Giveaway of the Day - Crystalix

Installation:

This is an 11.6Mb download which installs to 40Mb. The unzipped package consists of the familiar three files a read me that I suggest all new comers to read and separate modules for activation and installing the game. IYou should activate the game first, which installs the registration key into the registry then install the game.

Introduction:

Another game from alawar to brighten up our pre Christmas surprises. Thank you Alawar for being so gnerous with your games. The following is the program description given by Alawar in their read me document:

”In a fairyland, settled by good wizards, a calamity occurred. A comet came from the depth of the universe and scattered into thousands of fragments above forests, fields and rivers, turning them into the lifeless desert.
In Crystalix, the new game of the action-puzzle genre, you will have to destroy the fragments of the comet with the help of magic artifacts and your own ingenuity. You will really have to do your best, because the comet fragments are almost impregnable and are destroyed only by touching them with magic colored figures. Move them along the game field to destroy the dreadful pieces of the universe evil!”

The following are the minimum specifications that you require to be able to run the game properly; unfortunately I’ve uninstalled my copy of Vista home premium due to too many problems so cannot at this time comment upon whether this will run using Vista. The basic requirements shouldn’t be a problem with any computer bought post millennium. But if you still use a computer that was assembled before the millennium, you may have problems running the game as you do require some basic 3D emulation. All motherboard built over the last seven years should have at least 16Mb of graphics memory. If you don’t you can still pick up a low end graphics card from most decent computer hardware retailers for less than $10. I buy most of my stuff from a particular distributor (Microdirect) that are selling off cards of this type for only a couple of pounds (less than $5):
- Windows95/98/ME/2000/XP
- Pentium II 300 or higher processor
- SVGA card with 16Mb and Direct3D support;
- 64 MB RAM or above.
- DirectX 8.0 or higher

The Game:

The game opens with a short story that is accompanied by tinkling music. Following this you are presented with the profile set up screen where you have to input your name before you can proceed. Once the first profile has been set up you have the opportunity to set up multiple profiles whenever you return to the game by clicking on the If this is not you, click here link. The options menu is very basic, with only music and sound sliders and a windowed and 32 bit color toggle. Any changes made to these must be saved before leaving the options menu otherwise they will revert to whatever they were set to before the changes.

The help pages are animated and give a good representation of what you are required to do to proceed in the game. I did take a couple of screen captures of these, but because of the animations, they cannot show the full story. If you find that the help menu isn’t sufficient to explain what you have to do, then check out the demo, which is probably better with respect to the actual game play. The help menu does help with showing you the differences between the two games.

There are two game modes Classic and Jewel Games, both accompanied by a more muted music, that seems appropriate for the game. Not too boring and yet not too intrusive; In the classic game you have to remove all the crystals and tokens from the arena using the shapes that appear at the bottom of the arena. These shapes can be rotated using the right mouse button. The level ends when you have cleared all the crystals. Though if the shapes that appear at the bottom fill the whole of the bottom area, you lose a life. There are tools to enable you to destroy shapes in the form of a hammer or a wand that removes single crystals from the playing arena. You have ten of each at the start of a game. These are selected by clicking on the appropriate tool to the right of the playing area. During the level you will get several sets of crystals to destroy. Some of the shapes that are constantly appearing at the bottom of the playing area contain bonuses in the form of extra points, another wand or a hammer. There are also certain crystals that appear to sparkle more than the rest. When these are removed they explode (no visuals, just an audible explosion) and remove a few other crystals besides the ones being removed due to the shape. On each page of a level there are bonus tokens either in the form of single coins, piles of coins or shaped crystals, that when clicked on will add to your score. When the page scrolls to the next page within a level, you will have the opportunity to pick up even more booty Once you’ve completed a level, a window pops up showing you your level statistics such as the number of crystal destroyed, the number of shapes (figures) used, the time it took and your score; it will then scroll on to the next level. Any shapes you haven’t used remain in the pool at the bottom and if this fills up the game ends. You will be given the opportunity to restart the level that you had managed to get to and thankfully not from the beginning (unless you’re after getting a higher score). You do get some warning just before this happens that sounds like the cogs of a machine grating. If you have any hammers left use them quickly to destroy some of the shapes. Always try to use the bigger shapes at the beginning of a new set so that the smaller pieces can be used as the whole pile becomes smaller. This will help keep the shapes at the bottom of the playing area clear. You can pause the game by pressing the escape button that brings up a window that will either allow you to resume or restart the level as well as return to the main menu the help menu or the options menu;

In the jewel game, you have to destroy all the bad crystals and fill the game field with your tokens. Once the arena is full of gold that’s the end of the level. The game play is similar, but instead of an irregular pile of crystals you get a grid of crystals and there is only one grid per level. Also you don’t get bonus bricks or shapes with bonus items, which make this game slightly harder.

Selecting either of the game modes will bring up a further screen where you can choose the difficulty you wish to play at. Once this is done the appropriate animated help screen will pop up. This can be stopped by checking the box in the bottom left of the playing area. The difference between the difficulty levels is the speed at which the shapes appear at the bottom of the screen.

Conclusion:

I found this game entertaining and different enough from the usual color/shape matching games that it’s a definite keeper on my computers. I think it’s worth a good 6.5 out of 10 I could even be worth a7 out of 10 but I think there are far too many of these types of games. The game is presented well, the help menu’s and in game bonuses as well as the two modes of play make this a worthwhile solitaire and family game. Your progress is saved throughout the game in both modes so there’s no worries about having to manually save your game, or store codes to return to the same point. If you want to start from the beginning there is as already mentioned on option to do so when you pause the game. Thank you Alawar and the Game Giveaway team for yet another excellent game.

For in game screen captures and menu screens follow the links below:

All on one page:

http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Crystalix/?start=all

As a slideshow:

http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Crystalix/?albumview=slideshow

Googled:

http://images.google.co.uk/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&q=Crystalix+game&btnG=Search+Images

Jetta comment #44 from Thursday, thanks for your concern. The computer problems have been mainly of my own making. I’d stripped three down for upgrading and cleaning all together, and mixed up some of the components as well as inadvertently connecting some connectors wrongly. It’s taken me since early September to finally have all my computers running. Also thank you to Tamarra #26 from yesterday for your kind comment. I did miss my daily giveaways for the short period I was absent, though it looks like there was a lot of discontentment with what was given away