To say that there’s a glut of puzzle platformers on the market today would be an understatement, but that’s still good news for fans of the genre as there seem to be a worthwhile game releasing every week or two. The latest that should be on their radar is Planet of the Eyes, which originally released on PC in 2015. While it doesn’t have one signature hook to differentiate it from the crowd, it’s a solid title with a lot of heart.
Planet of the Eyes has players controlling a cute little robot that finds himself on a planet filled with deadly creatures and death traps. Everything seems designed to kill the player, which means they’ll have to carefully consider each action if they’re to make it out alive. Simply running ahead at full speed is a sure way to die, as there’s no shortage of different traps just awaiting the player to step into them. These scenes are never overly brutal, but it’s never fun to see a cute robot burst apart. As the player runs around the planet, they’ll find audio logs left behind by the man that activated the machine. While using recorded audio is starting to feel like a tired storytelling format, it works well enough here and the story is well-written enough to constantly keep my attention. It helps that there aren’t long narrative lore dumps, but just small clips of a few sentences and ideas. There’s a less is more philosophy throughout the entire game, and it works here as the pl...