Qix

It's games like Qix that make you realize the power simple ideas. Qix was originally released for the arcade in the early eighties and Nintendo bought the license later that decade, brining the game to the Game Boy. Although not nearly as popular as Tetris, Qix did achieve large-scale success as a action/real-time strategy game. As with most all classic arcade games, the rules and gameplay are simple. You control a diamond marker that starts on the boarder of a rectangle. Inside the rectangle is a series of lines that make up what is called the Qix. Your goal is to capture the majority of the area of the rectangle. You to this by drawing entering the interior of the open area, drawing a line in your wake. You can turn while in the interior and your drawn path follows you. If you are able to connect your path back to the existing boundary without having your drawn path touch the Qix during the act of drawing, you win the area carved out by your polygon.

Some twists on the game that make this challenging. One, you have two draw buttons. One gives you double points, but draws twice as slow making it easier to be hit by the Qix. Second, there are additional enemies called sparks that travel along the boundaries of the polygons that you have created. If they touch you, you lose. The good news is that they travel relatively slow and are easy to dodge by creating a polygon as they get close to you (they cannot travel on open draw lines and cannot reverse directions). Lastly, there is a timer in this game. If you waste enough time, the sparks turn into fast moving super sparks that have the ability to travel on draw lines. It is VERY hard to avoid these so speed matters.

It is games like Qix that make you appreciate the simple structure of classic arcades. The graphics are very basic, composed only of straight lines, and the rules are very simple and easy to understand. Yet this is one of those games that is hard to put down. It is easy at first, but the difficulty ramps up with each passing level (including multiple Qix on a level). You want to get the high scores in a short amount of time so you have to create quick polygons with your normal draw button, but do so in a fashion that does not take up much area and leaves you with a short draw distance you can use your double points draw button for massive area and massive points. Like Tetris for the Game Boy, Qix is an absolute classic. It may not quite be on the Tetris level, but if you like strategy games, it is an enjoyable game.