Star Beams

What is Star Beams?

Star Beams is a free light puzzle made with twikoi's creatures. A star shines a beam across a little board at night, and her creatures are asleep on round cushions.

You place mirrors and tilt them so the light bounces from creature to creature. Each one the light touches sits up and wakes. You only get a few mirrors, so every one has to be in the right square.

Every board is checked before you see it: it has exactly one answer, counted twice by two different methods. There are 90 boards in six chapters, plus a daily board.

How to play

1. Light goes straight from the star, square by square, and every sleeper it touches wakes up.
2. Place a mirror: tap a square the light passes, or drag a mirror from the tray onto it. Tap a mirror to tilt it the other way.
3. Change your mind: drag a mirror to another square, or back to the tray. ↶ undoes, ⟲ starts over.
4. Later chapters: splitters send light two ways, coloured cushions need light of their colour, spinners are fixed and only tilt, and grumps on a moon cushion must stay in the dark.
5. Stuck? The 💡 hint finds a piece in the wrong place and says what it does, or shows where the next one goes and which creature it wakes. Show me puts it there.
6. While you drag a mirror, the light shows where it would go. On a computer: click and drag, or use the arrow keys and Space.

Features

• 90 boards in six chapters, each adding one idea, sorted from easy to hard.
• Every board has exactly one answer, found by the level maker and checked again by a second counter that works a different way.
• A lesson you play, not read: it accepts only the move it is teaching and says why another move doesn't work.
• Hints that teach: a wrong piece is pointed out with what it does to the light, and the next piece comes with the creature it wakes.
• Made for fingers: tap to place, tap to tilt, drag to move, and the light shows where it would go while you drag.
• Her creatures react: sleepers sit up and hop when the light reaches them, grumps grumble, and the creature that just woke jumps up big beside the board.
• Stars for no hints and few moves, a Perfect badge for the fewest moves, picture pages every 4 boards, a book of every creature you have woken and every mirror keeper, and a daily board to share.

Modes, levels and unlocks

Chapters

First light (mirrors), Two ways (splitters), Rose and sky (colours), Spinners, Let them sleep (grumps) and Starfall. Each chapter opens after 8 boards of the one before.

Daily board

One board a day, the same for everyone, with the same creatures.

Lesson

A little 5x5 that teaches placing and tilting mirrors, one move at a time.

Tips

• Follow the light backwards: start from the sleeper that is hardest to reach and ask which square the light must turn on.
• A mirror only helps on a square the light already passes, or will pass once the mirrors before it are right.
• Count your mirrors: if the light needs more turns than you have mirrors, look for a path with fewer bends.
• Watch out for grumps: a path that clips a moon cushion is the wrong path.
• Drag a mirror slowly over the board: the light shows where it would go before you let go.

Who will like Star Beams?

Star Beams is for anyone who likes a calm puzzle with a bright payoff, from a first one-mirror board to a two-star board with splitters, colours and grumps.

It is also for fans of twikoi's art: her creatures sleep on every board, waiting for the light.

Questions

▶ Play Star Beams