Lately, lots of games have been claiming to create Zen-like experiences that would put you into a state similar to hours of meditation. Often these games fall short for one of two reasons: they’re not actually relaxing or there’s not enough content to keep you playing.
Breath of Light offers a great experience on par with Let There Be Life. In that game you build trees by adding branches and wildlife. In Breath of Light, you’re solving spatial puzzles by directing a double-helix-like ray of light toward crystals in order to transform them into flowers. You use a variety of tools to change the path of the light. Some of these are simple stones, others are orbs with gravitational pulls that will make the light circle them.
Most of the puzzles in Breath of Light are fairly straightforward and easy to solve. (That’s the point of a relaxation game, after all.) But if you come across a puzzle that has you stumped, you can simply skip it and move on to any of the other puzzles. That’s one thing I really liked about Breath of Light. Lots of other games lock you into a certain progression where you have to beat the first puzzle in order to unlock the next. In Breath of Light, you can go to any puzzle at any time you like.
The puzzles are also grouped into five background colors, so you can select a color based on your mood. Although I would spend some time on the early puzzles (with the pink background) simply to get a grasp on the basic concepts. Besides the pretty visuals, Breath of Light also features a nice soundtrack reminiscent of what I usually hear when I’m getting a massage.
Breath of Light is a great little game to play while you curl up on the couch after a really hard day. I found it a fantastic way to unwind once my daughter was asleep. Picking out puzzles on a light purple background that I could play around with made my wound-up mind and body a little bit lighter.
