An Inspired Take on the Light-Beam Puzzle, but Lacking in Longevity
Golem Lights took me aback. I’ve played a lot of Afil Games output, and they tend to be easy to sort into buckets. The sokoban games go in one bucket, the pipe-puzzles go in another, and the shape-sorters in yet another. Finally, there are a smattering of 2D platformers, but that covers the gaming output of this prolific publisher.
I had assumed, even having looked at screenshots, that Golem Lights would go into one of those buckets. The perspective doesn’t make it look too different from a sokoban or pipe puzzle. But Golem Lights is something new (at least to me). And not only new, but a great deal of fun. I know what comes next – Afil Games will produce about twenty of them in the next twelve months – but, for now, I’m enjoying this new style of game.
When Fog and Light Meet
Golem Lights is two familiar game mechanics colliding. The first is the old ‘light-reflection’ puzzle. I’d be amazed if you haven’t played one of them before. You have lenses, socketed into a top-down grid, and you are turning them so that they bounce light from an entrance to an exit. I’ve seen them in Legend of Zelda, the recent People of Note, even Shrek licensed games. They’re a well-worn, familiar mechanic.
Golem Lights, though, has the bright idea of adding ‘fog of war’ to the concept. You know, a fog of war from strategy and exploration games, where resources and enemies are hidden by an obscuring fog. That might furrow the odd brow: how do you mix a light-beam puzzle and a fog of war? Well, aha, that’s the subtle genius of Golem Lights.
When you turn a lens (or a ‘golem’ in this case), the resulting light beam will pierce the fog of war around you. Most of the time, the light beam won’t hit anything, so it won’t help you. But on occasion, it will find another lens that was hidden in the shadows. That lens will illuminate the area around it, letting you search for the next lens, and the next, until you have found everything that’s been tucked out of reach.
We Need a Name for this Genre. A Beambouncer?
You can turn the lens so that the fog drifts back, but you retain a ‘memory’ of each lens that you found. That’s useful, because some lenses can be switched. A flashing red hotspot can socket a red lens, as long as you have found it at one point. It doesn’t matter if you can’t see it anymore, thanks to the fog: as long as you have bounced a light off it at some point, it’s fair game.
If it sounds simple, that’s because it really is. This ‘tag for later’ approach to a light beam puzzle is surprisingly engaging. Each level becomes something of a routine. We would spend the opening moments exploring the fog of war, tagging as many hotspots and lenses as we could, effectively drawing out the boundaries of the puzzle. Then came the second step. We would swap around the lenses, trying to find an orientation that would reach the crystal – the game’s win-condition.
I can’t understate how new and satisfying this feels. I’ve not played many puzzle games where you have to find its pieces first. The puzzle simply isn’t complete until you discover everything. And I found that oddly joyful, particularly when the controls became second nature. I would zap-zap-zap around the arena, finding everything and bookmarking them for later.
Golem Lights tries to vary the experience, too. There are lenses that are locked in position, and lenses that can be moved. Some lenses bounce in multiple directions at once (the laws of refraction are definitely not abided by in Golem Lights). There are levels that become a criss-cross of light beams, and others that are more sparse, where projecting a light beam into a dark corner of the puzzle seems like an impossible task.
The Optional Collectible That Shouldn’t be Optional
Elevating Golem Lights further is a collectible. A tiny crystal needs to be zapped by a light beam on the way to lighting the exit crystal. This pushes you to find a specific solution to the puzzle when, before, there might have been several potential solutions. These smaller crystals are optional, but we would suggest that you shouldn’t actually treat them as optional. Golem Lights can err towards being too easy, so having this stretch goal makes things more interesting, and a level of difficulty that I personally preferred.
There are a lot of levels here – 60 at my count – and Golem Lights can’t quite stay interesting for the full 60. I found that, at around the 20 mark, I started to spot a pattern. Find a lens in the fog, turn it 360 degrees to find other lost lenses, and then do the same 360 with them. Methodically turning each lens saps the fun out of exploring the fog of war, but it’s the optimal way to play.
And Golem Lights can’t quite find new ways to riff on its super-engaging core. It needed more lenses, more ways to mess with the format. The grid has to fit on one screen, and that doesn’t give the puzzle designers much real-estate to work with. So, they do the same thing repeatedly. It’s not boring – the satisfaction of finding lenses makes sure of that – but it stops being challenging.
Everything is in Place for Golem Lights 2
Maybe I do want Afil Games to make more games like Golem Lights – as long as I could commit them to a binding contract to improve on the formula. Because Golem Lights, for twenty minutes, is a breath of puzzling fresh air. It’s so rare to find a puzzle game that not only finds a new puzzle format, but that format makes us feel and think differently too.
Golem Lights can’t maintain the momentum of its opening moments, and the puzzles end up becoming rote, but we have to give credit where it’s due. Golem Lights burns bright with potential, but isn’t quite there yet.
Important Links
Golem Lights Illuminates Xbox, PlayStation And PC – https://www.thexboxhub.com/golem-lights-illuminates-xbox-playstation-and-pc/
Buy, Optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/golem-lights-xbox-series/9N77SKX062W2/0010
Buy for Xbox One – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/golem-lights-xbox-one/9P801PR6X7RS/0010
Buy for Windows PC – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/golem-lights-windows/9ND13RXKBVQZ/0010
