Glass Lighthouse: A Wizard's Tale Review

Developer: Regulus Games
Price: FREE
Version Reviewed: 1.0
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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When you can’t figure out if a certain game mechanic is there deliberately to make things trickier or is an awkward accident, you know there’s a problem. That’s a key issue for Glass Lighthouse: A Wizard’s Tale and will mean you’ll probably give up sooner than expected.

As soon as you dive into Glass Lighthouse: A Wizard’s Tale, you’ll realise that it’s not great at telling you much. Visually, it’s quite interesting, using an appealingly minimalist art style, but there’s no indication as to what you need to do. Stumbling through, you’ll end up getting to the level screen and the first stage. A further stumble will lead you to figuring out what you need to do.

That thing you need to do? It’s simple enough, in theory. You have to slot jigsaw pieces back inside the existing shape. This starts out fairly simple but soon gets trickier as your intentions change somewhat. There’s a more fundamental issue too. It’s often hard to see where you’ve already slotted things in. At regular points, Glass Lighthouse: A Wizard’s Tale illuminates the shape but then the lines vanish all too soon, and leave you to try to memorize where things were placed before.

I’m not sure if that’s deliberate in order to make the game trickier or simply a misstep, but whatever the reason it’s obtuse and not exactly appealing. There’s plenty of content here thanks to the 60 levels available, as well as the fact that you can unlock Blitz and Limited modes. It also looks simplistically charming, but no one would blame you if you gave up relatively early on.

Glass Lighthouse: A Wizard’s Tale comes across as a game that’s meant to be somewhat relaxing, but that awkward way of highlighting what’s been done before and its vague exposition leaves you less than endeared by what’s to come.