Light Seeker Review

A while ago, I came across a campaign on BackerKit for a collection of 2-player games in soda cans. Admittedly, the novelty of the soda cans is what initially drew me in, but reading through the campaign about each of the games convinced me to back it. And that’s how I came away with the ‘fridge’ bundle of all 4 soda can games. This review is for the first one of the group that I played, Light Seeker.

Light Seeker is a game of abstract strategy in which players are attempting to create the most light in the world. Taking turns, players will be manipulating cubes to create adjacent areas of light in hopes of creating the largest and brightest area. To setup for the game, randomly place the Cubes in a 3×3 grid, with all Cubes showing the dark faces. There should be a small gap between all of the Cubes. Place the Buh blocking token onto the center Cube. Choose a player to be the starting player, and the game is ready to begin. Pictured below is the starting setup.

Players will be alternating turns, taking 2 Actions every turn (exception: 1st turn of the game is only 1 Action). On your turn, you will first select a Cube to manipulate. The Cube you choose must have an open space orthogonally adjacent to it, and it cannot have the Buh token upon it. Once you select a Cube, you can then choose to Slide it, or Tilt it. To Slide a Cube, you will simply slide it into an open orthogonally adjacent space, not rotating or changing the face in any way. If you choose to Tilt, you will tilt the Cube over one edge into an open orthogonally adjacent space, thus resulting in a new side facing up. In either case, at the end of your 2 Actions, every Cube must still be orthogonally/diagonally adjacent to at least one other Cube, and there must be more Light dots showing across all the Cube faces than when you began your turn.

The last thing you will do on your turn is to move the Buh token to a different Cube. The Buh token is a blocker, and the Cube it rests on cannot be manipulated. This can play into your strategy as you can block your opponent from using certain Cubes on their turns! Another thing to keep in mind – you can perform your 2 Actions on 2 different Cubes or both Actions on the same Cube. Think carefully about your moves!

The goal of the game is to create an area of Light that has a dot value of 7 or more. (Check out the picture below to see the Light dots on the Cube faces). An area of Light is a group of Light faces that are orthogonally adjacent to each other. Once there is a connected group of at least 7 Light dots/faces at the end of a turn, the player who just ended their turn is the winner!

Light Seeker seemed pretty simple at first, but it ended up surprising me with the strategic implications it offers. The gameplay is straightforward – Slide/Tilt Cube, repeat, move Buh, wait for next turn – but it keeps you engaged the entire time. There are three elements to Light Seeker that I really love, and the first is that it’s played on an endless grid. The game begins with the Cubes in a 3×3 grid, but as the game progresses, Cubes will be moving in many different directions. It really allows players to open up their strategy, as they’re not confined to that simple 3×3 grid. Another element that I really like is the use of the Buh token. I kind of already mentioned it above, but it allows you to block a Cube for your opponent’s next turn. You’ve got to be thinking ahead to what your opponent could do on their turn to see if you can effectively block them. There have been several times in my plays that I can see a winning move for my opponent, but luckily Buh allows me to stop them from winning. Unless they can figure out a way to win using a different Cube. Your strategy has to always be adaptable since you never know where Buh is going to end up.

The last thing I really like about Light Seeker is that, at the end of your turn, there must be more Light visible than there was at the start of your turn. You can’t just be constantly trying to undo what your opponent has done, you have to keep the game moving forward. And that kind of puts a ticking clock on the gameplay, even without a physical timer. As new Light is revealed each turn, it becomes a race of sorts to see which player can manage to connect it all into one single area of Light. And that goes hand-in-hand with the use of the Buh token mentioned above. And using the endless grid to your advantage. All of these elements mesh extremely well together to make for a pretty strategic game.

I’ll briefly touch on components. For starters, I can’t not mention the soda can ‘box.’ It’s a neat concept, and it works well for this small game. It looks like a real soda can, and I definitely love the novelty of it. Aside from that, the game components are pretty great too! The Cubes are nice chunky wooden ‘dice’ with some cool artwork on them. The Buh token is also cute and has unique art. I’m happy with the production quality that ThunderGryph Games brought to this little soda can game!

Is Light Seeker my favorite 2-player game? Not really. But I do thoroughly enjoy it. The small footprint, ease of learning/play, and strategy involved keep me coming back for more. There are many things that I like about this game, and really few things that I dislike. Some games go super quickly and definitely feel weighted towards one player, simply because the starting orientation of the Cubes allowed them to win in fewer turns. But other games feel like a real tug-of-war between the players, as each finds a way to disconnect/block their opponent from easy victory. Regardless of those little things, I do enjoy this game overall. Purple Phoenix Games gives this one an enlightened 8 / 12. Let us know if you agree, and keep your eye out for our reviews of the rest of the Soda Pop Collection games coming soon!