Projected Dreams is a cozy, puzzle game from Flawberry Studio. Here you’ll use household objects to recreate the given shadow silhouette on the wall. Each puzzle offers a glimpse into past family relationships as the environment around you changes. Take a journey through a heartwarming story about family, friendship, and childhood wonder as you fill the pages of your scrapbook. The demo got an update for the Wholesome Games Steam Celebration with new levels, music, and updates to gameplay and visuals. There has never been a better time to give the Projected Dreams demo a try. 

Nostalgic Puzzles

In the demo, you’re unpacking pieces of childhood nostalgia and using them to create shadow puppet versions of objects from family photographs. The difficulty increased over time with the second environment using two platforms and light sources to create a larger image. It was a fun twist on the format and really demonstrated that you can solve the puzzle with any number of item combinations. Each completed puzzle unlocks another photograph giving us more looks at the family’s past.  

The puzzles we see in the demo are challenging, and some of them honestly took some time. While this is in part due to the frustrating precision that some objects need for proper placement (more on that later), I think there is a lot to be said here for the game’s difficulty. I spent over an hour in this demo, and I still hadn’t gotten 3 stars on every puzzle the demo has to offer.  

Relatable Story

This style of gameplay loop isn’t particularly new as far as 3D puzzle games go. It’s the nostalgic narrative bit that is really at the core of Projected Dreams gameplay. Yeah, you’re creating the image of a cat with a telescope and a Furby to unveil a glimpse of the past. But it’s what the image invokes in us that makes Projected Dreams special. Each completed photo invokes a similar feeling of an almost wistful nostalgia that may bring to mind similar moments from your own past. 

A feeling that extends beyond the completed photos to the interactive secrets sprinkled throughout the levels. For example, in the demo there are cassette tapes nestled in quiet corners of the level. Once collected you can play them on your little white karaoke boombox with rainbow buttons that looks like it was pulled straight from the late 90s.  

I can’t lie, as an only child there were parts of the narrative that didn’t click with me as much as it would for others. But by throwing in so many nostalgic objects, Projected Dreams bridges that gap by appealing to families of the era rather than just families of a specific demographic. 

Balancing Fails

The controls of Projected Dreams gave me a little trouble at first. I suspect this comes from a combination of control issues. For starters, the mouse speed is high. I’m a light weight, high sensitivity mouse person, but the mouse movement felt extra light. This made exact placement a little challenging at times. Especially when trying to balance a certain rocket ship on top of a specific soccer ball (if you know, you know).

When holding objects you can use WASD plus Q and E to rotate them to fit the shadow. I made the mistake of thinking this was the intended way for moving objects. However, this creates a ton of balancing issues as it can be difficult to tell exactly how well the object is going to sit from the players point of view. Instead you should be using the snap feature to snap the toy to a grid for easier rotation with minimal use of WASD. Somehow I missed this during my first play through and it added a considerable amount of time to my game play. However I still wish WASD was a little more practical. Especially when trying to find creative ways to circumvent what objects we were supposed to be using.

Final Thoughts

I give Projected Dreams a 3.5 out of 5 stars. The demo shows a game with the potential to be a favorite with fans of story rich puzzle games.

Projected Dreams is a cozy, 3D puzzle game that is a love letter to childhood in the mid to late 90s. The puzzles are as challenging as they are entertaining, despite the occasionally frustrating controls. And the little Easter eggs hidden throughout go a long way in adding to the nostalgic charm of the game. As with any pre-release demo, it’s important to remember that Projected Dreams is still in development and there will be many quality of life and UI updates before full release. Despite the problems I had with the controls I still feel like Projected Dreams offers a fun demo experience that is well worth giving a try. 

You can follow Flawberry Studios on Twitter and Itch.i.o to stay up to date on the development of Projected Dreams.