Dyad created a tractor beam to my brain. With about an hour before my next meeting, I found myself wandering aimlessly through Sony’s booth just looking to see what caught my eye. Tucked away in a corner with a couple other PlayStation Network games, an infectious onslaught of lights and colors appeared to be either an interactive kaleidoscope or a psychotropic illicit substance simulator – but in reality those spacey images were from Dyad, an alluring title that could sort of be described as Tempest meets Rez taking place in comatose Wipeout-pilot’s brain, but only because “beautiful hybrid of racing, shooter, and puzzle genres” doesn’t afford the same quantity of respect as name dropping those illustrious titles. That’s kind of hyperbolic, sure, but Dyad desperately wants to be something special, and it’s apparently going all-out at every instance in an effort to do so.
Not that I knew any of that when I first got my hands on the controller. The well spoken representative from Sony explained that my mind wasn’t physically ready for some of Dyad’s more challenging levels and suggested I give the tutorial level a shot first. Ordinarily my gaming literacy doesn’t require much of a training level, but given that I still wasn’t quite sure what the hell Dyad even was, I agreed that was probably a good idea.
Dyad takes place inside an endless tube, of sorts, and fills it with countless balls of light. The general object of the game (sometimes, more on that later) is to proceed through the tube as fast as possible, and this is accomplished by hooking onto enemies/light with the touch of a button and then ramming into the circle of light created by said action. Doing this speeds you up, and said speed will keep increasing if you keep successfully pulling enemies. All of this is happening while you’re rolling around a tube trying to line yourself up with enemies, and when it gets going fast it’s quite a difficult task to manage.
Flying down a tube at a fraction of the speed of light is cool, but that’s certainly not all there is to do. In another level I was tasked with hooking two enemies of the same color in a row, which provided a better speed boost and filled up a small meter at the bottom of the screen. Once said meter was filled, I could spend it on a screen-obliterating burst that temporarily wiped away all of the enemies. In another level I started out going incredibly fast and had to run into, and deliberately not hook, stationary enemies. That’s easier said than done because I absolutely was not prepared for the visual rampage of hyper space colors assaulting my optic nerves. For the first few moments I had no idea I was actually playing the same game, or at least not until I was able to recognize a few familiar landmarks in the game space. I’ve never seen color and speed used quite like that, and the effect, while slightly alarming, is worth of intense appreciation.
In addition to the standard challenge, every track (or what have you) in Dyad carries a host of options. Trophy Mode is where one goes for additional challenges and to engage Dyad’s more traditional offerings (and earn trophies, duh). Another remix tab offered all kinds of knobs to fiddle with, further augmenting and customizing the experience of a level to a player’s liking. I saw a little bit of the latter and it was particularly wonderful means to expand Dyad’s already ambitious horizons.
In my fifteen minutes with Dyad I went from observing a curious oddity to a complete fascination and obedience to its design and message. Who knows what would have happened with a couple hours? Dyad’s been in development for a good long while; let’s hope it’s released soon.
