Deflektor Download (1998 Puzzle Game)

This early, authorized freeware remake of the puzzle game from 1987 updates the graphics and sounds while maintaining the original gameplay. Each level is a puzzle room filled with obstacles and viewed from above, where the objective is to use a series of mirrors to guide a laser beam towards a receiver device and complete the stage. The mirrors are stationary, but can be rotated to deflect the light to several directions, with some turning automatically all the time. The player must configure the mirrors and carefully avoid the mines and walls that reflect the laser back to itself, causing the emitting device to overload and explode. Bomb detonators have to be activated and destroyed to open a passage to the receiver. Other features change the behavior of the laser: the prism bends the light in random 90° angles; the optical fiber nodes act as a portals, transporting the beam to another place of the board; logical doors have internal mirrors that absorb or deflect the laser when hit at the correct orientation. This remake received a new version in 2006.

Deflektor is an excellent PC remake of the original (well, back then it was) and difficult puzzle game designed by Costa Panayi first for the Spectrum computers. The idea is to rotate various mirrors scattered across the screen so that a beam of light is deflected from the starting point to the end point before your energy runs out.

To complicate matters, there are walls and various other objects that the beam has to cross or destroy before you can complete the level. Some surfaces reflect the beam (but you can't control which way they do), some absorb it and yet others act as a sort of teleport, moving the beam to another part of the grid and allowing you on some screens to get at places that would otherwise be completely inaccessible. On all but the first three screens, there are also laser bugs that float around, changing the angle of the mirrors and generally getting in your way. And there is a strict time limit for every level, which means you have to think and act fast.

Deflektor boasts over 60 levels of devilishly difficult designs, although the early ones are easy enough to whet your appetite and teach you the basic concepts. Definitely a must-have for every puzzle fan, especially fans of challenging brainteasers.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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