Prism: Light the Way review

Oct 5, 2007

Along comes Prism: Light the Way, a quite brilliant little puzzler that takes us waaaay back to the halcyon puzzling days where there was nary a tumbling tetrimino in sight. Waaaay back to 1987, in fact, where we can find Prism's roots in a Spectrum title called Deflektor (sic).

Deflektor was a simple yet furiously addictive beastie that had you deflecting (or is that deflekting?) a ray of light around a grid using a number of mirrors, in order that it might form a complete circuit. Prism takes this simple gameplay mechanic and expands upon it, but it's far more than a shallow clone of a 20-year old title. Your task is to simultaneously illuminate the lightbulbs that litter the perimeter of the playing area. This you accomplish by shining a beam from one of the light sources directly into them. You can move the source around freely, and there are a number of slanty mirrors and multi-way, multi-coloured tubes to assist you on your way.

Easy peasy, yes? Yes, until you realize that each of the bulbs requires a certain colour to shine upon it, and that none of the elements on the grid can be rotated, leading to inevitable frustration-fuelled self-disembowelment as you send your rays of light around on a wild goose chase through a number of colour filters.