Back to Bed

Back to Bed is an intriguing puzzler that sees you trying to guide a sleepwalker through his dreams and back to the safety of the titular bed.

It looks great, and plays around with surrealist imagery to create an atmosphere that's not exactly unsettling, but blends together intrigue and dreamscape to make something pretty special.

It's not all sunshine and roses though. Fiddly controls conspire to spoil the experience all too often, leaving you poking at the screen while the dreamer you're supposed to be protecting wanders off the edge of a building.

You control a creepy looking dog and you need to manipulate the environment to lead the sleepy stumbler from the start to the finish of the level.

Usually this means blocking his progress with a giant apple. The dreamer always turns clockwise, and often you'll need to shunt him at one point, then pick up the apple and plop it down somewhere else.

The problem is the controls don't really work within the space they're designed for. You drag a line from your dog to send it wandering, but it's all too easy to get caught on lumps of scenery, or miss a set of steps and bundle into a wall.

That wouldn't be too bad if correcting your mistakes was simple, but it's all a bit too fiddly. Often you'll stop a square short of where you want to drop the apple, and then have to poke and prod the screen to try and get the reluctant dog to shuffle to the right space.

It's not the end of the world, because you can dump your dreamer off the edge of the world multiple times, but it is remarkably frustrating and taints the rest of the game.

There's an interesting, slightly by-the-book puzzler here if you're willing to persevere.

But there are enough more enjoyable, less agonising puzzle games out there that the sloppy controls make Back to Bed hard to recommend.