IPod Touch App Reviews: Laser Puzzle Game

Sep
17

IPod Touch App Reviews: Laser Puzzle Game

Laser Puzzle Game, a new offering from Sven Schramm, is available in the app store. Despite its sometimes head-scratching puzzles, this game disappointingly offers little in the way of polish or quality.

Laser Puzzle Game cuts right to the point. There is no music. There are no instructions. There isn’t even a loading screen or main menu. Launching the game immediately brings up the All Puzzles screen, from which you select a puzzle. All puzzles beyond the first are locked until the previous puzzle has been solved. Launching a puzzle brings up the game screen with a laser shooter and any number of laser catching receptacles. There are objects in the gaming area that act as barriers or obstacles to getting the laser into the receptacle. You have at your disposal a set number of angled blocks and splitters that may be placed in the gaming area to redirect the laser beam into its receptacle(s). When you believe that you have a configuration that will work, hit the done button and hit Fire to check your work. A red laser line will slowly make its way around the screen. If you are successful, the receptacles will light up. If not, the board is wiped clean and you must try again. There are 32 puzzles in all and no difficulty levels from which to choose.

The graphics are very simplistic, as are the controls. You tap on a piece to select it and tap on the game board to place it. Tap it again to remove or drag it to move it to a different location. We encountered several issues with the game. First, placing pieces is difficult, as they often don’t end up where you expect, requiring you to drag or remove. A grid would have been helpful. Also, dragging the piece from the bottom row onto the game area would have been better than tapping and retapping. Second, you shouldn’t have to hit Done and then hit Fire. It’s redundant. The Done button should be the Fire button. Third, if you hit Done accidentally, there is no way to back up without firing except to hit All Puzzles and start from scratch. Either way, if you fail, the board is wiped and you cannot just readjust a few pieces. You must replace everything. Fourth, the splitters do not always work. Often, the laser will travel through one side, but not the other, resulting in a failure and a wiped board, despite the fact that all pieces were properly placed. Fifth, it took several attempts before we could figure out how to use the splitter. Some form of explanation would have been nice. Sixth, the laser itself is ridiculously slow. We’re not looking for light speed, but it was a drag waiting for it to get where it was going. We’ve played through one-third of the game and found 6 shortcomings already. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the game.

There are several other games with similar style in the app store. We unfortunately must recommend investing in one of those if these issues are not fixed. The game just doesn’t come across as enjoyable. Replay value is very limited, as we cannot see ourselves picking this one up again. Priced at $0.99, it is on par with the rest of the app store offerings. Laser Puzzle Game invokes the mercy rule for a 3-Dimple score.

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