When it comes to puzzle games, especially mobile puzzlers, simplicity is king. Linelight by My Dog Zorro is a thing of simple beauty.
I get often asked: Which game would you take to a lonesome island? – The answer is pretty easy: Tetris. Even though I love impressive graphics in titles like Destiny 2, the Uncharted or Assassin’s Creed series, in the end it comes down to one thing: gameplay. Is it easy to pick up, but bloody hard to master? Is it fun? Are the mechanics sharp and thought through? Are the aesthetics in place?
Reduced to the max: Linelight doesn’t need bells and whistles.
The game told him so
If you strip away the shiny graphics, the “epic” features, not many games can answer all of the questions asked above with a resounding YES! Some are victims of feature creep, others just don’t have their concept properly fleshed out. But if you have limited resources, careful planning is paramount to your or rather your game’s success. For an independent developer like Brett Taylor, the brain behind Linelight, money is usually lacking. So choosing to do a minimalist game seems obvious, but not for Brett. According to an interview with Black Shell Media he didn’t set out to make a simplistic game. Brett wanted to make a game, that was on one line, “and this is what the game told him it wanted to be. The design came out of the game, not the other way around.”
Connecting the dots in Linelight
For everybody who has an aversion against loud, blinking and cramped games, Linelight is a simple thing of beauty. One needs to guide a dot of light along shifting lines from A to B. Nothing more, nothing less. Of course the mazes deliver food for thought and sometimes want to be properly explored, before offering the required solution. But the placid atmosphere provided by an accessible piano soundtrack, that sometimes borders on the line to kitsch, let’s you sink into puzzle solving mode. With it’s minimalistic design Linelight is also visually stunning. It sometimes looks like an bunch of very organized fireflies taking a field trip on a railway net. What else do you want?
