Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Game
Game2020
Lightmatter
Developer Tunnel Vision Games
Lightmatter is a 2020 puzzle video game developed by Tunnel Vision Games and published by Aspyr for Microsoft Windows. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
190 reactions from 2 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky) · newest Oct 6, 2026 · last updated Oct 7, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
89
LovedLoved
161 positive · 19 negative
95% range 84–93%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 161 | 19 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
10 newer reactions are still waiting for a label.
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
2,663 of 2,910 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
60 of 190 · most liked firstWhy, hello there! I'm a narrative designer currently working on a dating base-building game called Patchwork Home. Other than that, I also worked on Eternights (narrative designer), Lightmatter (writer) and Figment 2 (writer).
unlabelledView post →Anyone got any... good puzzle game recs... For reference I loved all the Myst games, Obra Dinn, 999, Blue Prince, Blake Manor, Chants of Sennaar, Portal, Lightmatter, Obduction, The Room, probably a bunch more I'm forgetting....
unlabelledView post →"LightMatter" where.... Light Matters... You first start off in this almost like "Portal" puzzle game where you are on a dying installation as if it is almost on the verge of collapse. As you progress in the game you are found with someone on the commentary as you complete each and every puzzle. Almost identical to the other game title, however they are just missing the mark of where portal had it right. Like any other game as you progress new and different challenges persist and you must…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →After a long hiatus of not being on Steam (broken PC), I have returned to my account on the Steam Deck. I was looking to play something First-Person to test how sh*t I might be at trying to use the trackpads and Lightmatter was pretty much the first one I landed on so I figured, why not? I’m so glad I did, because it was a joy from start to finish. You can tell pretty immediately that this game is heavily inspired by Portal, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. We all love Portal, and…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Lightmatter, developed by Tunnel Vision Games and published by Aspyr, is a first-person puzzle experience built around a single, striking idea that defines every aspect of its design: darkness is deadly, and only light can keep you alive. Set inside a sterile, futuristic research facility, the game places players in an environment that feels both clinical and ominous, where the absence of light is not just a visual detail but a constant, immediate threat. This premise gives the game a strong…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I thoroughly enjoyed this game and especially appreciated all the references to Portal. The game is well done and each level is fun. There are a few issues with it: 1. It cuts off the top and bottom of the screen in widescreen monitors. It's not that big of a deal, except when you are trying to figure out which level you are on (as that is in the top right corner) or when you are trying to select items in the menus. For example, the graphics menu has a FOV option, but I could never…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The masochist in me really enjoyed being insulted constantly for being dumb & slow while solving various light based puzzles. Also a PSA for future players: There's a chance your jump(space) button might stop working if you use Shift+Tab to access Steam overlay. Just press Shift again while ingame and it should fix the problem. Considering the game being 5 years old while writing this review, I don't have any hopes this being fixed by developers.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Time for a long spun-up community game of Lightmatter! A light based puzzle game!
unlabelledView post →Really clever puzzle game built around light and shadows. It starts simple but quickly ramps up into some brain-melting challenges. The humor and narration keep it from feeling too dry. Short, but very satisfying.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's short, it's sweet, it makes your brain go "vrooom". The challenges don't overstay their welcome, and while you can die, the checkpoints are very very generous and you won't get frustrated by having to do a task over and over just because you fail the same jump. There is a bit of timing asked, especially in the end, but nothing too difficult. OH, and there is no final countdown when reaching the end puzzle. Which I GREATLY appreciate ! The game's mood is heavily influenced by "Portal"…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hello Darkness My Old Friend Key features Portal wanna be, Actually nice puzzle mechanics, Randomly spawns a purring cat (rare encounter) Light Me Up Light is life, indeed. Overall Lightmatter is a nice puzzle game. It's very short, smaller than first Portal game, which Lightmatter tributes several times! There's a radio playing the song, if you poke dark corners you'll find the turret and cube, and then the director mentions Aperture Science. I think those mentions should have been more…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What a unique concept. Amazing puzzles, had a lot of fun figuring them out! Lore is connected to the portal series, cave Johnson was mentioned and some props like the cube and the turrets were a dead giveaway! So excited to see if this somehow connects to world of half life/portal series!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It tries too hard to mimic Portal and Stanley Parable's humor and fails miserably. The comments from Virgil become absolutely annoying throughout the entire game. Other than that, the puzzles are okay, and the price is low. So, thumbs up only if you find it on discount. 5/10.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I run into this phenomenon maybe once a year: the dreaded game that is the pinnacle of mediocrity. I'm not enjoying it. I'm not NOT enjoying it. I played an hour and a half of this with my brain parked in auto-pilot. 70% of players bail on the game before I did. It can feel a bit like a student project or a prototype, a jumble of simple rooms disposed of one after the other, mundane puzzles, nothing clever or unexpected, recycled elements, extremely basic presentation. Lightmatter is like…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Really fun puzzle game. A lot of homage to portal, especially on the humour front (Also a direct mention of Aperture Science). Avoid the shadows, shine light on them, do what you must to escape. 8/10
