Neon Starlight App Review
If you like puzzle games with challenging levels which makes your brain work at times, Neon Starlight is a game for you.
I personally love puzzle games. And not all iOS puzzle games are engaging to keep me hooked for more than 8-10 levels/stages. Most of the puzzle games now a days are monotonous. You start with a very amusing challenge and end up realizing all the levels are basically the same with added monsters or obstacles. Once you know how to get around those ( which you’ll master in few levels ) the further levels are very simple.
Neon Starlight is an adventurous space based puzzle game with simple yet challenging levels. The idea is to gather all the crystals to activate a portal and end the level by entering that portal. Sounds simple right? Wait until you know the catch.
Neon Starlight
Neon (controlled by us) is a maintenance space robot who’s task is to walk or hover through a cushioned marble like pathway and clean all the energy leaks ( energy crystals) and clear that level. Once you gather all the energy crystals a portal is opened which takes you to the next level. You can choose to walk over the pathway or tap on Neon to hover over. Now here is the catch, you are given a limited amount of energy at each level and it diminishes as you walk. Hovering over takes up extra energy. So you have to walk most of the level. Another challenge is while navigating you would fall into the holes if you are not quick enough to move him to the right direction.
Each level has an Easy and Hard mode and as the levels increases there are various obstacles to face and crooked pathway to follow. The controls are very standard and hence easy, tap right to turn right, tap left to turn left and tap on Neon to hover over the pathway. If you fail to reach the portal before you run out of energy you start over, if you fall off the holes in the pathway you start over.
All these challenges keeps you hooked to this game. It’s very annoying when you fall off the pathway you have to start all over again. But this makes you play the game a bit more cautiously and keeps you on toes all the time.
The Missing Link
There are a few things I wish the game had. It would have been great to have a mini-map of the whole level so as to have an overview of the locations of the energy crystals you need to gather.
Even though you have top-down camera view, in this view you don’t have much time to think and decide your strategy to finish the level.
Another missing part is the ability to restart a level at any given point. You have to go back to the main menu to do so. If you aren’t a seasonal iOS user who installs a lot of games the first level itself might be very difficult for you. For the game so intense it lacks proper documentation to explain or help you play the game. Apart from a video tutorial there is no quick help. So you have to watch through the video or if you wish not to then you end up discovering something and be cautious of the danger you discovered. There is no better explanation to tell you about the dangers and new elements which get added to the levels. Even though they are self-explanatory you end up knowing them only after you stumble upon them.
Final Thoughts
The developer seems to be working a lot on this app and packs a lot of stuff in the update, so I hope we could expect a lot of things in the future update. All in all this is a fun challenging game. If you love puzzle games which needs patience and quick thinking, I would highly recommend this game for you. The engaging game play compensates for everything you think is missing. You should definitely try this app.
