If you have ever played shadow puppets or been able to create shapes out of wallpaper patterns or inkblot designs, Projected Dreams will be a great game for you. This is a creative, nostalgic, and varied puzzle game that is all about using toys and objects from the 1990s to create silhouettes on the wall, projecting images from memories lost in your photo albums.
The cosy nature of Projected Dreams is found in its storytelling and setting. Across six chapters, you’ll visit rooms from a sedentary position, with a circular spotlight projecting on the wall in front of you. Each room is creatively arranged to be dreamlike and surreal, but also grounded in reality. You might be underwater or in space, but you’ll still have cupboards, boxes, and wardrobes to open and collect objects from to solve the puzzle in your current room. Add in smooth, atmospheric visuals, and a sentimental and wonderous soundtrack that sounds magical and emotional, and you are set up for what will be an engrossing and thoughtful journey that spans decades of life.
For each puzzle, you’ll be presented with a photo that’s blurred out, and a smudged outline of something important. That smudged outline is projected onto the wall, and it is up to you to select the right objects and place them correctly to match the outline. Whether it’s by mouse or a controller, you’ll be forced to rotate or roll each object around at set degree angles. This is intentional as it narrows down the scope of what a correct answer can be, but takes a bit of getting used to when you can rotate objects both vertically and horizontally. At the start of the game, you’ll need to pick the right objects from 10-12 scattered around the room, and then stack them or line them to match the shape. With each room, more pieces are added, so the choices and shapes become trickier to line up.
By the end of chapter one, you’ll have got the hang of things. If you haven’t, you can flip the photo for each level, and it will reveal all the objects needed to get 3 stars for that level, and the arrangement of those items too. I love the way the hint system is optional and somewhat progressive in its disclosure of information, meaning the player can take what they want. Even better would be to ask the player if they want to reveal only the objects, and not the arrangement, or vice versa. That then keeps the player in control and makes solving something more satisfying. That said, Projected Dreams has a low bar to progression, requiring only a single star solution to progress, vaguely covering the main outline.
Projected Dreams’ main gameplay strength comes from its variation. Each chapter introduces a standalone mechanic that exists for that chapter alone. It might be that there are two light sources, so you need to build two objects and merge them together. The ghost train allows you to turn objects invisible and place other objects on top so that they levitate in the shadows. Another area lets you glue objects together to create unusual angles. The space station lets you enlarge or shrink objects, giving you a new world of possibilities. You’ll have 6-8 puzzles in each chapter to solve, then we move on to a new time period in the character’s life, and a new gameplay mechanic to wrestle with. This keeps the game simpler to understand, as it doesn’t stack mechanics. If there’s a sequel in the works, it could go hardcore by mixing and matching elements together.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time solving Projected Dreams. It was never overwhelming, nor gave me any time pressures to run to. Instead, it gave me a world to feel invested in. My only minor critique is that many puzzles involve the same couple of box objects, which then makes solving the rest of the puzzle around them easier. If you are after a gentler, engrossing puzzle that is full of wholesome vibes, Projected Dreams is a recommendation from me.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Projected Dreams is out on PC.
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