Beam is the second co-op puzzle in our TwozyGames Originals lineup, and the hardest one to describe in a sentence. One player aims a beam of light and can rotate it, nothing else. The other can only stand where that light falls. The asymmetry is the entire design: the person who can see where the light needs to go cannot move it, and the person who can move it is standing inside it and cannot see the room. We wrote the code, so this guide can tell you exactly what the game is watching โ and how to clear all six levels.
The rule that makes it co-op
Only the walker turns mirrors, and only while lit. The emitter cannot touch them. Reach for a mirror from the dark and the game flashes TOO DARK TO REACH and refuses. That one restriction is what stops Beam collapsing into a single-player game with a spectator: to change the light, someone has to be standing in it, and to be standing in it, someone else has to put it there.
It also sets the rhythm of every level. The emitter is not aiming at a target โ they are aiming at a person, and that person is walking. Park the beam and your partner walks out of it.
How to tell you are in the light
Look at the beam itself. It is drawn as a bright core inside a wider soft glow, and that glow is not decoration โ it is drawn at exactly the width that counts as lit. Inside the glow you are safe; outside it you are in the dark, however close it looks. The light is a corridor, not a lamp.
And your walker will tell you the moment you lose it: the orb dims, starts to shake, and a red ring begins closing around it. That ring is your shadow timer. Let it complete and you are lost.
Darkness is a timer, not a wall
You can walk into the dark. You just cannot live there. The ring takes two full seconds to close, which is a long time โ long enough to cross most gaps on purpose.
The part most players never notice is that the ring unwinds far faster than it fills. A walker most of the way to lost is back to untouched after well under a second back in the beam. So short dark hops are close to free as long as you return to the light immediately โ what kills people is standing still in the dark deciding what to do. Move first, think in the light.
Three barriers that look similar and are not
Beam has three kinds of obstacle and telling them apart is most of the game:
Walls โ solid blocks. They stop the walker and they stop the light. You can see the beam end at them.
Bars โ the hatched grates. They stop the walker only. Light passes straight through, and you can watch it do so. This is the single most common misunderstanding: a bar sitting across a lit corridor looks exactly like something you should be able to burn away with the beam, and you cannot. There is nothing breakable anywhere in Beam. Walk into one and the game tells you as much โ GO AROUND โ LIGHT PASSES, YOU DO NOT. You go around.
Gates โ also walker-only, but they open. Each gate is wired to one receptor, and the beam has to go touch that receptor. Gates never block light either, which is deliberate: a gate that cut the beam could sever the light feeding its own receptor and flicker forever.
Gates latch โ charge, return, then cross
Touching a receptor with the beam refills that gate instantly and to full, and it then runs down on its own whether or not the light stays. You do not have to guess how much is left: an open gate drains a coloured bar along its length, and turns red and flashes when it is about to shut.
That refill is the mechanic. It means you sweep the beam across a receptor in passing rather than parking on it โ parking is the one thing an emitter cannot afford, because the walker is standing in the dark for every frame of it.
So the correct order at every gate is always the same four beats: charge the receptor โ swing back โ relight your partner โ walk through in the light. The latch lasts long enough for all four, comfortably. It does not last long enough for hesitation. And do not try to open the gate and cross it at the same moment โ that is merely tight in 2P and flatly impossible solo, because one person cannot rotate the beam and walk the walker in the same instant.
Receptors take the same narrow corridor the walker does, so aim at one exactly the way you would aim at your partner.
Dying never undoes your mirrors
Losing the walker to the dark costs you less than you think. The run restarts at the entrance, but every mirror you turned stays turned and the beam keeps its angle. Only pressing R wipes the level back to its opening state. So Beam is a ratchet, and it rewards the exact opposite instinct from our other co-op puzzle Tether, where a single death costs you the whole run.
Practical consequence: when a level is confusing, push the mirror chain forward even if the trip looks fatal. Build one link, die, come back to a level with one link already built. The only mistake is hitting R out of frustration.
The beam is faster than the walker โ be early
Race them once and watch: a quarter turn of the beam is finished before the walker has crossed a third of the room. The beam is comfortably the quicker of the two, which is why good emitters do not follow โ they arrive first. Put the light where your partner is going and let them walk into it, instead of chasing them one step behind and feeding them a stripe of shadow the whole way.
Level-by-level walkthrough
1. First Light โ the beam points straight down the middle and a bar lies across the left of centre. Step around its right-hand end, and the emitter leans right so the corridor stays over the walker. That is the whole level, and it exists to teach one fact before anything else can go wrong: bars are walked around, not shot through.
2. Corner โ the light runs along the ceiling into a mirror in the top-right corner, then turns down. A vertical bar splits the top corridor and a large block sits in the middle of the field, so the route is: slip below the bar, run the gap between the block and the ceiling, come down the right-hand side, around the second bar, and into the corner. Nothing here needs turning โ this level is purely about the emitter tracking. If the beam is ever stationary for more than a moment, someone's red ring is closing.
3. Handoff โ the mirror in the dead centre throws the light to the right; the goal is on the left wall. Walk down the beam to the mirror, turn it until the light points left, then follow it out. The first level where the walker changes the puzzle rather than just surviving it, and the first place the lit-to-turn rule bites: you must be standing in the glow at the moment you turn.
4. The Gate โ a wall splits the field with a single gate in it, and the receptor sits down and to the left, well off your route. Aiming right keeps your partner lit and the gate shut; aiming at the receptor opens the gate and abandons them. Do the swing, the walk and the swing back as one continuous move and the ring only closes partway before the light comes back โ there is real room in it, but only if nobody hesitates. Say the plan out loud before you start.
5. Two Turns โ the beam goes up the middle to a mirror, then left along the ceiling to a second mirror that currently throws the light straight out of the field. The walker has to reach that far mirror, and a bar across the middle of the room means going around its end, so the emitter is tracking the whole way up. Turn the second mirror so the light comes back down the left wall, then ride it down to the goal.
6. Long Way โ everything at once. The beam runs down the left wall into a mirror, right along the floor to a second mirror that at first reflects it straight back the way it came. Turn that one so the light climbs the right-hand wall, up through the hatch in the floor of the sealed room in the top-right corner, and onto the goal. Now the last move: that hatch is a gate. Walk up the right wall in the light, sweep the beam across the receptor near the middle of the floor โ which cuts the mirror chain and puts you in the dark โ then swing straight back and go up through the hatch while the gate's bar is still draining. On a clean run the red ring barely starts to close, once, on the final step.
Solo and 2P are different physics, not difficulty settings
In solo you play both roles and swap with Shift; the emitter simply stays where you left it. There is no partner bot, on purpose โ in a puzzle, a helpful bot would have to know the solution, and knowing the solution is the puzzle. What changes is that every cost runs in series: rotate, switch, walk, switch, rotate back. In 2P those overlap. The worst gate in the game therefore costs a solo player noticeably more darkness than it costs a pair, and the two-second ring is sized off the solo number, not the comfortable one.
In 2P, P1 takes the emitter on A and D, P2 takes the walker on the arrow keys with the slash key to turn mirrors โ one keyboard, two players, no second device. Expect to talk constantly; "hold, I'm charging the gate" is a sentence you will say on every attempt at level four and six.
Ready to try it? Play Beam free in your browser, or browse the rest of the Originals lineup.
