Dodo

You press a button, it activates and deactivates some other buttons and the goal is either to activate only some of them or all of them at once.
You’ve already probably stumbled on this kind of puzzle, and this is what the core of Dodo is.

I’m not a fan of those puzzles, they’re usually just very annoying and frustrating… but Dodo is very different.

You don’t interact directly with the grid, Dodo uses a system of letters and words to manipulate it.
For exemple, if you type “D”, your action will affect the whole grid because “D” means “select all”. If you then type “O”, the selected boxes will be activated because “O” means “activate”.
There are lots of other letters and you can do a lot of things. Discovering what they do is part of the game but don’t worry, the letters that mean “select X” always highlight the boxes they will affect.

The grid is also not your typical grid that directly tells you what to activate. Only the first 2 worlds are like that, the next worlds all have their own unique mechanic in the form of a grid sign you need to understand.
It’s usually not hard to know what to do as the first puzzles of each world act as tutorials, but it’s always nice to see puzzle games that don’t directly tell you what to do.
I know I often quote that game on my reviews but yes, it obviously reminds a lot of The Witness.

The confusing nature of the game and the tricky grid requirements make the overall difficulty quite hard. Even though there are usually multiple solutions for the very hard hard puzzles, finding one is already a challenge.
And if that’s not enough, you get a diamond when you solve a puzzle with one of the shortest possible solutions.

I didn’t encounter a single thing that needed to be changed, on the contrary I was surprised by how everything, including some quality of life such as the highlight, was already well-implemented (small games like this tend to have fatal flaws). The game even has funny achievements when your solution is a real word.
So, really nothing negative to report.

Dodo takes the raw concept of an annoying kind of puzzles and turns it into a very clever, interesting and varied puzzle game. If you like tricky challenges and don’t mind confusing games, Dodo is for you.
Recommended.

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Developer: ThreeByFour Games
Publisher: ThreeByFour Games
Platform: Steam – Windows
Release Date: April 15, 2024