A new Ratchet and Clank game is now playable in Dreams

Ratchet and Clank
(Image credit: Sony)

A new Ratchet and Clank game created by Insomniac designer Josh Leman is now playable in Dreams. 

Called Ratchet and Clank: Bullet Heck, Leman has created a 2D scrolling shooter that tasks you with saving the galaxy from Dr. Nefarious with the famous Lombax and his robot sidekick. With an arcade feel, you can try to earn yourself a high score by firing at enemies and collecting bolts. Dreams developer Media Molecule announced the news on Twitter, along with a link to a Twitch livestream that took place yesterday, where you can watch Leman play the game and talk about its creation. 

See more

Made using a mixture of Leman's own assets and community assets, the designer explains that he originally started making games for other people to play in Little Big Planet while he was working at a grocery store. After eventually getting a job at Insomniac, Leman has since worked on games such as Sunset Overdrive and Ratchet and Clank on PS4, as well as creating crime missions and other elements in Marvel's Spider-Man

Now, Leman is currently working on the upcoming adventure, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, which is slated to release on the PS5 sometime in 2021. This fun scrolling shooter created in Dreams was taken on as a personal side project. 

"When I first picked up Dreams, I thought it'd be fun to kind of come back to Media Molecule's toolsets using a slightly different perspective, having worked on big studio games at this point," Leman explains. 

"I was sort of thinking about what to do, and it kind of just sort of merged in my mind. I've been playing a lot of like 16-bit and 32-bit 2D scrolling shooters, and I was working with Ratchet all day, so it was kind of perhaps natural that I would start fusing the two together in my brain and think about, 'well what if Ratchet had been like a Sega Saturn game, like a 16-bit 2D scrolling shooter?'. Ratchet actually works really well for that, and I kind of started fiddling around with stuff [in Dreams] to try that out." 

Dreams is a game that essentially acts as a creative platform where you can create whatever you want, from whole games to music videos, and much more besides. If you can imagine it, you can probably make it in Dreams. News of the creation of a Ratchet and Clank game in Dreams was first revealed back in August with a previous livestream looking at the progress of the project. 

Ahead of the new game on PS5, Ratchet and Clank: Bullet Heck is a great way to reunite with the loveable pair. 

Here's our pick of the best Dreams levels you can play right now

Heather Wald
Senior staff writer

I started out writing for the games section of a student-run website as an undergrad, and continued to write about games in my free time during retail and temp jobs for a number of years. Eventually, I earned an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University, and soon after got my first official role in the industry as a content editor for Stuff magazine. After writing about all things tech and games-related, I then did a brief stint as a freelancer before I landed my role as a staff writer here at GamesRadar+. Now I get to write features, previews, and reviews, and when I'm not doing that, you can usually find me lost in any one of the Dragon Age or Mass Effect games, tucking into another delightful indie, or drinking far too much tea for my own good.