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a relatively short game with excellent graphics and story writing. The puzzles are amusing and interrupted from time to time with timed sections of obstacles. Some eye-hand coordination required, but most emphasis is on reasoning and puzzle solving. It would have been nice to have decision points that could split the storyline and allowed for more gameplay.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is absolutely beautiful! And I think it was inspired by Portal, which I really like. Lightmatter gave me wonderful emotions and surprised me with its unusual mechanics.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Really fun and short physics game. The story is narrated and has some interesting funny moments as the narrator can't figure out who you are. The puzzles are all well-thought-out and just in the right spot between easy and hard. Highly recommend!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you like your puzzle games really angular, your narrator's obnoxiousness cranked to 11, and having to sit through the same drawn out death animation then this game is for you. Although not without it's clever and satisfying puzzles, the gameplay started to become tedious once the reflecting lamp was introduced. And unfortunately this tediousness was on top of an already unbearable narrator who just won't stop talking... EVER!!! It got so bad I had to both mute him and disable subtitles.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Camera animation and movement locked to 60 FPS, which makes gameplay stutter like crazy.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →7/10. The inspiration from Portal and similar first-person puzzle games is clear, and the puzzles + voice acting are decent, but the aesthetic, story, and world building/levels feel somewhat more dreary and hollow than its inspiration.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Lightmatter is a Portal-like that wears its heart on its sleeve. While clearly paying homage to the Portal games, it manages to remain separate and unique on its own with its puzzle mechanics, which mainly centre on using light to avoid touching shadows. It almost reminds me of The Talos Principle for those who've played it before. The game's visuals are also kept simple, but visually appealing with blues, whites, and inky blacks. The voice acting is a real highlight; it's very well done! As…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What a blast, i knew i would love it as soon as i started, sound quality and atmosphere were top notch. Game is about of portal-like puzzles where shadows kills you, kinda like the floor is lava, so the puzzles resolve of lighting your path to the exit, Story is good too witch i didnt except it. Anyway definitly grab it if you see it on sale, it will not dissapoint.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game runs very poorly, it seems to have FPS capped at very low value, and you can only uncap it by manually modifying game binary files.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Warning: play this at 60 fps or lower! This review is only for the demo. I have not bought the full game and I do not plan on doing it anytime soon. I only recommend the demo. One thing I liked was that despite being a lot like Talos with its laser tools, the spotlights obviously shed light on a bigger area when placed further back. So it's not just a clone of fps puzzle games before it, it builds on top of them. But the cons, big sigh: There's no reason for this game to melt my pc while in the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Really great game. I like the art style, the story is fun, the puzzles and overall concept are great. I think it was a little too short though, it could have easily been double the length. Halfway through you discovery a second style of puzzle involving a different light tool and I expected there would be one or two more after that, but nope. Even taking your time you will likely finish the game in about 2 or 3 hours, maybe a little less. Still a game worth your time, but I think at $20…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →For today's stream, we're starting Lightmatter! This game is coming highly recommended by our local Onion! Let's solve some puzzles! #vtuber #vtlive twitch.tv/athenasaibo
unlabelledView post →Now you're thinking with lights
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A delightful mind challenging love letter to Portal. Well balanced, VERY polished, no annoyances, no irritations, pure puzzling with seldom jumping races to dilute the otherwise purely intellectual game play. Perhaps dialogues... or better say monologues, could have been slightly more interesting, or maybe there could be less of them, or the voice actor could be slightly more involved in what he was reading, but that's nitpicking. Great job and highly recommended to anyone who enjoyed Portal 1…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very nice narration heavy puzzle game focused on avoiding shadows.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Here's a piece of #dkgame news I missed all the way back in January! The defunct cmpany Tunnel Vision Games got together for the anniversary of Lightmatter to release an anniversary edition of nine different prototypes from various stages of its development: store.steampowered.com/app/3383220/...
