Browser Game Pick: LaserBox (Dust United)
LaserBox is an interesting little puzzle game about guiding lasers through boxes in an attempt to uncover the hidden mirrors.
Lasers and 'Impulses' can be fired from one of four directions into the group of boxes and will proceed to bounce around and eventually come out somewhere else. Depending on where it pops out, you then need to work out where exactly it could have bounced and implement a Minesweeper-like removing/tagging strategy.
The number of boxes can also be increased to give more of a challenge for anyone finding it a little too easy. Give LaserBox a go at Newgrounds.
Comments
It's a very good game. Sound kind of irritating, and the menu interface is kind of slow. But it's a very fun deductive reasoning puzzle. The laser and impulse tools work very well. I have yet to beat a 16x16 grid though, I suspect luck plays a big role in that one.
Posted by: Deceased Crab | May 27, 2009 4:13 AM
This is a nice replacement for those "tired" of Minesweeper. It would have been nice if the menus came out faster and if it let you change the viewing angle.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 27, 2009 6:44 AM
I'm not sure how much skill is involved in the starting steps? It'd be nice if there were some boxes already destroyed to help you work out where things were going?
At the start you have to randomly guess at an empty box - I suppose much like minesweeper - but I find that a bit annoying. At least with minesweeper you usually get some info back from your first random click. Here it's very difficult to deduce anything useful from the first box removal.
Maybe I'm wrong though? I only played a couple of times.
Posted by: Alex Waterston | May 27, 2009 2:19 PM
Using a combination of lasers and impulses is required early on, otherwise you run the risk of either getting an incorrectly flagged mirror or breaking a mirror (the latter of which is a "fatal error" so to speak).
an 8x8 board can be cleared out with absolute certainty with some quick and effective use of lasers and a small handful of impulses, my record being 39.01 seconds according to the high-score board.
Posted by: Zeta | May 27, 2009 7:39 PM
one more thing: you do NOT have to wait for the impulse to finish before placing another laser (doing so just wastes time), just check the number on the side for an indication of how many blocks it traveled - if it's larger than the length of the board, it's guaranteed to have hit at least one mirror. if it pops out on the other side of the board, there are NO mirrors on that row/column. there's additional information that can be gathered from using the impulse on certain rows and under certain conditions, too.
Posted by: Zeta | May 27, 2009 7:44 PM
Oh lol, I'm #5 (out of 6) on the Hard board.
Impulses are almost optional on the easy board, but when you go to the harder levels they are completely invaluable.
Posted by: nat | May 28, 2009 8:15 AM
More strategy tips:
- If you fire the laser from an edge, and it pops out on the edge you fired it on, you can try counting spaces. If the number of spaces is the minimum (e.g. it pops out 2 spaces away, and the total spaces traveled is 3) then you already know the arrangement of the mirrors that would make it bounce like that.
- Degenerate strategy for degenerates (like me): At the start, remove a box from the centre. Then fire impulses from all cardinal directions towards the empty space. If the impulse travels through the empty space, and the distance traveled is equal to the minimum distance required to reach the empty space, then you know that there are no mirrors between the firing position and the empty space. This allows you to quickly carve the grid into more manageable blocks.
Posted by: nat | May 28, 2009 10:46 AM