Diora review: The Playdate gets Monument Valley

Dior It may be the most ambitious game I’ve played on Playdate. It’s all about perspective: You can operate the handheld crank to rotate your view of bite-sized 3D landscapes, letting you peek around corners to find solutions to various puzzles. On a device with a 1-bit black and white display, the miniature worlds look miraculous, like little dioramas you can spin in your hands. But the most impressive part is the puzzles that will make you twist your brain as much as you turn your crank.

in Dior You play as a Network Technician who travels to various locations around the city, repairing machines in the wake of a freak accident. Fixing things is easy; All you have to do is access the computer at the end of each level. Getting there is the hard part.

Dior It starts out relatively simple. You can press switches to open portals or push platforms to create paths. But what makes these familiar puzzles interesting is how they do it Dior Plays with your point of view. You have to constantly move to where you are looking to find the right way forward. This can turn even seemingly simple challenges into real mind-scratchers. Each level also steadily increases in intensity. Most of them have you exploring multi-level structures where the first few floors introduce a concept before hitting you with something more complex.

It reminds us Monument Valley or Fezthough Dior It differs in some key ways. First, the architecture is (mostly) not full of MC Escher-inspired impossibilities, but instead buildings and structures rooted in reality. And while Monument Valley It’s an almost serene experience, Dior can get it truly difficult. I’ve found myself stuck on more than one occasion, as many of the solutions involve making decisions in a very precise order. There’s no hint system to help you, which can be frustrating, however Dior At least it has a checkpoint system which means you won’t be replaying large chunks of the game after making a mistake.

This game is also a good sign that just a few years after its release, developers are already pushing the boundaries of what Playdate can achieve. There aren’t many 3D titles on mobile, and Dior It has the kind of grittiness that suits the Playdate aesthetic and gives the game a surprisingly chilly post-apocalyptic vibe. Dior It even has a built-in level editor so you can create your own puzzles.

Not long ago I wrote that One of Playdate’s strengths was its steadily growing library of puzzle games. It’s a perfect fit for the device: experiences you can play in short bursts on the go, but also lose yourself while traveling or wasting time. Dior It’s near the top of my list of games I recommend; It’s technically impressive, but more importantly, it’s a puzzle game that forces your brain to see things in different ways.