Giveaway of the Day - Turtix

Introduction & Installation:

I’ve was working on a different game last night as I was told another game would be up for today, but it has been changed at the last minute so all I’m going to post is my review from 2007 with some additional information. Back then I didn’t put as much detail into my reviews but I’m sure it conveys what you need to know about the game. If you want to try the game online first to see if its worth downloading you can do so HERE

Yes we have Alawar back after an absence of three years. Tis is really good news as Alawar tend to give away some great games, (they have in the past). This was originally given away back in October 2007 where it received a brilliant and positive 93% of 270 votes. You can check out previous comments HERE

The downloaded zip file is 44.4MB which unpacks to a dual activation and setup module and a read me with the terms and conditions. The game will automatically register itself once it’s installed and the installed game is 50.2Mb. As with most giveaways there is no shortcut installed nor an uninstaller so make a note of the games installation path so that you can create one yourself.

The Game:

Despite not being into platform games apart from the occasional dip into the Brave Dwarves 2 series this is going to be a keeper for the kids.

For those who are new to the giveaway project you’ll need to activate the program using the activate icon, then install the game to wherever it is you keep your games; it’s as simple as that.

Images and Video:

You can see a slideshow of some in game images HERE; and there are some videos of gameplay HERE and HERE

The options menu is straightforward, with music, sound sliders and a full screen/window toggle, unfortunately, for those obsessed with screen resolutions, this game seems to be fixed in one mode. (It looks fine on all my monitors) There are two modes, story and arcade. The former is recommended for experienced platform players, but there seems to be no difference between the two to me, although I only played the first few levels to see if it was suitable for my children. It’s definitely a game designed for the younger ones. I think my daughter will love it, but Callum whose 8 years old may find it a little too boring. (IMO) Still it’s a lovely game that any parent or grandparent will love to have for entertaining their kids.

The game play is simple, collect all the diamonds that were spread through the levels when Turtix used his magic and rescue all the turtles, all of which are guarded by baddies, lol. There are 12 levels in each of the five worlds to explore, making a total of 60 levels. The game play does get harder as a you progress through the levels. You’ll also get end of world or maybe level bosses to deal with . See the help menu and in game help screens for details on how to play the game. You can use the keyboard, mouse or a joystick to control the game, so there are preferences covered for all of the community (I’m presuming the joystick controls can be swapped for game pads, but I’ve not checked yet). The keys are simple to learn with only movement, jump and action keys to remember.

Walking over a ? mark in game brings up a message window telling you what you must do next. Staying on the help spot for more than around 10 seconds brings up a new Turtix, whose grooving to new music. Check it out; it brought a smile to my face. The music is fresh and pleasant. I like it, but I’m sure there will be those who complain.

The game works with All platforms (i.e. XP, Vista and Win 7). The only problem I seemed to come across was progressing through the levels in arcade mode. Using Vista I couldn’t get past level 1 and using XP pro with SP2 I couldn’t progress past 2, however I think this may be something to do with me not finding the secrets. It works fine on all OS’s when playing in the story mode. I later found that once I’d played in story mode, the arcade levels were opened. It may be that to play in arcade mode you need to play the story mode first. That’s just a guess though.

Conclusion:

This is an excellent and very colorful platform game that’s ideal for the family. The kids will love it especially the younger ones, tohugh I’m sure adults will to. I used to play this with my kids when it was first given away (back then they were 7 and 9).

Well worth a good 8 out of 10 IMO.

Additional Information:

If you miss todays giveaway the game is free 24/7 from MyPlayCity (MPC), but I wont link to it because MPC have changed their policy and force you to install toolbars and change your homepage before being able to play their games. They now have a superb collection of between 500 to 600 arcade games most of which are premium games and available elsewhere for sale. They can do this because they pay the developers of these games a nominal sum so as to be able to gie the games away. Of course they rely on advertising as a way to fund their operation though MPC have also developed games in the past.

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Problems installing, activating and running today’s game:

If you have difficulty downloading or activating the game you can try again later or do one of the following – for example once downloaded when you click on the dual activation and set up file you may get the message “Failed to connect. Please try again later” Check to see if your internet explorer isn’t offline (thanks to MrSnoozles/Mike and GMMan for that fix). If the previous suggestion doesn’t work go check out previous comments from the last several weeks and look for comments from GMMan and Mike. They have also posted their possible fixes for this problem.

