Hands On: Media Molecule Flexes with Megapenguin Rehatched’s Opening Levels in Dreams

We’ll openly admit to being a little late to the party on this, but we’ve just played Megapenguin Rehatched in Dreams and have to tell you about it.

As we reported a couple of weeks ago, Megapenuin Rehatched is a collaborative project within Media Molecule’s creation game. The idea is brilliant: the studio has crafted the first few stages of Megapenuin’s journey through the Dreamiverse in order to inspire the community to create brand new levels starring the beefy bird. The best of these will be added to the official adventure. The end result will be an improvised game devised mostly by Dreams players. It’s an awesome concept, and exactly the sort of thing Dreams is good at.

Whether you’re interested in creating something yourself or not, we would urge you to check out Media Molecule’s opening levels for Megapenguin. As we mentioned, we’ve now played the introduction, and it’s just wonderful.

The muscular penguin is flying through the cosmos with his fleet, when disaster strikes and he crash lands on an unknown world. The opening cutscene is full of the daft charm we’ve come to expect from the developer, and it continues as you start playing this 3D action platformer. Megapenguin has four delightful emotes, can make penguin noises on command, and it’s quickly established that he loves shiny pebbles. It’s hard not to fall in love with him immediately.

As you start exploring, you’ll collect those pebbles (which is very satisfying, by the way) and start unlocking some abilities, such as a scanner with which to learn more about the surrounding area, a wrench that acts as a melee attack, and the best glide we’ve seen in a long time. These first few levels are pretty straightforward, but they’re expertly crafted, and a real joy to go through. You’ll explore hidden paths, find amusing scanner readings, and perform some simple platforming. We had a big dumb grin on our face the whole time. It all culminates in a cute hub area where the game splits off into three pathways. It’s within these different sections that Media Molecule will eventually insert community-made stages.

This introduction to Megapenguin and the whole project is excellent, and even has us wanting to put something together. After seeing all there is to see in the opener, it’s left us excited to discover how the adventure will evolve with community input. With such a good leading example, we expect players to go out and make some great stuff. If you have Dreams, check out Megapenuin Rehatched.

Have you played the start of this cracking project in Dreams yet? Tell us what you think of it in the comments section below.