Virtually everyone who has access to Xbox Live or a DS has had a chance to lose hours, and in most cases their soul, to Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. The gem-shifting puzzle game is returning in the form of Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, albeit taking a turn from fantasy to sci-fi and trading in their old columns-and-rows system for hexagonal gem-based challenges.

Galactrix will be coming to the Nintendo DS February 24, 2009 and will take PC, XBLA, and PSN by storm sometime “early 2009″. Although there’s still a month before you can actually clutch the game to your wildly beating chest with your clammy hands like the jewel-matching junkie you are, there are playable demos available on the PC in downloadable and Flash-based forms.

The rules have been altered slightly from the original but Galactrix proves to be just as addictive, even in the watered down form of a demo. The Flash version lets you play through one battle, over and over. While even one battle proves the lie of the promise Infinitive Interactive made to the public, that the computer AI would be dumbed down somewhat to prevent it cheating with as great a frequency as it does in Puzzle Quest: Challenge on the Warlords, it’s great for picking up on all the new rules and learning the quirks of the new gem system. Once again you switch two gems to match three in a row of the same color. I’ve yet to fathom the pattern of new gems dropping into the grid, it’s seemingly random, but the colors were easy enough.

Stockpile red gems to unleash a fairly powerful attack called the “Trident Laser” on your opponent. Yellow and green gems combine in a move to add five to your shield, which protects your health points. Blue gems automatically add one point to your shield for each one that you match. A good move to consider is matching grey gems when it won’t allow the enemy to take a shot at you because once you reach thirty grey gems your shields are completely fortified, by five more each time you manage the feat. Purple gems seem to be useless, other than matching them five-in-a-row for an extra turn but as with the grey gems once you reach a certain number you reap the benefits, in this case an extra turn. Perhaps the most important are the mines which vary in strength by turn and cause damage to your opponent equal to their total number. If you’re lucky your move could result in so many consecutive matches that you get a “Nova” which gives you full stores of red, yellow and green gems. Even more fantastic is the “Super Nova” which eliminates your opponent’s stores of gems.

The downloadable version allows you to play through the first hour or so of the game, depending on how fast you are at decimating your opponents. This allows the player to gain a feel for the other features of the game beyond the battle system, such as the overworld and mission structure. Just as the original game had minigames for weapon crafting, enhancing your magical arsenal, and training mounts, Galactrix gives us item crafting, asteroid mining, and warpgate hacking. Knowing how many hours I have already joyfully wasted playing the Flash demo over and over, along with anyone else who has been snagged by it’s hypnotic pull, new and old hands at Puzzle Quest will lose weeks of their life to this new and welcome addition to any game collection.

Categories: DS, Demo, Impressions, PC, PSN, Upcoming Games, XBLA