LIT: Bend the Light

LIT: Bend the Light is a creative physics-based puzzle game in which you can experience the reflection and refraction of light beams in a fun manner. In each level you will need to find a way to use the available elements (various shaped mirrors, prisms, glass blocks) in order to guide a light beam from the source to its target. It’s more of a precision puzzler rather than a brain teaser: many of these levels require exact positioning / rotation of the available objects in order for the light beam to traverse them at certain angles. Therefore, it can get very finicky, with almost pixel-perfect requirements at times, and thus demanding an increased degree of patience.

The strongest aspect of the game is undoubtedly the realistic physics: the light behaves like in a vacuum container and the paths built in LIT are possible in real life (yet extremely hard to reproduce, according to the developers). The objects can be moved / rotated using the keyboard or the mouse, with extra controls for slow movement (pixel by pixel) for additional precision and one can cycle through them either using “Tab” or by selecting them with the mouse.

Most of the levels have multiple solutions and for earning 100% achievements you need to find a specific amount of these. They differ in terms of what objects are used for solving the puzzle, the order in which they are used and how many bounces the beam light does. For specific levels there are extra achievements awarded for solving them with specific requirements. Nothing extremely brain-challenging, but it often leads to path optimization attempts (asking yourself “how can I solve this using less / other objects than before?” usually gives you an extra solution).

LIT: Bend the Light is a pretty nice game, well balanced in offering a mechanical challenge at times and intellectual provocation of finding extra ways to solve a level. I also enjoyed the nice steampunk graphics and the calming score.