February 25, 2008 - Last week at the Game
Developers Conference D3 finally gave us a peak at the successor to
last year's surprise hit, Puzzle Quest. We've known for a while now
that developer Infinite Interactive is working on another RPG/puzzle
hybrid set in space called Galactrix. It turns out this is our next PQ
fix and has added the brand name to its title so that it reads: Puzzle
Quest -- Galactrix.

D3 was only showing off the new battle system at this point.
Galactrix's puzzle mode is still a match three game, but now the gems
are hexagonal. They can be swapped horizontally, vertically, and now
diagonally. As the action has been moved from the countryside of
Etheria to zero-gravity space, the direction from which new gems will
fall into play changes based on which way you swap tiles. They can now
replenish from any part of the playing field's circumference. D3 hopes
this adds another level of strategy to gameplay as we plan our moves in
anticipation of creating combos.

Players will still take damage if they make a mistake and do not match
three with their swap. Damage gems now come in varieties of 1, 3, 5,
and 10, and matching them will deal their total amount of damage to the
enemy.

Instead of choosing a character from several different classes at the
start of the game, there is just one character who can then be
customized throughout the game. Battles are fought between the player's
ship and the enemy's. Instead of spells, there are special attacks at
your disposal once you've built up your ship's energy. Red, yellow, and
green tiles are used to build up your energy reserves (much like mana
in PQ) and can be spent to engage in defensive maneuvers or powerful
attacks.

We no longer will be earning currency in battle. Instead, the white
tiles increase our intelligence, which leads to discovering more juicy
rumors outside of combat. We know we can upgrade and customize our
vehicle, but for now it is unclear how we go about doing that without
any money. D3 wasn't ready to divulge this information quite yet.


At first glance, Galactrix reminds us of Hexic.


Another
new development is the addition of shields to each player. Clearing
blue tiles will increase your shield, and your opponent will need to
diminish it before they deal any damage to you.

Even though D3 wasn't showing any gameplay outside of battle, we
managed to squeeze a few details out of them anyway. Galactrix asks the
question, "What if people didn't have a soul?" The story involves an
evil corporation trying to take control of the galaxy. Players will
still move about an overworld map from location to location, only now
they can zoom out to view the entire solar system and visit different
galaxies.

Multiplayer is still included and should be very familiar to those that
have played PQ in versus mode. D3 also assured us that every effort is
being made to make sure the game's AI is "fair." Some who played Puzzle
Quest were convinced the game would sometimes cheat, but D3 and
Infinite Interactive have always insisted this was not the case.

Many gameplay features from Puzzle Quest are still up in the air. As
Galactrix is still in development, D3 could not confirm if players will
be able to "siege" territories like they could in PQ and add them to
their nation of tax-paying citizens.

It looks like Galactrix is bringing several new features to the Puzzle
Quest table. It could end up being a much more complicated game than
its predecessor. We'll have lots more coverage as it nears its fall
2008 release.