by Charlotte Anderson

Created on: August 16, 2007   Last Updated: July 31, 2010

In Games and Alawar Games bring you Turtix, a lively side-scrolling game featuring bigheaded turtles as its occupants. By now, if you've read up on Alawar Games, you know its downloads come fast, installation faster. In less than five minutes I was up and running, listening to jungle themed music as I entered my name to begin play in my own new profile. Easy to navigate and easy to read, the main menu has several options.

My recommendation is to begin in story mode, though you also have the option of arcade mode. Story mode allows you to learn more about the game and the (duh) story behind it. That, or you can keep reading here. First things first, you've typed in your name and now you have an extra information panel on the main menu. This panel tells you which profile is loaded, what level that profile is on, and what difficulty the profile is set to.

Clicking on story mode brings up the "new game" screen, wherein you're able to set the difficulty rating. Easy is for beginners who haven't played much of the arcade style games. Medium is the setting most of us who've played Super Mario Brothers even once will likely enjoy, and Expert is the setting for die-hard fans of side-scrolling fun. Once you've chosen your difficulty setting, you're taken to the story panels. You learn that Turtix, the title character of the game, was the star pupil of an old shaman and together they ran the school of magic.

The artifact of power, a diamond, is shattered by accident one day while Turtix was practicing a hard spell, and it was flung in five pieces over various areas of land. Meanwhile, Turtix was knocked unconscious, evil forces loosed upon the land, and all the other students of the academy were kidnapped!

Now when Turtix wakes up, he takes it upon himself to leave the academy and go free his fellow students and find the five shards of the diamond. Here, the actual game play begins with a striking up of Eastern-influenced music and amazing graphics. The background and foreground are animated and seem to pop out of the screen. Colors are brilliant and mesh well together.

To complete each level, you must free every trapped turtle within it. You also need to pick up gems along the way, and defeat the enemies around each cage. First, jumping or walking over them picks up gems. Enemies must be jumped on, and then kicked before they are defeated. Cages are busted open by jumping on them.

As you move through the levels, different enemies and conditions are added. Disappearing terrain, invulnerable enemies, new powers and health buffs along the way are just a few of the features that open up. Be on the lookout for areas that hold diamonds that may be out of the way, not all the walls you think are solid are, and you earn more points for finding secret areas.

The game plays, all in all, like Super Mario did. Being a child of the 80s, I have a hard time separating myself from comparing this game to the Mario Bros series. As much as I obsessed over those darned plumbers, I can honestly say Turtix is an entertaining way to spend a few hours. It won't keep my attention for more than a little while at a time, but newer generations of children who perhaps weren't raised on side-scrolling jump and collect type games will get a good kick out of this game.

The only flaw I found in this game was the way the turtles are drawn. In life, turtles are all shell and teeny limbs. In Turtix, they're all head and tiny little bodies. Other than that one nit-picky little detail, I found Turtix by Alawar and In Games to be a fun, active and enjoyable game to play, and would rate it playable by all ages.

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