Light the Flower
Mr. Roy G. Biv makes a welcome appearance in Chillingo's entertaining iOS puzzler.
Most plants are happiest in direct sunlight. That's the premise behind Chillingo's newest puzzle game, Light the Flower, AKA our newest iPhone and iPad addiction.
In it, developer Tribeflame took one of the most basic concepts and turned it into a challenging title that'll leave you scratching your head. The game's 60 levels display a top down view into a bedroom, living room and other locations that feature one or more flowers.
The goal is to direct the sun's rays in their direction using mirrors to reflect the light beams at different angles, paying close attention to three gold stars carefully placed throughout each stage, where illuminating them nets you a much higher rating.
Things become trickier with three or more mirrors, as you carefully rotate the objects desperately searching for the best possible solution, of which, there may be a few.
Not only that, but the creators make things even more complicated by introducing prisms that split a single ray into several beams, and then plants that only respond to a specific color of light, forcing you to guide it through corresponding filters; blue plants love blue sunlight, red plants need red sunlight and so on.
When stuck, you can take the easy way out by completing a puzzle without lighting all three stars, but eventually that comes back to haunt you, since you need a requisite number to unlock different houses/level packs.
Personally, we think Light the Flower is top notch. It's both expertly designed and challenging. We'll literally sit upwards of five to ten minutes per puzzle trying to figure out the best possible angles for those mirrors. Not only that, but we adore the little things, like the way flowers go back to sleep without sunlight, or how levels start out in black and white, then color appears the moment we touch the screen.
The best part? Tribeflame has more levels on the way, definitely great news, since Light the Flower is worth your dollar, as well as a refreshing change of pace from all those Chillingo published physics games. Brighten your day and download it March 22.
Review code provided by Chillingo.
What's Hot: Sixty levels of mirror tilting goodness, prisms and filters add a new layer of strategy, multiple solutions for a plethora of stages.
What's Not: Weird baby cacti.
4/5
