Lightmatter

Lightmatter is created as a spin-off to Portal games, but with very unique and challenging mechanics of using light sources. Using aesthetically pleasing high contrast graphics, players will learn to navigate through levels and solve puzzles that get more complicated with each passing level.

What makes Lightmatter work isn’t the puzzles or the story but how well the two fit together. Every new room is a different challenge and comes with its own chunk of story as well. It also helps that the game has a distinct art style, mostly blues and blacks but with everything clearly defined in bold solid colors. The player moves at a decent speed, and movement is nicely responsive so there’s never any impatience at enacting an attempt at a new possible solution. There’s an unanswered mystery as to the player’s identity, teased at but never revealed in any kind of believable way, but in the end it’s not important.

It’s rather short but if you still long for Portals maybe this one could fill the void in your heart. [03/2020, p.73]

That aside, this is a very decent first-person puzzle game, albeit heavily weighed down by its derivative nature, that constant sense that you’re playing ideas from other games pasted together. However, when there doesn’t appear to be another Portal or Talos Principle coming along any time soon, this is a great scratch for anyone with that itch.

It's exactly how we felt the first time we played Portal, and the first-person puzzlers that followed afterwards, and it's been a good while since we last played one. Tunnel Vision is more than comfortable in that shadow and, honestly, so are well. [Issue#342, p.122]

Lightmatter is almost a tribute to Portal, but thanks to its puzzle and the catchy story, it is able to stand on its own feet.

Lightmatter is a very interesting Portal-like game, featuring some brilliant ideas and puzzles based on light and shadow.

Quotation forthcoming.

Lightmatter is a little heavy on its influences, but nonetheless is a fascinating and tightly-wound first person puzzle game with plenty of tricks.

It might have some problems with its difficulty curve, performance, and the way it's being sold, but Lightmatter is a very solid puzzle game that offers a decent amount of playtime, some very good puzzles, and a great story.

Lightmatter is a generally well-crafted experience which gently eases you into more difficult challenges and switches up the puzzles just when you’re getting irritable. Tunnel Vision Games have created a finessed puzzler with superb pacing.

Lightmatter rests somewhere in the middle of the pack when it comes to first person puzzlers. It uses the basic light tools satisfactorily, and the sharp visual style and brisk pace help it succeed. Unfortunately some technical blemishes offset its better qualities.