Extraterrestrial ghosts It gives you everything you need to succeed if you really want it. Help is (almost) always a few clicks away. Because of this, it feels uniquely accessible – an “invisible puzzle platformer” designed to trip you up over and over again until you’ve learned enough from your mistakes to move forward. Depending on how you approach it, Extraterrestrial ghosts it’s either a trial-and-error nightmare or a relatively easy platform adventure. Or something in between. I died 274 times in my first playthrough, if that’s any indication of how difficult it can be.
Extraterrestrial ghosts presents you with a grid and some floating doors and essentially says “ok, now find your way out”. There are platforms that form a path to each door, but all platforms are invisible. This is where the game’s “difficulty lies” mentality comes into play. You can jump off a cliff and hope to land on a platform every time, remembering every misstep so you know what not to do next time. if you die or you can choose from three available tools for some guidance. “Peek” will give you a sneak peek at any nearby platform, “Paint” will highlight any platform you’ve stepped on, and “Show” will reveal all the platforms in that room.
Stubborn as I am, I was determined to go as far as I could without any help. However, I was very embarrassed to find myself trapped in Levels 2-5 – many sub-levels that will send you back to the start multiple times if you go through the wrong doors. Here, to give my brain some space to figure out what the puzzle was without worrying about remembering the platforms, I finally turned on and activated the Show feature. (I eventually realized it wasn’t that complicated. oh). After this point I alternated between going unaided and using the “Paint” option as a small cure.
The game, which I thought was very clever after getting over the initial frustration of not knowing what the hell was going on, throws you a curveball about halfway through when it introduces a new mechanic that requires a crank. And then, Extraterrestrial ghosts it undergoes a stylistic change that transforms it into something completely different from what it was in the beginning. The developers wrote this in the description Extraterrestrial ghosts is “more than a grid of dots” and they weren’t kidding. I had a lot of fun with it. You can get it now in the Playdate Catalog for $6.
