Prism: Light the Way - Nintendo DS

Prism: Light the Way is a cutesy puzzle game set inside a black hole. It is based on the conceit that black holes are the natural habitat of quantum beings called Glowbos that feed on light. When the light is blocked by a space monster, the Glowbos risk starvation until a race of light-emitting creatures called Bulboids (effectively controlled by the player) arrive to save them.

The basic principle of the game is to bend rays of light (which always travel at right angles) so that they hit colour-coded targets at the edge of the playing area (an 8x8 grid). To achieve this the player can move any of the pieces (Bulboids, mirrors, coloured filters, prisms, etc.) on the grid. Pieces can be dragged to any free space on the board (so you don’t have to shuffle pieces about as you would with a sliding tile puzzle) but cannot be rotated.

The game features a “time attack” arcade mode (where the player must clear randomly-generated levels to earn extra time), a free play mode which removes the timer, a puzzle mode where the player must complete increasingly difficult handmade levels, and (in the PC version only) a fast-paced shooting gallery mode where targets and playing pieces are dropped onto the board intermittently, and the player must constantly rearrange the pieces to hit all the targets before they go critical.