It’s one of the oldest puzzle tropes in gaming, but at some point, everyone will have had to move a mirror to direct light to an intended source. Whether it be as a solo game focused on purely that, a mechanism to open doors in larger games or an environmental puzzle, it is a trope as old as gaming itself.
In fact, even this introduction feels familiar, because I wrote something similar when LIT: Bend the Light launched; a game with a very similar premise. However, whereas LIT: Bend the Light had a bit of personality about itself, Rayland is the ready salted equivalent.
Not that there is anything wrong with ready salted, but there are definitely more exciting flavours on the market.
Rayland consists of bouncing light off mirrors in the purest sense, as that is all that you are tasked with doing. It does apply a slightly sci-fi element to the game as instead of lights, it’s lasers you are directing, but the premise is identical.
The official synopsis for Rayland claims to be about the residents of said Rayland using energy from the Domus to survive. They use an item called a Reflectus to reflect the energy from one Domus to the other. Gubbins. You are reflecting lasers from point A-to-B using mirrors. That’s all there is to it.
This story isn’t mentioned anywhere within the game itself; only found on store pages.
There is a futuristic feel to Rayland; lasers and neon colours lend themselves to that. There is also a futuristic piece of music playing in the background. Just the one, on a loop, but you can at least see where the aesthetic is going. Thankfully Rayland is completable within thirty minutes so that piece of music barely has time to grate on you.
Across just forty-two levels, you will need to divert the lasers. At first, there will just be the one laser to get to the end goal but as you progress there will be more lasers and more goals. At some point, you will even need to bring different lasers together by pointing the beams at each other. This will cause them to fuse together and bounce off at an angle. For Rayland, this is as complex as things get.
Should you choose to, there is a level select where you can replay levels. Get stuck on one however, and you cannot progress until you solve it.
Mirrors are placed on a grid in Rayland. On one hand, it means everything has a uniformity to the gameplay and nothing acts differently as intended, but sometimes the grids inadvertently reveal the solution too. Rather than just being a full square grid, there are squares missing or bolted on to the edges. If you see one of these then it invariably means a mirror needs to be placed there, thus telegraphing the solution to players.
As such, there isn’t much of a difficulty to Rayland. Call it part familiarity with the mechanic in general, and part not the most difficult puzzle game you will ever play. Later levels can even have more than one way to solve them, judging from the mirrors left over when I solved certain ones.
Obstacles do pop up more frequently as you reach the later levels. Some squares will have a cube on top that prevents any lasers passing through them. Others have cubes with a hole in that will only let the lasers through when approaching the square from a certain direction. Even these though will rarely cause you any headaches.
These is pretty much nothing else to worry about gameplay wise in Rayland, but it does have another trick up its sleeve in the form of easy achievements. And the best part is, you don’t need to finish all forty-two levels in order to unlock all twelve achievements. These are unlocked as you complete levels one, three, five, seven, nine, and every three levels from there until you finally reach level thirty. This is the last one you need to complete if you want the full 1000G, which is ironically the same point that Rayland offers a bit of variation and difficulty.
That is really all there is to Rayland – quick, easy and, for some, nothing but Gamerscore fodder. It is a puzzle game that focuses on getting lasers to point at a goal; something which will have been done better in other games, even where it isn’t the main feature. If you like these types of games and are hungry for easy Xbox Gamerscore, then have at it. But there really isn’t anything else here, and you can find something much better to play for thirty minutes, which is about as long as Rayland will last.Â
Pick up Rayland from the Xbox Store
