Flowing Lights Review
Fast Facts
Flowing Lights
Developer: gFaUmNe
Publisher: gFaUmNe
Website: https://gfaumne.com
Genre(s): Arcade Puzzle Shooter
Platform: Steam(PC), Xbox One, Nintendo Switch!
Age Rating: PEGI 3
Release Date: 07/05/2021
Price: 8.99
A code was provided for review purposes
I have a rocky relationship with puzzle games. Sometimes, I enjoy them and other times I don’t. So where does arcade-shooter puzzler Flowing Lights, the first game developed by gFaUmNe, land in this? Read on to find out.
Flowing Light’s presentation was very surprising and a real treat. I love neon visuals so much and this game hits home with its visuals as everything just pops for me. Were there issues with the performance? No issues were encountered as the game ran smooth and responsive. I also encountered no glitches or bugs either.
Disappointments
Sadly the same praise can’t be said for the story or the music. I understand what was aimed for with the music but the audio all felt the same to me. Eventually, leading me to become bored. Honestly, this game will be a great game to listen to podcasts with because of the lack of interesting music. The story is fairly standard, you crash land on a planet and need to exit.
High Points
Bouncing back from negative to positive, Flowing Lights features excellent gameplay which uses the terrain of the levels to its advantage for creative puzzles and challenges. The game begins with flat land so you could first learn the controls before hitting you with new ideas with the terrain. From making multiple hills or holes to manipulating your shots, it’s a lot of fun!
Balance in Numbers
There are 200 zones in total but don’t let that number make you nervous, the zones are very short but feel great to play through. You might notice I keep saying zones and not levels, well that is because the game goes by 10 levels with each part of that level a zone you play through. Each level doesn’t have the same about of zones, some are longer and shorter than others, but I am glad by this. The devs create enough ideas for the levels we play and don’t try to over-push it, meanwhile making sure they don’t do too little. There is a balance.
Bouncing Difficulty
Sadly there is no balance in the difficulty. Like the up and down nature of the gameplay, the difficulty is forever changing. You’ll play some zones and then all of sudden get hit by a couple of harder zones, only to go back to normal after a couple of zones. Although, the true difficulty comes with the ranks. To get an S or A ranks you have to do a couple of objectives, sometimes to get a combo with a bomb and time or just time. They are all possible but don’t worry about getting them all.
Flowing lights was a great experience. From the amazing neon visuals to the gameplay that I very much enjoyed. Sadly, it wasn’t perfect as the story felt like an afterthought and the music was lacking. The difficulty also felt unbalanced some of the time, but despite this, I still thought it was a fair challenge. Do I recommend it? Yes!
Rapid Reviews Rating
4 out of 5
4
You can buy Flowing Lights here.
You can find and read our reviews on OpenCritic.
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