Puzzlexia

Old video games had pretty basic ideas and they were just as easy to figure out, but that didn’t make them simple from a gameplay point of view. In fact, old arcade titles are still renowned for their excruciating difficulty level, especially those that required lightning-fast reflexes and the ability to split your attention between multiple tasks at once.

Puzzlexia is an arcade game with puzzle elements that challenges you to figure out how to quickly collect all the diamonds from each level and get out before the moving wall crushes you to death. The time limit is pretty tight and sometimes you really have to calculate every move in order to stand a chance, which is why the experience can get frustrating every once in a while.

To begin with, each stage has a certain number of diamonds you must collect, as well as plenty of other blocks that happen to be lying around. These blocks can be collected too, but by doing so you lose precious seconds and the chance to make it to the end of the level in time. You can gain advantages by only picking up certain power-ups, such as additional time, or more points.

Unfortunately, there are a few flaws with the gameplay, because the collision system does not always work like it should and you often find yourself unable to avoid touching the blocks. In fact, it’s sometimes impossible to avoid wasting time, which makes the entire challenge feel very cheap and unfair. On top of that, the controls are not at all responsive and you can only use one directional key at once to move the character, which is mighty annoying.

In essence, a tough game is not a bad thing, but it needs to be difficult in such a way as to require a particular set of skills, and not by featuring annoying gameplay mechanics. Thankfully, the visual quality is pretty decent, although the retro look might not be everyone’s cup of tea in this case. The same goes for the sound, but you can get used to it after a while.

In the end, Puzzlexia may suffer from quite a lot of inconveniences and design mistakes, but all of these can be fixed with enough dedication and will. Thus, maybe if the controls were refined and the game had an easier to climb learning curve, it would be simpler for people to appreciate it.