Puzzle Quest: Galactrix Review

By Ned Jordan

The original Puzzle Quest game was a clever blend of a puzzle game and RPG elements that produced an enjoyable and addicting game. Like an RPG, you had quests, character classes, and new spells and skills to learn as your character reached new levels of experience. However, all of the battles in the game were fought by playing a puzzle game competitively against your current adversary. It certainly helped that the game's puzzle-based battles were played using a variation of the gem-matching game Bejeweled, an excellent puzzle game in its own right that has spawned a seemingly endless stream of clones. Success in the world of videogames inevitably leads to a sequel, and now we have Puzzle Quest Galactrix. While the basic concept remains the same as in the original game, Galactrix introduces a number of changes and is more than simply Puzzle Quest... in space.

You begin a game of Galactrix by selecting a character, but unlike the original Puzzle Quest there aren't any character classes. Your character will still gain experience, but new abilities are gained through ship upgrades rather than character advancement. When your character advances a level you're given a couple of points to spend in one of four categories which basically affect your starting energy levels in a fight and how much energy you gain when matching certain colors of gems. In practical terms this determines factors such as your ship's starting shield strength or the available power for your weapons systems. This allows you to customize your character to your style of play – aggressive, defensive, etc. All of this results in a game that feels a little less like an RPG and more like a space epic.

The puzzle game central to all battles in the game has undergone a transformation in Galactrix. The object of the game is still to match three or more gems in a line by swapping the positions of two adjacent gems, but the gems are now hexagonal in shape and can be matched and swapped in six directions. When matches are made in Bejeweled or the original Puzzle Quest, the gems sitting above the eliminated gems 'fall' to take their place and new gems enter from the top of the screen. Galactrix takes the idea that there's no 'up' in space and applies it to the puzzles in that new gems can enter the screen from any direction. The direction that the gems move is dependent on the direction in which you swapped gems to form a match, and if that sounds a bit confusing, that's because it is. Predicting the direction that the gems will move can be a little tricky, and it's not always easy to select a move that you know will set off a chain reaction.

Like in the original Puzzle quest, battles are resolved in Galactrix by playing the puzzle against your computer-controlled foe. When you encounter an enemy ship, either as part of a mission or at random in space, the action moves to the puzzle board where you alternate moves with your opponent. The color of the gems determine the bonus bestowed when you match a row of three or more of them. Blue gems add power to your shields, red, yellow, and green gems provide different kinds of energy to power your ship's weapons and upgrades, and purple and silver gems provide bonus experience and money. There are also special black gems with red numbers known as Bola mines. When you match these, the red numbers are added and the total is applies as damage to the enemy ship. Damage is first applied to the enemy's shields, and once they are drawn down to zero the damage is applied to the ship's hull. Once the hull strength reaches zero, the ship is destroyed and the survivor wins the fight. These mines are the primary way to do damage to your opponent, but there are offensive ship upgrades that can deal damage as well as long as you've accumulated enough of the right types of energy. The capabilities of the ship upgrades serve the same role as spells did in the original game, and you have the option on your turn to use a ship upgrade instead of making a move on the puzzle board. There are a wide variety of upgrades available in the game and you can store extras to be freely swapped in and out of any starbase. This gives you the flexibility to configure your ship to suit your mission, a flexibility that's further extended by the ability to own a couple of different ships at a time.

Galactrix extends the puzzle-based play beyond combat. Planetary systems are linked by stargates and before a stargate is used for the first time it must be 'hacked'. The hacking procedure is played using the same puzzle as used in battles, but in this case there's no opponent to compete against. Instead you are given a sequence of colored gems and you must make a match on the puzzle board with gems of the same color. Make the match and you're given the next color to match, and if you make it to the end of the sequence before the timer expires, then you will unlock the stargate. The time constraint coupled with the fact that is can take some work to manipulate the puzzle board to set up a match of the required gem color make the hacking game a bit more difficult than the game's battles – especially since it seems that the game's AI has been dumbed-down slightly in comparison to that in the original game. Another puzzle-based activity in the game is asteroid mining. Asteroids can be mined for resources that can later be sold at a starbase for cash. The mining game replaces the gems with a lot of gray rock and a few resources gems. If you make a match of resources, they are added to your cargo hold. You can continue mining an asteroid until there are no moves left on the puzzle board of the asteroid is tapped out of resources. The mining game is rather low-key compared to the others and feels more like a mini game than a full puzzle, but it's a fun little diversion none the less and a nice addition to the game.

The galaxy in Galactrix consists of a large number of star systems interconnected by a network of stargates. You can travel as far as you'd like on the galactic map as long as you've hacked the stargate for each link you've traversed. When you reach a system with a locked gate, you'll need to enter it and hack the gate before you can move beyond that system. The galaxy is large but navigation is simple. Just click on the system that you'd like to travel to and your ship will hop from system to system automatically as long as there are a string of open stargates between you and your destination. As a very helpful aid to navigation, the game marks systems in which new missions are available and those you need to visit to complete your current mission.

Each system has about a half dozen locations that you can visit to mine, receive and complete missions, sell cargo, and upgrade your ship. Each system belongs to a faction and if you're not friendly to a faction as a result of the missions that you've completed you may find yourself under attack as soon as you show your face. There are also a few ships wandering around each system and you can attack them to gain money, cargo, and experience, but you do so at the risk of damaging your reputation with the owning faction.

If you enjoyed Puzzle Quest, then you'll find a lot to like about Galactrix. It's Puzzle Quest on a galactic scale and provides a tremendous amount of gameplay for an Xbox Live Arcade game, and when you're finished with it you still have the option of playing the puzzle online against other gamers. Unless you have a strong dislike of puzzle games like Bejeweled, you'll probably have a great time with Galactrix.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 88%. More than just Puzzle Quest in space...