Playing as a Positron in Dyad - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 12 June 2012 / 3,101 Views
Ever been to the Synchrotron in Chicago, IL and pondered what it would be like to be a single particle inside a massive accelerator? What sights you would see? How would it feel to accelerate to the point where you're almost catching up with the speed of light itself? No? You've never thought about this at all, and I'm a giant nerd for even considering it? Well screw you, guy.
Luckily there are others out there like myself, particularly the creator of a little PSN title called Dyad, a certain Shawn McGrath. Dyad puts you in control of a single particle as you go whirling around in an accelerator. Your forward path is set but you can move along the boundaries of the cylinder that contains you. Dyad isn't just a simple racer, though, it's much more like a puzzle game than anything else, with different levels giving you different objectives to figure out.
The first level I played was one of the introductory levels that was designed just to show people the mechanics by which you accelerate. Instead of accelerating like a car your particle has to slingshot itself off of other particles passing through the field. Get a particle in your sights and press the X button and you'll quickly blow past it. After doing this a certain number of times the level was over.
Next I played a middle of the road level designed to be a bit more difficult by forcing you to try out some of the other mechanics. The name Dyad comes from the idea of two, or a pair, and that plays a role in the game as well. Oftentimes you'll have different colored foreign particles whizzing past and while it's beneficial to hook onto any particle you'll get a much larger boost if you can pick two particles of the same color in a row.
Another mechanic introduced at this point was a lance, which you can use by pressing the Square button. This allows you to blow past particles that would normally destroy you if you hit them. Powering the lance requires a little bit of Crazy Taxi-style driving. Everytime you hook onto another particle for a slingshot that particle gets a little circle around it. If you can pass through the circle without hitting the particle and being destroyed (similar to how you rack up points in Crazy Taxi) you power up your lance for later use.
There are 26 levels and each one comes with a different music track to listen to and three different modes to play it in. Normal mode is what I had been playing. Trophy mode for this particular level forces you to try and chain together a certain number of pairs within a certain time frame, but the different types of particle wouldn't be differentiated by color, but by sound instead. By listening closely you can hear a difference in pitch when targeting the two types of particles.
Maybe challenges aren't your style though, or you have friends coming over and you just want to give them a fun game to play around with whenever they wander over to the TV. This is where Free Play mode rises to the occasion. You can customize just about everything in this mode and make the track endlessly loop just to give people something to mess with. R2 and L2 slowdown the gameplay and the music in tandem while your playing creates its own noises to add to the mix.
Lastly, I played one of the later levels on trophy mode, which had a strange goal that forced me to rethink everything I'd learned. This time I was starting extremely quickly and the goal was to slow down to a stop before a minute passed. Instead of dodging particles as best I could, this time I had to smack into them on purpose just to try and slow myself down before the timer ran out. It's surprising how much simple gameplay flips like that can really pose a challenge once you've had the rules of a game engrained into you, even over the course of a short demo.
Dyad will be releasing on PSN later this year, and everyone with a passion for new and exciting gameplay ideas should give it a look.
