Here’s another WayForward puzzle game on mobile. It’s well done, but so light on content that I finished with it much too quickly.

Lit started as a 3D Wiiware title. This smartphone reboot changes out the gritty 3D art style for the typical clean, cute look WayForward is known for. It also locks the gameplay down more to a grid. Both of these changes are good for the platform, and it controls well with taps and swipes.

The premise is that the boy hero has to save his girlfriend (sigh). She had more of a presence in the original, as she would phone you during gameplay, and was unlockable as a playable character. The ending I got (without clearing the time and step targets for every puzzle) told me I was too slow, with Jake anticlimactically standing at her grave. It’s possible she’s also unlockable in this version, but if she’s only available after replaying every room to do them perfectly, then there wouldn’t be any game left to play her with.

Anyway. To expand on the premise, the school has been overrun by intense darkness in which monsters are lurking. Through strategic use of light-generating devices (lamps, TVs, breaking a window, etc.) Jake can make a safe path to the exit without stepping into the deadly shadows. By varying the layouts and the bahviour of different devices and monsters, the game presents a nice little set of puzzles. Although restarts were often required, they don’t take long to execute.

In fact the game itself can be beaten in one sitting, with only 16 rooms to solve. A comparison to the Mighty Switch Force games jumps to mind given their similar number of levels, but as each of Lit’s puzzles are a single screen the experience is much shorter. I could have extended my playtime by trying for perfect solutions, but I often find that kind of busywork frustrating. Lit left me wanting more, but in a disappointing way; I was unsatisfied. I wanted to see the game to iterate on its ideas more. Oh well.