Osta Puzzle Quest: Galactrix

Extreamly addictive , a gem matching game with a somewhat solid space rpg like game written around it. i'm not even 1/4 of the way through it yet. it does crash occasionally , so use those jump gates to save your game.

PIcked this up in a sale at 90% off; and yet I struggle to make sense of it. It feels like the computer is cheating all the time. I make a move, match 3,4 or even 5 gems, and if i'm lucky I'll get a chain. The computer will make a move and the gems added to the board conviently creates chain after chain after chain. The AI's moves is like a vegas fruit machine paying out, mine are like rotten fruit. I guess I could just be unlucky, but I suspect some fowl play going on. Oh and it crashed afer 25mins of play, taken steam with it.

I loved PQ-1, a bit more meh about PQ-2 but this is likely to never be played again..

It's a Puzzle Quest game. So of course it's great but I didn't ever really get into the puzzle gameplay of this game. I played every game in the series and while this one is good the other games are all so much better. Skip this one and get the original Puzzle Quest. If you already played all the other games and maybe want more: go ahead. Buy this.

You spend too much time hacking stargates, which leads to timed puzzles where you have to match certain colors, which are harder than they sound. Also, it crashes too often for my tastes.

I loved Puzzle Quest, kinda meh on PQ2, but my god, do I hate this game.
Played for less than an hour and the computer cheats in this game more than in PQ, and I hate the game board, so confusing to try figuring out, and you are given no practice dummy to try making sense of it all.

Seriously cannot recommend this game, go play Puzzle Quest 1 or 2 instead.

Highly buggy, may not event start.

The start menue is bugged on windows 7 64 bit. Only background and a mouse pointer appears, and the game won't start (see the toic on the discussion board). Lets hope this gets fixed sometimes becuase right now this is a scam, not a game.

Update: The stuck in menue is a driver issue appearing for both AMD and Nivida drivers. Personally (having a nvida 470) updating to latest drivers and restarting the comupter solved the problems. My older drivers were still petty recent (around half a year old), which I likely why a lot of people see this issue.

As for the game itself, and the recomendation, I'll update the review once more when I've played enough.

I actually really enjoyed the departure from the fantasy setting and the overhaul of the gameplay. Maybe not as polished as the original PQ but still really good in it's own right. I grabbed it at 90% off which made it 99 cents and at that price it is a must buy for anyone that likes PQ or just puzzle games in general. At full price it is a little harder to recommend unless you are a puzzle game junkie, otherwise I would say just wait for a sale to pick this one up.

Don't let my short play time dissuade you from my review. I've been playing this game for about 2 years on my laptop. I just played a bit to make sure the Steam version works, and it does. Quite flawlessly, really. I've encountered none of the issues anyone else has, so far. I'm on a Win 7 64-bit laptop.

This game has lost none of it's charm, or it's difficulty. It plays simply enough. All you have to do is connect 3-or-more like colored tiles to gain the effect desired. During battle you can only move one tile per turn. The game seamlessly enters weapons and other tools you can use during battle as well. For example, you have a laser. This laser requires 5 red tiles to use. During the battle, you make enough red tile combos to get 5, and then you can use the laser. If you don't want to use it right away, that's fine. Every time you get a combo, these colored tiles are added to the ship's "battle inventory", and are stored for later use. There are tools to alter the gravity of the board, destroy specific tiles to gain their bonuses, affect your (or your enemy's) ship in some way, etc. To damage the enemy ship, you make a combo of the mines that are strewn about the board. Each mine has it's own number blinking on it, which is the amount of damage it causes. A combo of 3 level 5 mines will deal 15 damage, for example. You could get a combo of 7 level 10 mines (very hard to do), and deal massive damage in just one turn. Be aware that your enemy also uses these mines, and has their own weapons and tools. Don't worry though, as battles aren't timed. You will have all the time you need to study the board, and make a decision.

You can mine asteroids to gain materials to sell to any of the star bases, then use the profits to buy new ships, weapons, etc. Each asteroid has different materials on them, and each has an amount listed that you need to reach. If you reach these, you'll get a massive bonus to the resources you gain. Don't worry if you don't meet the requirement, you'll still get all the resources you mined. So it's always useful, and sometimes necessary, to mine during the game. Mining sequences are not timed, but have a limited amount of combos you can make, depending on the amount of tiles present on the board.

The most difficult, and extremely frustrating, point in the game... is the gate hacks. In order to get to different star systems, more asteroids to mine, and missions, you need to hack into an "star gate." This is not optional. In order to progress through the main story, this is required. Even if you don't want to explore. Each gate has a different difficulty. Every gate requires a certain amount of color combos to open it, and you have to do these in the shown sequence... and in the amount of time it gives you. The harder the difficulty of the gate, the more combos you have to make, and in less time available. Since the way the board works (once you get a combo, more tiles enter the board), you could easily get a string of combos and win within a few seconds. Or it'll give you a couple combos, and you can easily get confused as to why you aren't affecting the hack. You may think you need a purple tile, but the auto combos did it for you, but you didn't notice it. So you're entering purple combos to no effect. You can easily waste time this way, and tiles for future use. Unless you're a puzzle master, and love this much of a challenge, you are guaranteed to get frustrated.

