Luxar

User Rating: 5.3

Luxar deceiving..

Luxar is.. well its a bit hard to firmly point out, say not quite puzzle, not quite platformer, but a floaty assault course experience against the clock. 

You play as an infant alien organism, that in order to graduate to the big league, must fulfill a series of progressively harder trials. This is in order to impress the elders and perhaps be able to fly your own flying saucer or terrify and eat humans on abandoned spaceships. 

Each trial/level is a twisting and turning array of passages, with the organism having to reach the target exit area in the fastest time and more importantly, before our little fellows oxygen gauge runs out!

Luckily there is plenty of help on the journey.. 

A green leader orb will speed in front, showing the correct route and position for our organism to follow. Around structures and up and down past obstacles such as low beams, and manoeuvring through small gaps whilst coming across scattered orbs on the way. 

Red orbs, if you’re close enough, will suddenly give chase and if in contact, deplete a small portion of your oxygen. Blue orbs, on the other hand,are precious commodities that allow you to fully charge your oxygen meter, but at the expense of valuable time.

Success grants you a firm nod from the elders and access to the next level, where things get trickier. Our organism, for example, having to navigate through web like floors at a certain speed and eventually. more difficult opposition such as gun turrets.

Graphically, its a very stylish and well presented game. Gamma effects and orb trails are smoothly rendered and the controls are responsive and light with the trigger buttons adding extra movement to simulate dimensional perspective. 

It’s just a shame that the story is rather light and the gameplay can get stale rather too quickly. Yes, there’s objectives in completing in a certain time limit, beating the leader orb, or even without using an oxygen orb in the run through. Yet, it still feels rather short of the mark and interest. 

Luxar proves to be a title that may appeal to the arcade racer type amongst you. It’s certainly a strange looking hybrid that may convince you to buy it, with its air of strangeness and trips of luminous oddness and mystery. 

Whether you stick with it, is all down to your perseverance and patience levels with trials requiring quite repetitive gameplay mechanics. 

Thanks to KOALABS for the code. 

Summary
Luxar is a small budget puzzler that might hold interest for the quick thinkers amongst you. There is some fun to have here. Interest and addictive qualities run thin quickly though
Good
  • Cleverly thought out
  • Visually ok
  • Alternative for speed run fans
Bad
  • Interest and motivation free
  • Linear
5.3
Average
Graphics - 5.5
Sound - 5.5
Gameplay - 5
Value - 5
Written by
Spent over 40 years gaming and played plenty of titles over plenty of platforms. Handheld consoles seemed a natural progression with their portability and ease of use, and with technology forever advancing. It’s now great to play titles I used to play all those years ago…on the go! Switch and Vita are my two main favourites and any title with dark themes ..RPGs, first person or rogue-like my main interest…

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