms that form a path to each door, but all platforms are invisible. This is where the game's “difficulty is what you make of it” ethos comes into play. You can commit to jumping into the abyss every time and hope to land on a platform, memorizing every misstep so you know what not to do next time. if you die, or you can choose one of the three available tools for guidance. “Peek” will give you a quick look at nearby platforms, “Paint” will highlight any platforms you've stepped on, and “Show” will reveal all the platforms in that room.
Being stubborn, he was determined to go as far as he could without any help. But I was humiliated not far away when I found myself trapped in level 2-5, a level with multiple sublevels that will repeatedly return you to the beginning if you go through the wrong doors. Here, I finally gave in and enabled “Show” just to give my brain some room to figure out what the puzzle was without having to worry about remembering platforms. (When I finally figured it out, it wasn't even that complicated. Sigh). After that point, I wavered between going it alone and using the “Paint” option as a little treat.
The game throws you a curve ball midway through when it introduces a new mechanic that requires cranking, which I found really clever once I got over the initial frustration of not knowing what the hell was going on. And later, Dreams off the planet It undergoes a stylistic change that transforms it into something completely different from what it was at the beginning. The developers wrote in the description that Dreams off the planet is “more than a grid of dots,” and they weren't kidding. I had a lot of fun with that. You can get it now in the Playdate catalog for $6.
