LifeisXbox’s Flowing Lights review | Flowing Lights is the new arcade puzzle shooter from gFaUmNe. While playing you will have to shoot yourself a way through different puzzles, with a goal to clear them as fast as possible. But watch out! The enemy is shooting back and when your lives have depleted you will have to do de puzzle over again. Do you have what it takes to defy gravity and complete every single challenge? Let’s see.
We played Flowing Lights for 4 hours on the Nintendo Switch. This game is also available on Xbox One and PC.
What we liked!
- Graphics | Graphical-wise, Flowing Lights isn’t the best game out there since there aren’t any special things like characters or so, only alien blobs and a simple spaceship. But the levels that you have to play through are really clear and looking sharp. The lines they added to show how the gravity is going around certain hills are really helpful and the whole package contributes towards the arcade sci-fi shooter experience that the developer wants you to have.
- Sound | What I mentioned above about the graphics also goes for the sound in Flowing Lights. There isn’t some big tune playing in the background, rather it’s just some simple relaxing sci-fi beats that are completed with the sound of you shooting your gun at the aliens. It may not be much, but I really liked the combination of the gameplay, sound, and graphics and I experienced it as one complete package.
- Gravity | The aspect of the game that I liked the most was that you can literally play with gravity. In the screenshots, you will see that every level has lines. These lines show you how the gravity is at a certain level which you can then use to shoot your guns with a curve to take out multiple enemies at once or kill aliens that are hard to reach while shooting straight. You really need to think about how you are going to complete each level and how to use the gameplay to your advantage.
- Gameplay | In Flowing Lights you need to complete 200 fights/levels. Every fight you start with your spaceship and it’s your goal to eliminate all the opposing aliens while you not getting hit. The extra challenge in this is that you can play with gravity to get an advantage as I described in the point above. Every level takes up around 20 to 30 seconds but if you happen to die you have to start over and so time really starts to add up the further you progress in the game. The game also offers extra challenges which are mostly things like ‘complete this level in a set amount of time’. With these challenges, you can even compete against your friends in the leaderboards to see who cleared which level the fastest. While playing you can also earn power-ups, this is done by making a combo that simply kills multiple enemies with one shot or a group of enemies in a few seconds. Power-ups range from an extra life to a special gun for 15 seconds. In the end, they are purely there to make your game a bit easier.
Somewhere between
- Nothing | While playing Flowing Lights there was nothing that left me behind with mixed feelings.
What we disliked
- Repetitive | The only thing that I disliked is that Flowing Lights can get really repetitive. Everything is fun when you are blasting through the levels but eventually, everyone will come to a point where you don’t really know how to complete the level and have to do it over and over again. At first, I didn’t mind because eventually you will figure it out and progress but at some point, it gets frustrating since you are basically doing the same thing over and over again without much changing, and I really disliked that.
How long to beat the story | 6 to 8 hours
How long to achieve 100% achievements | Switch games don’t have achievements
Similar with | Other Arcade puzzle shooters
CONCLUSION
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