This is an amazing game. I have never played a puzzle game quite like it. Everything it does, it does exceptionally well. The dialogue is great, the battles and mining are fun, the quests (though tedious at times) are well written and unique. The galaxy map is quite expansive, with plenty of systems to explore. There are multiple factions, each with their own feelings toward you, and your actions for or against them are reflected during the game. Each star base has different bonuses (positive and negative) for different resources, so if you care about getting the max bonus for each individual resource, you're going to be traveling a lot. I don't really worry about it, though. Most systems have a "shop" where you can buy everything you need. There's also a crafting system. Sometimes when you destroy ships, meet quest requirements, etc., you'll receive "plans." With these you can create new weapons and tools that were previously unavailable to buy, or make expensive items with cheap resources. Later on, you will have access to PSI abilities that allow you to "skip" battles (at the cost of PSI points) with certain ship classes. So if you have a massive battleship, you don't have to fight a lowly raider shuttle, if you don't want to.

As stated earlier, this game may or may not work for you. It has worked just fine for me. But I highly recommend this game to everyone who enjoys a good puzzle board, or space ship battles, or both. This is a great game.

Possibly one of the most addictive tetris style games for me. Clash of heroes was another. I love games that dont try to impress you with flashy grpahics. It's simple, addictive and has a badass soundtrack. Buy it... buy it now!

For 99cents you can not go wrong with this game. I have played for 3 hours already today. I know I will play a lot more. 99 cents for all that time playing. And it's fun. It is hard to wrap your head around the unique angles that the swaping takes place on, but that is part of the charm of these games.

I wasn't able to get into Galactrix like the previous Puzzle Quest games. They mixed up the formula and it doesn't have that same addiction factor as before. The gem movement takes some getting used to, but it does lead to more strategic gameplay like being able to prevent certain moves your opponent can make on their next turn. The different systems don't provide any heads up display information so you can't get an idea what is in the system before you visit. And the minimap doesn't even provide system names making it pretty useless. The game also crashes way too much, and each time it does I get discouraged from playing further. Nevertheless, it's still a decent RPG match 3 adventure, just a bit of a disappointment considering the other Puzzle Quest titles were so much better.

This game is so much more fun and addicting than I expected it to be! It's not simply a bejewled type game, it's a space RPG story with bejeleweled-type minigames instead of monster fights! There are several different types of games that are mostly connect 3+ gems of the same colour to get past the level but there are also energies you collect during fights to power up weapons against enemy ships, there are mining games where you collect different resources to sell in different systems for different prices, you gain reputations with different factions depending on who you attack and what you mine and you need to hack gateways to travel between systems by doing a timed mini-game of collecting a sequence of gems.
This game far exceeded my expectations and I would recommend this game to those who enjoy mouse only puzzle games as well as those who enjoy story-focused RPGs.
(Your character doesn't move though so the image you first choose sticks with you. My first pick had her hand stuck to her chest like some kind of bewildered ♥♥♥♥♥, I couldn't handle it had to make a new character)

I love this game. FIrst got it on my Nintendo DS. Don't know why everyone hates it so much. It's my favorite Puzzle Quest game (including Puzzle Kingdoms and Chronicles... I've played them all.) Yes, the gameboard is different. That makes it more challenging. All the puzzle variations are more embedded in the game and keep you on your toes, especially the jump gates. And the story is interesting (unlike Kingdoms). I felt like PQ1 cheated more than this one. PQ2 seemed to cheat the least, but once you got a solid strategy/spells in place, every battle was the same. It is worth way more than 99 cents!

Bought this on sale after having spent many hours enjoying Challenge of the Warlords. This game has a familiar Puzzle Quest feel but with a fresh new take on the match 3 mechanic. The game modes are challenging without being frustrating and the story board elements are amusing. The routing system between games can become a little tiresome much like previous Puzzle Quest games but the option to "buy-pass" some of this with your in game "credit" cuts the tedium down. The game has crashed a couple of times but that aside it's been a fun return to a game style I like with plenty of new elements to entertain.

