ah, genre melding. What a noble art. Today, we're dealing with a melding of the platformer and the mirror puzzle. Yeah, interesting, aint it?
Speculum loses points with me from the start by having a tutorial wherein you're only allowed to do what some text above you says you can do. Luckily, this only happens twice and both instances are over in a flash, but it's still a bit irritating to know that this game assumes stupidity on the part of its players...
Once that's out of the way, though, the game goes uphill fast, even in the conveyance department. First, though, let me try and describe how this game works.
You control a little blue ball who can place a certain amount of mirrors anywhere around him in a 3-tile radius. You use these mirrors to reflect a laser onto a door, thus opening said door and allowing you to go through it to complete the level.
At first, I was ready to say that the whole platforming part of this game is completely extraneous because once you open the door, getting to it is a cinch. However, the whole "only being able to place mirrors near you" thing provides challenging engagement, which is my pretentious way of saying it made me giggle like a schoolgirl on ecstasy.
The levels are specked with the occasional hazard, but you need to be near the hazards in order to place the mirrors where they need to go. Honestly, the concept is genius; it's creative and fun from start to finish.
When I was playing this game (with my lovely girlfriend who also maintains a blog at vivalavidaconamor.blogspot.com which you should all totally check out and give boundless love to yay), I kept thinking "every time I notice a flaw, the game fixes itself." Remember that conveyance thing I mentioned earlier? Well during the later levels, you're introduced to this mysterious blue box that you fall through if you try to stand on, but you have to go upward from where it's located. So then you're like "well crap, what do I do now?" So since the act of playing the game and screwing around with lasers is fun, you end up shining the laser at the blue box to realize the laser also passes through the box, but this time it's a blue laser. Out of sheer curiosity, you stand in said laser and it propels you exactly where you need to be. Brilliant.
The game isn't perfect by any means, but it's still definitely worth picking up. You'll encounter the occasional glitch and frustration, but otherwise it's got a very solid foundation and enough bells and whistles to keep you occupied. Check this one out. It's worth your time. It gets my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay reflective.
Links
Specs: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26015
