Format: PC (tested)
Released: May 2018
Senalux is a progressively mind-melting light puzzle game that continuously adds more variants and challenges over its initial 80+ levels. You’ll be asked to manipulate laser beam paths to a light source to colour in the grid and what starts out simple ends up tricky.
Lasers, lights, walls, bounce, angles and maths – argh my brain!Initially, you’ll be twisting walls to rebound the lasers off them at different angles but quickly you’ll be placing them yourself, changing the colour of the light, blending colours together and causing long chains of events to take place to get to your goal. Every 12 levels a new type of problem is added to the mix and this stops the level design getting intensely complex. What keeps you on your toes though is that previous game mechanics stay on so it’s a progressively more difficult problem set to solve – mainly because your amount of possible solutions expand exponentially.
For each level of completion, you’ll be awarded shards depending on your efficiency, although just completing the level is enough to progress. If you get stuck, you can skip a couple of levels too. DLC packs for 2 more packs of levels are also available but you can only play them once you’ve finished the previous sets so I haven’t tested those out, and it’s worthwhile noting there’s no colour-blind mode for those of you that are.
The level editor is a welcome additionOne of Senalux’s strengths though is that everything takes place on a hexagonal grid, so it makes lining up lasers much easier as you can chart their trajectory with ease. Also, a boon is the level editor and steam workshop where you can load in previous level pack levels you’ve completed and see how they were built. That helps you understand how to build your own trickly levels, validate them and then get them uploaded to the workshop for others.
A copy of the game was provided by the developer for review.
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