Game Review: Luxantis

“Table presence” is a term I see more and more game designers talking about. It’s just a fancy way to talk about how attention grabbing a game is when people are playing it. If you’re at a gaming convention, does it look like every other game there, or does it find a way to stand out? If you’re playing a game at a FLGS (Friendly Local Game Shop) will people come over and want to know more about it? To increase a game’s table presence, you might have unique game components, detailed miniatures, oversized cards, or battery-powered LED game boards that light up. Oh, you haven’t seen any boards that light up? Let’s talk about Luxantis.

Luxantis
Designer: Kai Haferkamp
Publisher: HABA

Theme

The story goes like this: Shadow creatures are moving towards the castle in Luxantis. 1-4 adventurers must travel through the magical forest in search of the special items needed to defeat the shadow creatures. However, the forest is filled with good fairies and evil spirits. The good fairies will shine blue, showing players a path that is safe, while the evil spirits will glow a sinister red: a warning to those who dare to travel too close

At the end of each player’s turn, one of 4 things will happen:

• The good fairies will shine blue, reminding players where the safe paths are
• The evil spirits come out, and send any player who is on a space that glows red back to the start.
• The forest is randomized with the fairies and spirits moving, making new areas blue or red.
• The shadow creatures move towards Luxantis Castle.

The players win if they successfully defeat all 8 shadow creatures that are marching towards the castle. The players lose if a single shadow creature reaches the castle.

Gameplay

Luxantis is a fully cooperative tower defense game that has players move through a maze that utilizes LEDs in order to defend said tower.

There are two main components to this game: the board with the castle that the shadow creatures will move towards and the LED forest. You will place 4 face-up shadow creatures along the bottom 4 spaces on the castle board, and a stack of 4 face down shadow creatures.

Each shadow creature has 1-4 item icons on its card. These items are found all throughout the LED forest board. If you land on an item, place a token over each icon of that item seen on all shadow creature cards. If all icons on a shadow creature are covered up, then it is defeated and removed from the game.

On a player’s turn, they can move up to 5 spaces and then roll the die. On 2 of the die faces, you will press the blue button on the forest to activate the blue lights. This is to remind players where the safe paths are through the forest. On 2 of the die faces, you will press the red button. This will activate the red lights. Any player who is on a space that lights up red is sent back to the starting area of the forest. One of the dies faces will cause you to hit the black reset button on the forest. This immediately randomizes what spaces are red, and which are blue. So even if you were on a safe blue space, the randomizer may send you back to the starting area. The final die face has an icon of a shadow creature. This causes the players to choose one row of shadow creatures to advance towards the castle.

So, players will move up to 5 spaces, roll the die, and do whatever the die says, and that’s it. Next player’s turn. Players will search the forest for the items they need to defeat the shadow creatures moving towards the castle, all while remembering where the safe and unsafe paths are.

There is some variable difficulty during set up. For easier games only shuffle the shadow creature cards that have 1-2 item icons. For more difficult games, only use the ones with 3-4 item icons.

For Parents

There are small tokens for covering the item icons on shadow creature cards. The player pieces that move through the forest are mostly clear plastic so you can see the light shine from underneath. This is just another reason to make sure little hands aren’t reaching up, knocking things on the floor.

Choking hazards aside, this game is made by HABA so you know it’s intended for young children. The box says ages 6+. My 4 year old enjoys it, but that’s because his older siblings can help set up the game and know how to play. This is probably my 5 year old’s current favorite game.

Honestly, the hardest part about playing this with kids is keeping them from just pushing the buttons on the forest to make it light up just because. We’ve played a few times, so they understand that they just push it when the die says to. But it did take a few games before they had that self restraint.

This game is VERY easy. It’s designed to have kids win. The shadow creatures only move one space when their die face comes up. If no shadow creatures ever get knocked out, you can roll 13 shadow creature faces before 1 reaches the castle. I did introduce a house rule to makes things a little more difficult. I had my kids move 2 shadow creatures every time that die face came up. That put them at needing 7 of that die face before the castle is reached. They have played 3 times with that rule, and won twice. The time the lost, they were 1 turn away from winning. So, I think that’s just the right difficulty for them.

Final Thoughts

Luxantis is The Legend of Zelda meets Lite-Brite, and the result is a fun game with table presence like nothing else out there. The kids love this game. The box says playtime is 20-30 minutes. I don’t think we’ve ever finished a game of Luxantis in 20 minutes, but 30 feels like a more accurate time. This is definitely the game with the longest playtime that my 4 and 5 year olds will play without getting distracted or wanting to quit partway through. The turns are fast-past with not much downtime, which is huge part of that.

The LED board is so unique. Most games that utilize technology can feel like they were done just for the sake to using a gimmick. This one does not. The whole reason the LEDs are used it to be able to quickly recall or change a memorization feature with the press of a button. It is using technology to merely speed up an established game mechanic. You could have the exact same effect of the LED board by having a larger forest and placing a red or blue card face down on each space. But revealing and randomizing those cards at the end of each turn would take up way too much time. The LED forest merely streamlines that and promotes that active thinking of trying to remember where the red or blue lights were.

Luxantis is a game I can sit down and have fun playing with the kids, or I can help them set it up and walk away as they play on their own. The biggest downside to having the LED board is its energy save feature. If you go too long in between pressing buttons the board will shut off. I think it’s something like 5 minutes. During gameplay, this isn’t an issue since turns regularly only take 30-40 seconds before rolling a die that will prompt you to press a button on 5 of 6 results. My issue with it comes when we need to pause the game for a restroom break, or one of the other, younger children needs a bottle or diaper change. The board will time out. It needs turned back which changes up the current configuration of red and blue lights. I really wish there would have just been an on and off switch so that this isn’t a problem. However, in the grand scheme of things, this is minor, and I realize this.

Luxantis is a family game that uses the most unique game board I’ve ever seen as players memorize the pattern of lights to successfully navigate the maze to collect items needed to defeat enemies via tower defense. And it does it in a way that gameplay is very rapid with minimal downtime between players. This can easily be a gateway game for children where they learn mechanics and interactions that they can use to understand other games as they get older. If you’re an avid gamer, looking for ways to get your young family involved in your hobby, I think Luxantis is a great addition and a game that is unlike anything out there.