Fortix is the 21st century remake of the popular 80's arcade game Qix. The main object of this top down game is to guide your knight and his box making line into the battle field, then fence off the enemy fortress by drawing boxes around them, which in turn captures the area and grants you victory.

 

 

There are of course some twists that make capturing the areas difficult, these come in the form of dragons that fly around the battlefield and the canons, which take every opportunity to fire at you as soon as you move. To take the cannons out you have to capture the area with an axe, this will then create a catapult to destroy the canons. To destroy any other enemies such as Dragons you simply capture the area in which they are flying.

 

Your knight will be killed if he takes a hit, this counts if you are away from the baseline of the battlefield or have an unfinished line. On the plus side though you do have three lives, you just need to make sure you use them wisely. To aid you in your quest there are also power ups which will appear on the battlefield, when you capture these you will be rewarded with various bonuses, such as speed, an extra life, invulnerability etc. These can become quite invaluable so look out for them.

 

Winning is all quite straight forward to begin with and you will find yourself taking down the fortresses it easily, however as you progress through the games levels the fortresses become bigger and the enemy forces become a lot more difficult. Later on in the game you will find walls being built in front of the axes and even come up again other types of creature such as the blood bats who can attack you even on the normal safety zone of the baseline.

 

 

Graphically Fortix is presented from a top down view, its not going to win any design awards but it is very colourful and the presentation of the maps and creatures does suit the game well. The sound is also fairly decent and adds a good dramatic feel to the proceedings.

 

Fortix is a strategic, mind bending puzzle/action game which will have you hooked from the moment you turn it on, it’s so very addictive and has that one more go appeal. This is a great start to the minis series as it seems like the type of game which is perfect for people on the move. It’s hard to fault this game at the price it costs.