LightUp Challenge

Lasers – the quintessential weapon for any self-respecting sci-fi hero (or villain). They can bring down robots, starships - even whole worlds.

And yet we all know that, in real life, all that's needed to repel a laser beam is a humble make-up mirror.

It's this inherent reflective bounciness that lies at the heart of GlobalFun's new mobile puzzler, LightUp Challenge.

Aptly enough, it hits its target with laser-like precision.

The goal of each level is to re-route a series of coloured laser beams onto their corresponding targets. It sounds simple, but a number of factors contribute to make things considerably tougher.

Firstly, there's the limited number of mirror and prism units you have at your disposal, in a variety of shapes. There are straight ones, angled ones, ones that split beams into two or three, and even ones that split them into their component colours.

Establishing how to use each level’s allotment is part of the challenge. The fact that you can finish certain levels with pieces to spare just demonstrates that there are multiple solutions to many of the puzzles.

But by far the most ingenious element is the levels themselves. GlobalFun has done a fantastic job of creating a varied set of puzzles that make brilliant use of each of the skills you pick up.

The learning curve is perfectly drawn, easing you in gently before starting to really challenge you. When you do finally beat a level that stumps you, the next one or two are often relatively simple affairs, which help ease you back into the rhythm of play before confronting you with another light-refracting conundrum.

Elsewhere, fixed one-way lenses and destructive black holes (touch them with a laser beam and it’s level over) often block off the easy route, forcing you to look at alternative, less obvious solutions.

It’s tough to pick faults with a game as accomplished as LightUp Challenge, but there are a few minor blemishes. An instant restart option from the menu would have been nice in a game of this sort, and the controls are rather unintuitive in places.

Probably the biggest disappointment, though, is that there isn’t more of the game. Thirty levels seems a little stingy, especially given the lower-than-average size of the game file.

But then, we are greedy when it comes to top class games - and make no mistake, LightUp Challenge is a top class game. Its ingenious design, stylish visuals, and perfectly pitched difficulty level set it apart as one of the finest mobile puzzlers we’ve seen so far this year.