Linelight has beautiful music and a beautiful concept. In the early part of the game I enjoyed the puzzles tremendously. They were difficult enough that I had to think, but not complex enough that I would get stumped. The difficulty doesn't necessarily go 'up' in later levels, but the complexity comes from "timed moves", synchronized moves, or patience and waiting for enemy lines to reset. I ran into several puzzle bugs that would not reset properly, which ended my progress on collecting bonus gems in the final level. Because of this, I could not find a reasonable way to progress to epilogue levels and was too frustrated with mid/late game puzzles to find any repeat enjoyment. I appreciate the creativity and certainly the peaceful-yet-dynamic soundtrack, but there are plenty of new puzzle games out there. Given a choice I think you can find several that are move enjoyable than Linelight.

It just failed to grip me enough to complete it, mostly because I'm not a huge fan of timing-based puzzles, which there are plenty of in this game. The first 5 worlds felt pretty easy, though I still mildly enjoyed myself, and I was hoping to breeze through World 6 so that I can leave a positive review, remarking that it's a good game for casual gamers, since the puzzles aren't that complicated and that their challenge came from being timing-based, but World 6 introduced a mechanic that led to a huge difficulty spike! I got stumped, and while I love most puzzle games, I didn't like this one enough to spend time working out the solutions. The game has an interesting concept, but I just couldn't get into it, and I wouldn't recommend a game that I didn't personally enjoy, but feel free to check it out as one man's trash could be another man's treasure. Heck, I might just give it another go myself in the future, but not too soon, of course.

There is so much I like about this game, and I want to say that first before I'm critical. I love how they deliver exactly what the premise implies, it's a puzzle game stripped down to its bare elements. And a lot of the puzzle design is really creative, I found myself having "Aha!" moments over and over. The visual design and music are also great. And while the "story" is abstract as heck, I enjoyed all of the segments at the end of each world where you have a little companion that you often have to guide through the levels, that's really fun.

The reason I can't recommend this game is that I just don't think it's polished enough. I found some glaring bugs that, in multiple cases, softlocked my save file and made finishing the game impossible. The first time around, I got all the way to the b+ world, and up to the room with the three locks and splitting pathways that lead off into rooms with keys. Well, I went into one of the rooms, got a key, came back, and before I could use it, I accidentally reset (by holding R) and then poof! The key was gone. The padlock was still there, and no amount of reseting in the room I got the key from brought it back. As far as I can tell, it is now impossible to complete the game on that 5 hour save file. So I started another file, and ran into another problem. The companion in World 6 that follows you and copies your movements straight up stopped moving. Like, I was pressing in every direction, but it just would not move. And reseting did nothing, so I would say that save file is dead as well.

In short, I can't recommend someone a game where it's easily possible to softlock the game, without even trying to do so. I want to like this game, I really do

controls lag so timing is off

INACCESSIBILITY WARNING: you cannot remap controls on this game.

Wanted to play this game because I'm into chill puzzle games. Unfortunately was not able to play it because the devs couldn't be bothered to let you remap the controls. With the disability I have this is a dealbreaker for me. Disappointed.

It gets repetitive and doesnt feel satisfactory when u solve the puzzles. I also got stuck in a checkpoint death loop one time which is kinda annoying. 5/10

Absolutely do not recommend
Broken ♥♥♥♥ with gamebreaking bugs.

I've reached the end of world 4, earning an achievement which less than 50% of players have reached. My explanation for how this is happened is that linelight is kinda boring.

It is the sort of game that simple yes/no-recommendation does not really work: I wouldn't recommend it to my past self who had not yet played the game, while some others would probably enjoy this a lot. For it's a great example of lots of promise brought down by an annoying mechanism that makes me not want to play it (and since the game description here is not too clear about it, for now I opt for "not recommended".

The mechanism in question being timer puzzles, and that they are done in the worst way: that if you mess up the correct timing, there's a good chance that you die and have to restart the level.

I think I could have put up with this if they had dumped the idea that touching those moving red lines means death: they could still have kept the levels that involve manipulating them to follow a certain path. And they could have kept that you can't get past them, but if they hit you it's just like hitting the wall.

With the other mechanisms shown, those would still have produced content which I might not have adored (I don't really enjoy any timer puzzles) but which would still have been more manageable: now it shows a "without repeated dying until you have built enough muscle memory for a particular level, it's not a proper puzzle platformer" cliche that in itself should die.

That's actually a key element, that the gameplay of this is essentially that of a puzzle platformer; the minimalistic art style does not make it too obvious but it is there. And I guess people who like puzzle platformers would enjoy this a lot.
Those of us who are more wary of that particular genre should be very suspicious about this as well, despite the promise there is a good chance you'll dislike this as well before even reaching the end of the first world...

I rate it 60/144