The original Puzzle Quest was one of those rare moments in gaming where a small development team combined two worn out genres to create something fresh and incredibly addictive, which then went on to receive critical acclaim and steal hours from the lives of hopeless digital savants.
The demo to the sci-fi themed follow up, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix has landed online, and this Geek Culturally educated editor decided to give it a test run to see if it’s a worthy successor or a waste of memory on your desktop.
One of the things that jumps out at you during the first few minutes of playtime is just how much they are pushing the “science fiction” angle.
Now instead of being a noble young knight venturing around a medieval landscape fighting orcs and participating in a generic fantasy plotline, you’re a noble space pilot fighting alien lizard-men and participating in a generic space opera plotline.
To start out I selected my character from a gallery consisting of a super serious black male with what looked like telepathic head gear acting as a fashion accessory, a semi-bubbly girl with pink hair, a vaguely Megan Fox looking brunette, and a creepy double-ganger for the blonde guy in Fight Club.
I decided on the brunette, named her “General Foxly” for good measure and ventured out into the wide open world of Galactrix.
My first encounter with an awkwardly designed alien dinosaur introduced the new combat system, which is essentially Bejeweled against an opponent. You have to match certain gems in order to bring their energy bar down to zero and win the “battle.”
The game board is now hexagonal, which resembles the one in Hexic, and you now have a shield you can recharge by matching blue gems. The shield actually makes the game a bit less brutal than the original, which the game makes up for by having the enemy occasionally unleash hammer of Thor levels of damage onto your protagonist.
Galactrix plays a lot like Puzzle Quest, and yet still manages to differentiate itself enough to keep veterans interested. It’s more than worth the hard drive space, although be warned; this is one of those demos where you can’t save, so when you’re, you’re done.
This really hit home after I quit and came back to find that General Foxly had faded off into digital oblivion.
