Projected Dreams Review: Stress-Free Cosy Fun

Projected Dreams is a simple but immersive puzzle game where you arrange items in a room to cast the correct shadow on the wall. Around the room are items like a teddy bear, rocket ship, a Magic 8 Ball, and rubber duck. You use the game's clever controls to manipulate each item, turning and balancing each one to fit the projected shadow. As the levels progress, you get trickier puzzles, and more ways to manipulate the objects such as turning them invisible, changing the size, and duplicating them.

There is a real sense of accomplishment when you manage to select, turn, and stack each piece correctly. Personally, I wasn't happy until I had earned the full three stars, although you could complete the level with just one star if you wanted to. The puzzles are smart and just challenging enough. I did become frustrated a few times, at myself more than at the game, but that made the eventual success all the more satisfying. Projected Dreams invites you to be creative, to not just think outside the box but to balance it on its end and stick a spyglass on top.

The story running alongside your playtime is sweet, if a little confusing, and follows the childhood of two sisters. Each level unlocks another memory, revealing an almost-wordless tale of friendship, sisterhood, growth, and bittersweet goodbyes. It wasn't always clear what was happening, however, and at one point I was left with a weird feeling that the mother died, or the parents divorced. After finishing the entire game, I am still left feeling unsure.

I am so used to games these days working through trauma, or bringing some darker and emotional element to the story that maybe I projected (haha) my own assumptions onto the story. If the developers at Flawberry Studio could let me know what happened to the mother in the story, that'd be great.

The soundtrack is lo-fi and unintrusive, and as you progress, you get to uncover some extra music tapes that you can pop into the cassette player. I absolutely love when games have these little extra collectibles, so this was fun. If you are a completionist gamer, this will be a cute bonus for you. The music is by Floris Demandt, who worked with gentle piano melodies and quietly nostalgic ambient music. The perfect soundtrack to a rainy afternoon.

All in all, Projected Dreams was an enjoyable and interesting puzzle game, with enough going for it to make you want to load up after a long day. It certainly doesn't completely reinvent the puzzle game genre, but it makes a damn good go at bringing something new and interesting to the table. For just around a tenner, it is just about the right price, especially for such a short game of around 3 hours of playtime. Any more expensive and I would have trouble recommending it to anyone other than avid cosy puzzle gamers.