unlabelledView post →A quick and fun puzzle game, with good voice acting and an interesting concept. Very short though. The story is beatable in about 4 hours. Get it on sale when it's about 75% off!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Now add portals to it.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →try hard portal, better play portal revolution, because its lightmatter's story is just generic/bland at most
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Мне игра понравилась. Головоломки сложные, интересные. Стоит игра копейки, когда со скидкой.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Lightmatter is a first-person puzzle game heavily inspired by the Portal series, with several in-game references to it. Puzzles revolve around light, shadows, moving platforms, and switches to progress. I found most puzzles straightforward, needing help only ~5% of the time. If you want a simpler version of The Talos Principle with some humor, this is worth playing.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Lightmatter is basically what happens when someone takes Portal, adds light and shadow mechanics, and is just self-aware enough to poke fun at the comparison. The game throws quite a few jabs and easter eggs at Aperture Science. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are a bit too on the nose. The humor aims in the same direction as Portal, even if it does not quite reach the same heights. That said, it is definitely not "Temu Portal." It stands well on its own. The puzzles are solid,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →4-5h of puzzles and -94% discount = must try
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I like this game. It is very Portal-esque both in some puzzles and in lore and story, but it is lacking in some way I cannot describe. Maybe it is because Portal's existence robs this game of uniqueness. The plot is funny. I love the labels you get and how they change throughout the game from inspector to spy, and the voice acting was really great. But other than that the visuals are really boring with a very predictable ending. The puzzles were really simple and so were the jumping puzzles.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fun short puzzle game. The puzzles weren't all too hard but sometimes I did get stuck unable to think out of the box. Overall pretty relaxing as well, since there are no time limits as well.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Portal but with light rays instead of portals. It's good in it's own way for sure, but foundationally, this is more portal.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A bit "light" on puzzles. Light Matter is a game that has taken inspiration from Portal in some big ways, and it doesn't hide this. The developers obviously loved Portal and so they throw in homages to it throughout the game. If you've played Portal, you know somewhat what to expect. You've got room based puzzles to get through with a snarky off screen voice diriding you and calling you names. You also have the uncanny ability to survive a fall from any height. Unfortunately, Light…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →10/10 would recommend
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The perfect game to play in one sitting at the end of a long week. The music, story, voice acting, puzzles, and increasingly intriguing setting really captivated me. The OST should be sold or provided for free as DLC. The team did a really great job. I was thoroughly challenged at the end of each puzzle "act" or "arc" so to speak. The problem-solving sometimes requires the player to take a few minutes to visualize the layout of the puzzles and try every combination until they've passed the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Seems like a decent puzzle game. It has a Portal vibe, which is nice. The puzzles were annoying to me so I didn't get far. If I liked puzzles, I'd probably like this.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's so and so. OK when it's on sale but not otherwise. The game desperately tries to be another Portal but fails pretty much on every level to live up to it. It constantly references Portal but not in a clever way. It even reuses jokes from Portal. Where GlaDOS is at times snarky, ironic, sarcastic, trolling and passive aggressive the guy who is constantly talking at you in this game is just being a pompous prick 24/7. That shtick gets real old real fast. The environment doesn't make any…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Buy on sale, really fun game I enjoyed this puzzle game a LOT. Highly recommend for puzzle enjoyers
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Years ago i randomly found this game and gave it a try cuz it had a free demo. Immediately fell in love with it. I really like the concept of using light sources to illuminate a safe path for you to walk on (floor is lava = darkness consumes you) Game has many references to Portal and Aperture. It is a chill puzzle/strategy game. Some puzzles really got me stuck but i was never frustrated. Amazing game. 10/10
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →anything for you grand admiral
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →💡🔥 LIGHTMATTER — When Light Becomes the Ultimate Rule 🔥💡 Developer: Tunnel Vision Games Review Type: ⭐ Positive | 🎮 Detailed | 💡 Helpful 🎯 Introduction Lightmatter is a first-person puzzle game that places lighting at the core of its design. Developed by Tunnel Vision Games, the game blends logical thinking, careful exploration, and subtle storytelling into a smart and engaging experience for puzzle enthusiasts. From the very beginning, it establishes a clear concept: light…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →отличная игра, вдохновлённая порталом
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fun puzzler, not quite as funny as Portal but still pretty charming. Doesn't overstay its welcome either. Wahoo!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The trailer doesn't quite do it justice! Great portal-like game! (If you like this I also recommend The Entropy Centre), The central antagonist is REALLY well written, and this game (especially late-game) does a great job of getting you to think! Not just about the puzzles, but also about perspectives and philosophy (not in a preachy or pretentious way though). To a degree, the story feels like a microcosm of modern politics.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A very fun little puzzle game trying its best to emulate a portal like expereince. While it misses the mark on getting to an Aperture level of puzzle design, the story itself is fun and the puzzles are engaging, I liked the mechanics with the shadows and the light, had me stumped a few times with a few fun moments of realization. I'd recommend it but you can probably finish this game in an afternoon.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Really fun little game. Good puzzles and reasonable achievements. Dialogues regarding Cave Johnson are entirely on brand.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →7/10 Very fun and amusing game, got it on sale and I had a good time. I can think of at least 4 times that I was thinking "How the hell do I solve this??" and after a few attempts got through it.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A nice and quick puzzle game, with some Portal inspirations. Had some really nice brain scratch moments!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →pretty cool little logic game. story/atmosphere is interesting enough. puzzles aren't too difficult, but they manage to be engaging.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Short, but sweet puzzler with interesting ideas and good voice acting.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I can't believe I haven't heard of this before. The puzzle system they've come up with is super flexible and every level feels unique. Recommend
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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