This game has practically sucked out my ability to form cohesive sentences with the overwhelming might of its sheer stupidity, so writing anything about it is hard, but I'll try to list some bullet points as to why, after several hours of playing and DESPERATELY trying to make it worth the $0.99 investment, I must warn you that it's just not possible:
- So let's say there's an enemy with a special power that skips 2-3 of your turns. Fun, huh? No big deal though, there's a power up that gets rid of debuffs. Cool. Except that you need to have a turn to use it, and all other status ailments I've encountered are incredibly petty debuffs like slightly decreasing energy collected every turn, making this power, like many, many others, totally worthless.
- The combat system itself is some of the most anger-inducing, pure luck based BS that's ever had the audacity to call itself a "Puzzle". You can have an enemy at 10 health after a half hour of matching blocks around (if it doesn't take that long for ever fight, it sure FEELS like it does, because the only blocks that cause damage are super rare and only about half of the other blocks are kind of helpful at all for either side) and then when they take their turn, mines slide in in a deluge by pure bad luck and one shot you from practically full health. Yeah, there was a lot you could do to prevent that.
- Speaking of combat, there is next to no penalty for losing, and just some piddly experience for winning, which feels downright insulting with how long and frustrating battles are.
- And the fun doesn't end there. Exploring the universe is incredibly slow, due to the fact that the game pauses to save (really, you have to make me wait in what's basically a pretty menu when most modern action games could save while I'm in the middle of an intense throwdown) ALL THE TIME. And the galaxy is huge, much bigger than it needs to be for all the content there is to "enjoy". Why are there missions where I'm flying through a smattering of planets, scanning them one at a time to find out where my objective ISN'T, until I finally get a lucky guess or there's only one place left to look? WHY DO THEY DO THIS MULTIPLE TIMES!? You will feel like the developers are intentionally trying to waste your time because apparently they think a good game is one that takes the most time to complete.
- Despite being a casual game, a surprising amount goes unexplained. I blew up one ship that I salvaged Contraband from, a high-value cargo. Unfortunately, every ship in the system now magically knew that I was a filthy drug-runner, and attacked me. Would have been nice to know that would happen! What would have been even more useful knowledge would be knowing that by fighting back, I would piss off a huge swath of the galaxy, so that even after unloading the contraband, I get attacked every freaking system I travel into, causing travel between missions to take HOURS, unless you intentionally lose every single battle that comes your way.
- Speaking of missions, these make Skyrim's fetch quests and Draugr hunts look like the works of Shakespeare. Search random planets for thing. Fight thing. Win. Or mine 20 Dragon Dildoes and 10 Mountain Dew Cases. Or, my personal favorite (and there are a LOT of these); go to X, Y, and Z and come back. Yes, half of the side quests are fetch quests where you're not even fetching something. Just go to place and come back. No fight, no minigame, not even any dialogue.
- The music is bad, and it doesn't even flow together well. I swear, the battle music loops once, and then goes back to the AMAZINGLY dull space exploring music for the other 25 minutes of the fight. Absolutely inexcusable.
In short, this game is bad. I wouldn't pay 99 cents for this piece of digital trash. I wouldn't pay ten cents. I wouldn't let the developers pay me to play it, I'm dead ♥♥♥♥ing serious. I wouldn't give this to a poor ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ child if playing it would make his mom finally love him, it wouldn't be worth it for the poor kid. I wouldn't finish one more mission if every girl from Game of Thrones would be standing naked behind me the moment I did. If this game were around in World War 2, Hitler wouldn't allow Jews to play it because it wouldn't feel morally sound. If Puzzle Quest: Galactrix were a perfectly marbled T-Bone steak, dogs that eat their own feces wouldn't even be able to handle its smell without vomiting. This game's release was one of the final signs of the coming of the End of Times, milennia of madness and horror with no end in sight for the tortured remains of humankind. It's an insult to all things fun, a long, brown, smelly skidmark on the underpants of humanity. It sucks, it blows, it's a piece of ♥♥♥♥ing ♥♥♥♥♥♥ garbage from a medical waste dumpster reserved for pus-oozing rotten scrotums and boil-ridden ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s, and I for one do not much care for it.

Played on Win8 tablet (i5, HD4000):

This is one of the greatest casual games to play on a tablet. The controls are perfect; there's no way to tell it's a PC game. Nothing staggers unlike most other "probably good to play on a tablet" games. You just click/swipe the diamonds, go through a pretty entertaining (for a casual game) story and don't ever worry about incorrectly read controls or anything else. There're tons of missions, RPG progression and some kind of minigames as well but nothing too complicated, so it's fun to play when you need to pass time.

- Works with touchscreen;
- Doesn't need multitouch;
- Doesn't require a keyboard;
- Runs smoothly.

I usually don't like match 3 games, but this one, for some reason, I can't seem to let go.

'ah, 20 mins casual game time'... An hour later, I'm still playing. Now luckily, this isn't your normal match 3 game, you actually have to think about where you want things to fall. Now bear in mind, your playing board if hexagonal, 6 sided, and depending which 'gems' you move and how, depends on which way the gems fall.

It can be massively frustrating at times, especially if you have a decent spec ship, and the AI gets a shed load of mines on you in one fell swoop. Before you know it you're starting again. Same with the hacking and mining. At least with the hacking you can keep going back.

Crafting your parts and the ability to upgrade your craft is quite a nice touch, and the map is quite large. There's certainly more than enough to keep peeps entertained for some time.

For a simple format match 3 game, I like it.

Like Puzzle Quest? Tired of playing it the same way? Then get this game! Lots to like about this game.

For a puzzle game, this is suprisingly addictive, after the first hour or so, this get's quite strategical and difficult.

Recommend that you get all the PSI you can, while the hacking and battles are easy. I made the mistake of going for firepower and that is rarely a good thing.

If you do go down the 'RUN AND GUN' method, get better weapons by selling cargo when it is green on the sell menu!

GET IT NAOW

Very casual game, with slight RPG elements, and a simple but enjoyable storyline. If you like games that you can play with one hand on the mouse, and the other hand on your beer, buy it. It's cheap fun.