Based on a game with the same name created by Juho Pohjonen back in 2007, Reflexions is a colourful puzzle game and the latest GameMaker game to be published by YoYo Games.
Puzzle games are one of my favourite genres and I think well suited for gaming on the move as they do not require the lightening reflexes you are often unable to provide when travelling or taking a few minutes out of your day.
The premise of the game is simple – you must use rotate mirrors in order to reflect a “ball of light” around a course consisting of red obstacles, blue way-points and a large number of orange mirrors.
When the ball of light hits an angled mirror it is deflected at a 90 degree angle and, by making use of the reflective walls around the play area and manipulation of these mirrors, you can direct the light orb around the course. Each mirror can be angled in one of two positions which you can switch between with a simple tap in order to navigate the ball via sequence of “reflexions” safely around obstacles.
The game has been given a complete visual overhaul from the original PC version, with the white background and blocky sprites giving way to a dark honeycombed background and polished glowing neon game objects. Each time you “die” following a collision with a red obstacle your orb of light disintegrates into many tiny flying pieces, a good example of the type of “polish” YoYo Games have brought to the game.
When I first started a new game it wasn’t immediately obvious what I had to do to get the game going. I had an idea of what was required but all I could seem to manage was to rotate a few of the mirrors. Then I went back to the game menu and started again thankfully this time a tutorial started introducing the various elements of the game. Not sure if this was a fault with me or the game! To start a level, you must tap the green orb starting position to set the ball of light on its journey, then the only required input is to rotate mirrors.
The game starts off at a good speed giving you time to react to the light bouncing as it travels instead of rushing you into a frustratingly high number of premature deaths. If things do look like getting a bit hectic getting the orb of light “stuck” in a backwards and forwards cycle of reflections can give you time to think ahead and plan your next move carefully – trying to plan an entire level’s completion from the start gets increasingly tricky as you progress through the game.
Reflexions can be played in landscape mode only as the game rooms have been designed with that particular layout in mind.
For the competitive player the number of moves and time taken to complete each level are tracked, you are awarded a number of stars each time you complete a level with the figure being based on the number of moves you had to make to solve the puzzle. There are also in-game achievements although no global highscores tables are available through OpenFeint unlike other YoYo Games titles.
At times I found the game-play quite small and fiddly on the screen of my phone, I imagine Reflexions would be much easier to play on an iPad or Android tablet due to the large number of level objects shown on screen at any one time.
Visually the game is very impressive with its glowing graphics and the earlier levels at least seem to be designed with a suitable level of difficulty. Reflexions sells at £1.49 and with 4 unlockable worlds each containing 10 levels it should keep you occupied for a while.
Reflexions published by YoYo Games is available on iOS and Android