When it comes to puzzle games, some games get really deep and create mind-boggling puzzles which have you scratching your head over, whereas others deliver games which are so easy a child could complete it within a few minutes. However, sometimes the simplest idea can be genius – just look at the Rubix cube or Tetris. Energy Cycle from Sometimes You have taken a well-known puzzle, expanded upon it and delivered a simple puzzle for us to ponder over – can you turn a bunch of lights into the same colour? Sounds simple but knowing Sometimes You, will there be a catch? Let’s take a look and see if Energy Cycle is enlightening or if it’s just a faulty circuit…

The game starts off fairly simple and gets harder over time. This one is a lot harder than it looks!

As expected, Energy Cycle has no story behind it as such, it’s a simple puzzle game which has been modified and given to us as a quick pick-me-up game. You are presented with a grid-like structure which contains glowing orbs. The orbs are presented in three different colours, Green, Blue and Turquoise. Once you press X on an orb, the orb will change to the next colour in the sequence and so will all the orbs in the vertical and horizontal vicinity. For example, if you had a + shape and the middle orb was blue and the outer lines were green – if you select the blue orb then it would turn turquoise and the green ones would turn blue.

That’s pretty much it, in terms of gameplay. However, the game isn’t just simple puzzles like that, they range from so simple a child could do them to so frustrating you may resort to looking up the solution. When you start getting to levels where they have multiple cross-over lines all intersecting each other, it becomes very hard to get them all to change to the same colour. Even though the game doesn’t have a ‘story’, it does have a ‘campaign mode’ which consists of 28 levels which all increase in difficulty. As with all puzzle games, I advise you to play the game yourself without any guides or help and you will get a lot more out of it and a lot more satisfaction when you finally overcome the level that’s been annoying you for a very long time!

Yet another one which is bound to baffle you – remember, every time you select an orb – all adjacent orbs also change colour along the full vertical and horizontal axis.

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The game also comes with a Time Attack mode and an Infinity Mode. Both of these are nice additions and a way of prolonging the life of the game as they are randomly generated with the Timed Mode levels offering an added sense of urgency as you are working around a timer. The big issue here is that the game doesn’t evolve – what you see in the first level is what you’ll be seeing at level 100 – true, the difficulty will get harder and it will randomly generate puzzles which require more selections in order to resolve the issue, but the premise will always be the same with no new mechanics thrown into the mix.

For me, this wasn’t an issue as I was playing this game primarily whilst games and patches were being downloaded or when I had a few minutes to spare – Games like this aren’t really meant to be played in large chunks at a time which is why I believe the PS Vita/Switch versions may actually be the best platforms for this type of game.

This is one of the random levels (within Time Mode) – As a pick-up-and-play game, you do get some challenging puzzles.

Graphically, Sometimes You have gone and made another trippy looking game! They seem to like this style as seen in games like Energy Invasion, with the constantly moving backdrop and the neon-coloured orbs. I would strongly advise against actually playing the game if you are currently on a trip or very drunk as the movements and lights might send you to a whole ‘nother level!

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The music is what you would expect from the team as well, futuristic cyber-punk music, bass and drums, rave-like music etc… Personally, this isn’t my kind of thing and I found it to be a bit distracting from playing the game, but if you like rave music then this game has plenty of tracks in there for you. They did a similar soundtrack within Energy Invasion as well – it’s a strange choice for the music within the game but I’m sure some people will appreciate it a lot more than myself.

Trophy Wise – yet again, we have a situation like Spiral Splatter and Alteric with three platinums up for grabs via three purchases. You have the PS4 version in NA and EU and the PS Vita version in NA and EU but you will only be able to get one PS Vita platinum due to the region lock. This game has a platinum rating of over 96% – so over 96% of people who own the game have fully platinumed the game on each version. This is most likely due to the game being incredibly easy if you use a guide (which is why I suggest you don’t) and there is a glitch in the game which makes it possible to cheat your way to the platinum a lot faster and easier as well.