Deflektor
| Developer: N/A | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Gremlin | Sound: |
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| Year: 1988 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Puzzle | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
5/10 | |
An old, ugly game (originally released on the ZX Spectrum), just the kind I usually enjoy. And yet…
A laser emits a light beam. Rotating mirrors allow it to be deflected. The objective is to destroy all the balls on the screen, then direct the beam to the “exit” before running out of energy. While doing so, beware of not sending it back to its source or towards a mine, which would cause overheating.
Little creatures wander around the play area and enjoy spinning on the mirrors. You must disintegrate them on sight. Good grief.
What grates on me is that instead of thinking through a solution, most levels boil down to aimless clicking and blind luck. The layouts barely change from one to the next, so boredom sets in fast. Worse still, the lack of a save feature kills any faint desire to return. Because slogging through 60 identical levels in one sitting, all to the same looping soundtrack … it’s enough to drive anyone up the wall.
Its sequel, Mind Bender, incorporates a password system and a two-player mode.
And I’ve found its spiritual successor: LIT: Bend the Light (2020).
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