Mike suggests that you check to see if Internet Explorer is offline (even if you use firefox). If it is make sure that it’s online thn try again. I’ve always tried re-booting my modem and/or router with some success, though Mike has said that doing that does nothing. Still, it’s worth a try if all else fails.

If you are getting the black screen problem right click on the games executable and select properties then click on the compatibility mode and select the disable visual themes. This should fix the problem, if not try disabling the display scaling on higher dpi settings and disabling the desktop composition.

Other fixes include changing your screen resolution, installing the latest direct X (remember that XP uses DX 9 or earlier only, Vista uses DX 10 or before and Win 7 DX11 or before). Also try updating your graphics drivers. The main two chip manufacturers are NVIDIA and ATI (now AMD) both of which offer driver downloads for free. Just go to the respective manufactures home page and you’ll find a link to the driver download page. To find out which graphic card or graphics chip your computer uses type in Dxdiag in the search field (Vista or Win 7) or the run command (XP); this opens up the DirectX diagnostics panel. click on the display tab and look to the left panel. You should easily see what graphics card or chip you are using. (This is required information when selecting the correct download from the developers site).

If you are asked to turn off your Data Execution Prevention for this game to run. You can create an exception so that the game will run without having to turn DEP off. Please bear in mind it’s rare that anyone even mentioned getting a DEP warning. If you are not sure how to create an exception read THIS article, which tells you how to do it.

If you are having problems unzipping the game giveaways zip file, for example getting a message saying the file is invalid try using a different file archiver such as 7-Zip, J-Zip, CAM UnZip, Hamster Free Zip Archiver, GZip, B Zip2, peazip, ZipUnzip, FreeRAR Extract Frog, RAR File Open Knife, ALZip, The Extractor, RarZilla Free Unrar

Okay, that should be enough. there are actually many more free versions available. also there are other commercial titles such as the well-known WinRAR, Stuffit, WinAce, NXPowerlite and Corel Winzip Pro, but IMO 7-Zip is probably one of the better freebies. I did purchase a copy of Stuffit when it was on sale a few years ago and recently repurchased a more up to date version when it was o offer via BitsDuJour, but didn’t like the interface for some reason, so hardly ever use it.

If you are posting requests for help late in the day I would suggest posting in the main giveaway forums in the game Game Discussion . If you’ve installed the game but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so someone may be able to help at another time. Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it then once the giveaway period is over there’s nothing that can be done until the game is given away again (though that isn’t guaranteed. It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them as well.

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Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with search engines like Google. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of potential cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away more decent games to draw more users to their site. There are a lot of game sites and they all want your business. I really do think if we can improve on the quality and numbers of users leaving suitable feedback more developers will join the project. It’s a great environment to recruit beta testers as well; giving the community the opportunity to try out games that aren’t on general release yet.

Again PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE leave some suitable feedback once you’ve played the game for an hour or so. It can be positive or negative, but please explain your reasons for the feedback you post. It doesn’t need to be a dissertation, just a paragraph or two explaining what you think could improve the game and maybe what you didn’t like about the game with suggestions to replace the negative area’s. Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment. It will be very much appreciated by the developer, the giveaway team and me. Thank you.

Yes….

I love this game! What a great platform game! I am so glad to see Alawar back on GOTD! They have contributed so many great games over the years! This one doesn’t whack my fingers out, lol
Their Arkanoids are the best, wish they would bring those back to the main stream gaming scene instead of HOGS!
I lost Turtix due to a hard drive failure, so I am glad to see my little buddy back!
Alawar, thank you so much and thanks to GOTD!!!

Hi Whabbit! Hope all is well with you and the family…

……………….Moderator Comment…………………

Thank you Suki. And yes everythings fine. Yes it’s great to see Alawar back. When I spoke to then shortly after the last games were given away back in 2008 they said they wouldn’t be giving any more games, well, at least not in the near future. How right they were.

I’ve not done any Beta testing in around 2 years now, partly becasue I wasn’t able to get into the game testers area for some reason. I still get otifications for new beta testing, but have never bothered to contact then telling them my account is inaccessible. I think it was partly becasue last time I really took notice most of the games were time management and HOG’s, which I either don’t like or had enough of.