Product: LightUp Deluxe | Genre: Puzzle

by Spanner Spencer

So many classic games, dating right back to Space Invaders, really, were visionary champions that simply didn't have the hardware available to help them realise their full potential. That's one of the great things about a retro remake - it's an opportunity to unlock that potential and reveal the game these brilliant ideas always promised.

GlobalFun's new iPhone puzzle game LightUp isn't really a retro remake so much as a futuristic homage and profound refinement of the classic Deflektor, in which a beam of light is directed around a maze using crystals and prisms.

LightUp follows the same basic premise, but blends the gameplay with some stunningly beautiful Geometry Wars-style visuals and outstanding music electronica to bring those lasers to eye-scorching life.

Each puzzle entails redirecting a coloured laser into a similarly coloured target. Being a beam of light, bending it around corners is no simple matter so you're given a selection of reflective and refractive prisms to send the lasers around obstacles and, more importantly, away from black holes.

It's fairly simple in principle. And, being set on quite a small game board, even the more advanced levels look rather simplistic at the opening. Rather fittingly, though, this apparent simplicity is an optical illusion and even the most basic looking LightUp levels offer a serious cerebral challenge.

Unlike its inspiration, LightUp features a host of different crystals required to complete the puzzle. The basic ones send the laser beam off at 90 degrees, but as you get deeper into the game beam splitters arrive to send one laser in three directions, while others change the colour of the beam, or combine two differently coloured lasers into a single beam of their combined hue.

Convincing your stray lasers to converge at just the right point on the map to create an entirely different coloured beam can be a real brain twister, but the game manages to remain entirely addictive with very little frustration.

You're given a selection of these prisms with which to solve each level as quickly as possible, though sending a laser into a black hole causes the timer to jump forward, presumably in accordance with Einstein's theory suggesting that time speeds up as you approach the speed of light around a black hole's event horizon. (Pocket Gamer does not endorse Spanner's cosmological credentials. Unless he's right - ed.)

Coupled with cunningly placed obstacles and valve prisms that only allow light to pass in one direction, LightUp is as challenging and addictive as any iPhone puzzle game we've seen for quite some time.

The game is further bolstered by some stunning visuals and wonderfully atmospheric audio accompaniment. The backgrounds shimmer behind the laser's heat, while attempting to match the sizzling-hot colours of the beams using the massive variety of prisms creates a glowing work of light-graffiti around the play area that looks real enough to burn your fingers.

GlobalFun will be releasing a Lite version (top gag) at the same time as the premium LightUp game, with five free levels to entice you into the full laser-lit product. If you're in the market for a new and unique puzzle experience, the game you've been waiting for is just around the corner.

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