Glo Flo Review

If you enjoy games like Piczle Lines or Trainyard, you’re going to feel right at home with Glo Flo. It’s a puzzle game where you’ll be drawing paths to connect like-colored bugs on a grid, without crossing lines. It’s a basic set-up that’s certainly be done before, but that doesn’t keep it from being fun. And yet, Glo Flo is more of a smirk than a full blown smile.

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Glo Flo is a fun and simple puzzler, but it does little to stand out from the pack.

If you enjoy games like Piczle Lines or Trainyard, you’re going to feel right at home with Glo Flo. It’s a puzzle game where you’ll be drawing paths to connect like-colored bugs on a grid, without crossing lines. It’s a basic set-up that’s certainly be done before, but that doesn’t keep it from being fun. And yet, Glo Flo is more of a smirk than a full blown smile.

In addition to the puzzles of the main mode there’s also a time attack mode that’s significantly more interesting to play. In this mode you’ll actually be timed while you solve, and will get points depending on how long your lines are onscreen. In the normal mode there’s neither and it gives you time to just stare and hash it out.

Beating a level in time attack pauses the countdown timer, which continues ticking down in the next puzzle. Covering every dot on the grid gives you extra points and some additional time on the clock as well. This gives the game a much needed extra dimension, forcing you to not only think fast but think complete.

The music is really a nice fit and really chill next to the glowing bugs of the game. The graphics themselves do look decent, but suffer from a lack of retina display support. There’s just a lack of crispness and sharpness to the graphics that, quite frankly, we’ve just come to expect.

Puzzle games like this, while tried and true, still suffer from a serious issue. There’s just no replayability here. Once you’ve solved a puzzle, there’s simply zero reason to revisit it. There’s no score generated so there’s no hook to go back. That’s addressed some in the time attack mode, but that’s a huge pail of water for that side mode to carry to keep the game interesting after you’re done going through the main game.

Glo Flo
Glo Flo

My other issue is a design choice that, while some people may not even notice, definitely bugged me in the later levels. As I was trying to parse multiple bug paths in the more complicated levels I kept running into an issue where I would begin drawing the line for one set, then want to leave it and start another line from a different bug. Sort of working on both pairs together. Well in Glo Flo, taking your finger off the line to work elsewhere causes it to disappear, and I was constantly losing work because of this. Maybe it was an intentional choice on the developer’s part, but it annoyed the stuffing out of me.

There’s a lot of complaining on my part, but really I did enjoy Glo Flo. It’s just that I enjoyed it with reservation. It’s not perfect, and when compared to those other games I mentioned earlier in the review, it simply can’t compete on that level. But as a short distraction with no pressure of long lasting appeal Glo Flo can certainly fit the bill.

The good

    The bad

      50 out of 100