Prism: Light the Way Hands-On

Glowbos must surely be among the dumbest and most fortunate creatures in existence. They need light to survive, yet they choose to reside in underground caves where there is none. In fact, if it weren't for a friendly, light-emitting alien race known as bulboids--not to mention the numerous mirrors, colored crystals, and T-junctions that can split beams of light in two that are found in the caves--the glowbos would surely have long since been extinct. This is the unusual premise for Eidos' upcoming puzzle game Prism: Light the Way, and we recently had an opportunity to spend some time with it.

Each of Prism's levels is a cave in which a number of glowbos are being deprived of light. Your goal, using the bulboids at your disposal, is to find a way to shine light on all of them simultaneously. The catch, naturally, is that you'll rarely have as many bulboids to work with as there are glowbos, so you'll have to manipulate the aliens' beams of light using mirrors, which redirect them; T-junctions, which split them in two; filter blocks; which change the color of the light to suit certain glowbos; and a handful of other items.

Many of the glowbos require different colored beams of light to survive.

Prism: Light the Way's puzzle mode appears to boast well over 100 caves. In addition to those, there are a purportedly infinite number of randomly generated caves to play through in the appropriately named infinity mode. Based on our experiences thus far, Prism: Light the Way starts out very easy and doesn't really get challenging until you're about 50 puzzles into the game. At that point, the difficulty level takes a sharp upturn because the caves get more complex and the game's hint system--which shows you where to place one item every time you use it--is no longer available.

Other modes of play in Prism: Light the Way include playing against the clock and a "hyper" mode where the glowbos will explode if they don't get any light for an extended period of time. There are also some multiplayer options in there somewhere, but at the time of writing, we haven't had an opportunity to check them out. Regardless of which mode you're in, you'll be playing exclusively with the stylus, which is used to drag the various items around on the touch screen while your score is displayed up top.

Prism: Light the Way is currently scheduled for release next month. Expect a full review in the not-too distant future.