We've all been there. Lying in bed, anxious about waking up in time
for an important event.Finally drifting off to sleep… only to have a
tiny version of yourself emerge from your head, step into your alarm
clock and launch into outer space to complete increasingly tricky
challenges. Right?
No? Well, good thing I'm not alone, as Bart
Bonte has gone and made a game simulating this bizarre condition in
order to better educate us all. And what a game it is.
Sweet dreams are made of cheese
Merging and expanding upon some of Bonte's earlier browser-based releases, Sweet Drmzzz is a delightfully dippy game, balancing a wonderful simplistic elegance with some ingenious puzzles.
Each
short level showcases one of several gameplay types, always taking
place on a single screen, trusting the player to work out how to
progress.
Some stages take the form of a Snake variant. Here,
tapping the screen rotates a space worm 90 degrees as you try to collect
stars, with later versions adding several space worms all controlled
simultaneously.
Who am I to diss a brie
Other
stages will be familiar to fans of Bonte's earlier game sugar, sugar,
as slopes you draw on the screen redirect space dust towards small moons
occupied by, you guessed it, more space worms.
Multiple revisits
to this game type sees the introduction of upside down moons, requiring
judicious use of a switch to reverse gravity.
Later you'll
encounter coloured filters that the dust must pass through before
redirection to the corresponding space worm's humble abode.
And while those two stage types are how you'll spend most of your time with Sweet Drmzzz, there are a few others which I won't spoil here, all controlled with simple, intuitive taps and occasional swipes.
I cheddar the world and the feta cheese
Where
the game excels is in its welcoming nature. Initially working out how a
puzzle is interacted with, let alone how it is completed, is a genuine
joy.
Similarly, there's no pressure to succeed - no score system,
no star ratings, no timer - and you're afforded infinite retries, which
become essential as the space dust puzzles ramp up their challenge.
All
in all it makes for a somewhat meditative experience, punctuated by
gleeful silliness that's easy to like and even easier to recommend.
Everybody's looking for Stilton
Of course, Sweet Drmzzz won't be to everyone's taste.
If
you're the sort to bang on about replayability being essential in games
then you should know that there's little reason to return to Sweet Drmzzz after completion.
This
isn't a sprawling, state-of-the-art epic. It has no narrative component
to speak of, and its series of single-screen challenges could, at a
push, be likened to a mini-game compendium.
But unless you're
allergic to strong, simple game design, free of any unnecessary clutter,
and all accompanied by an adaptive ongoing toe-tapping tune, you might
just find yourself as the newest fan of Bart Bonte and his minimalist
design ethos. I know I am.