Auditorium is a fun, browser-based game that involves multiple senses and your brain! Part symphony, part visual art work, and part puzzle, Auditorium combines a lot of great elements to make a complete game. A final commercial version has recently been released with 70 different levels over 15 different acts, but a good sized demo of the game is available on their website that spans multiple acts.
The light show component is available from the very beginning. Your objective as the player is to redirect a flow of light into a container. The light starts off as white, but further into the levels you can redirect it through different color loops to change the color. This isn’t just for show, some containers will only respond to certain colors. The symphony begins as you fill up the containers. You’ll hear different instruments as you fill different containers and it all blends together very nicely. This is a very soothing game that prepares you for the mental challenge of puzzling out how to go about redirecting the flow just right so that all the containers are filled simultaneously. Once that happens, the level completes and you move onto the next setup.
Here’s what you have to assist you:
Directionals
As you can probably guess, this directional will push any photons of light that enter its area of influence (the thin outside concentric circle) down. Different directionals might push in different directions. To interact with this guy, you can move it into position and increase its area of influence. The left directional in the screenshot above pops up from having your mouse on the center white circle. Just drag it where ever you’d like to move it. The directional on the right is what you’ll see to increase the area of influence. Just click between the thin circle and the center circle and drag away or toward the center white circle to increase or decrease its influence. Your object is to use the directionals to change the flow of light so that it consistently reaches a container and fills it up to the top.
Containers
The containers will vary as the levels go on as to what color of light will cause them to start filling up. You change the color of light by going through different color rings. You’ll have to use the directionals just right (although there are multiple ways to solve the puzzle) to get the light where it needs to go. Of course, you’re not just limited to directionals throughout the game. Other elements, like Attraction and Repulsion, come into play and keep the puzzles interesting. You can see more of the other elements by going to the Auditorium site, clicking on Learn More, and scrolling down to the Control area.
If you make your way through a few levels, soon you should be seeing something like this:
Auditorium is Flash-based game, so it requires a Flash-enabled browser. It can run full-screen or inside a webpage. With some of the visual elements, you’ll want a decent processor to run on and with the music basis, you’ll want a decent Internet connection so that the music files can download smoothly. I had no problem with my cable Internet connection. One convenient feature about Auditorium is that it remembers the last level you passed if you happen to close your browser. It will prompt asking if you want to resume the next time you return to the site.
Check out the Auditorium demo (which definitely has enough content for a few sittings) and see if the full version is worth your Alexander Hamilton ($10) at the Auditorium site.