[u]In short:[/u] Prelogate features logic puzzles revolving around laser circuits and additive colour mixing. Similar to Zachtronics games the leaderboards encourage you to optimize your layouts. Gameplay is smart and enjoyable, but the presentation is severely lacking to the point where it sometimes impedes gameplay. Still, given the interesting puzzles, roughly 10 hours of content and an almost criminally cheap asking-price this is an easy recommendation.
[u]In long:[/u] Each of the 64 levels has square tiles assembled into floating platforms. Laser emitters and receivers are prebuilt. [b][u]Gameplay[/u][/b] consists of redirecting and mixing the various laser beams so the receiver conditions are met. What starts simple with mirrors and mixers soon turns into sprawling circuits of various logic gates through several stages. These stages (called "steps" in-game) are where the meat of the challenge lies: You get to design just one layout per level, but the inputs and outputs will cycle through various combinations. That means your circuit will have to work with all of them, leading to some really interesting design challenges, especially on later levels when you are subject to very harsh space constraints.
On average the game is of moderate [b][u]difficulty[/u][/b]. The mechanics have close ties to propositional logic (AND, OR, XOR and IF gates are available). But even with a solid understanding of propositional logic there are some non-trivial challenges (most notably due to the absence of a NOT gate). The progression is very uneven though. The tutorialisation is pretty good, then the game ramps up, but twice has a very sharp drop in difficulty which feels odd. Most levels are short and self-contained so you can usually knock out 2-4 if you have half an hour to spare. Only 2 or 3 levels I found innately very hard, but a few more optional challenges are available in the form of achievements. Beyond that you are left competing with the leaderboards (number of devices, length of laser, etc.) like you might on a Zachtronics game.
Indeed Prelogate shares quite a few similarities with early Zachtronics games like SpaceChem. Unfortunately that similarity extends to a clunky [b][u]UI[/u][/b]. Don't get me wrong - the game is completely functional and even has several hotkeys. But the menus are pretty convoluted. Some stuff is smart, like the ability to keep 5 manual saves plus an autosave per level. Other stuff is bafflingly silly like the "Levels" menu not allowing progression unlike the "Play" menu. When you finish a level on "Play" mode you get to see the leaderboard statistics for the first time, which might alert you to much better solutions being available. Unfortunately to replay a level you have to quit to main menu and enter the same stage via the "Levels" menu. There you load the autosave, have to run through all the tests again so that you can properly save it as a backup before improving upon it. Very cumbersome. The game is structured in 10 chapters, but you still have to beat each level in sequence, which has the potential of getting you stuck.
And things don't exactly improve when talking about the [b][u]visuals[/u][/b] (again quite like early Zachtronics). Both the menus and the game are quite ugly. The design is simplistic, but not really minimalist. Everything (but the lasers) is in shades of white and all of the 9 devices not only look alike, they also blend in with the floor. The game is in 3D, but offers a 2D mode, which is just a top-down camera onto the 3D level. Since all the action takes place on a 2D plane I'd prefer the 2D view, were it not almost unusable on the last third of the game. Walls and floors look virtually identical from above, some floating obstacles are indistinguishable from the top, rarely there's even a hole in a wall that is completely invisible in 2D mode. Lights on top of receivers tell you which colour they require, but errors will be marked with giant red floating exclamation marks above the device. Viewed form the top they are easily confused with red lights. It's just all very poorly thought-out and shoddily designed. It's a classic case of "developer art", where the dev might be a brilliant programmer, but not a graphical artist by a long shot.
This flaw extends to the [b][u]audio[/u][/b]. The sound effects are awful - just shrill bleeps everywhere. The music is pretty good though, which comes as no surprise as the soundtrack comprises of free music by Kevin MacLeod.
On the [b][u]technical side[/u][/b] I am fully satisfied though. The Unity loader takes care of windowed mode and resolution selection and even allows for customisation of hotkeys (I found some default hotkeys a little unintuitive). Beyond that there is an extensive ingame settings menu complete with separate volume sliders, some rendering quality controls and even camera sensitivity and axis inversions. Very good stuff! The game ran completely stable and had appropriately low hardware demands.
In [b][u]conclusion[/u][/b] Prelogate has a rock-solid core of enjoyable and at times challenging logic puzzles. While there are a select few smart and convenient features, a lot of the user experience leaves much to be desired. There is probably somewhere around 8 hours of unique content, with a few hours on top if you want all achievements. That makes the asking price of 4 USD/EUR already very cheap, but on sale for -80% Prelogate is an absolute steal for any fan of Zachtronics-style logic games.
