The Lighthouse HD

Having owned both an iPhone and an iPad for a while, playing games on them was always inevitable, regardless of whether they were a welcome distraction or a necessary boredom buster either during long flights or waiting for long flights in airport lounges. A developer favourite for touch screen devices seems to be the line-drawing genre but it’s often implemented with mixed results. I enjoyed Flight control, for example, but Harbour Master struggled to keep me interested. With this in mind “The Lighthouse HD” was downloaded from the AppStore with both anticipation and apprehension. Will this be the same as the rest? Will I be bored within 10 minutes? The answer to both was no.

This is a line-drawing game with the twist that you don’t need to draw lines. Confused? Don’t be. The thing about i-device games is that there seems to be no set of rules defined yet and long may this continue! The aim of the game is to control the big powerful beam of the titular lighthouse guiding the ships on screen along a designated path, highlighted with what seems to be beautiful luminous algae. Simple. However we have ships of varying sizes and speeds, obstacles to maneuver around and bonus objects to collect. As the game progresses the number of ships to guide increases and the obstacles get more challenging. There’s also the mental challenge of simply getting the ships out of the zone and completing the level versus going after those bonus items. Of course the game takes you up a learning curve and for those of us who play a bit (or a lot!) those first few levels seem to drag on a little but it’s most certainly worth getting through them.

As you progress you also get items which can assist you in managing the increasing number of vessels you need to wrangle. Marker buoys, for example, when strategically placed can provide some nice automation in guidance but don’t make the mistake of thinking that this makes things easy, it’s actually one more thing you need to manage!

The visuals in The LightHouse HD are lovely and the animation is smooth even on my first generation iPad. The sounds employed are also impressive and really help to set up an ambient tone of ocean life.