iPhone Game Review – “Trixel”

Review

Puzzle Spiele gehören ohne Frage zu den beliebtesten Games auf dem Markt. Sei es Tetris in 2000 Varianten oder Hexic oder Dr. Mario oder oder oder. Auch auf dem iPhone ist das nicht anders. Leider findet man nur wenige Puzzle Spiele, welche mal mit einer neuen Idee aufwarten und dazu auch noch gut umgesetzt sind. Doch es gibt sie, die richtig guten Puzzel Games für unterwegs. Eines davon ist „Trixel“, welches letzte Woche für das iPhone veröffentlicht wurde. Ich habe das Game getestet und mir auch gleich noch einen Entwickler des Spieles geschnappt und ihm einige Fragen gestellt.

Trixel? Was muss ich machen?

Die Idee hinter Trixel ist ebenso einfach wie brillant. Ihr habt ein Spielfeld mit verschieden farbigen Steinen. Der jeweils oben, unten sowie links und rechts angrenzende Stein kann per Klick umgedreht werden und ändert dann seine Farbe. Oben links in der Ecke seht ihr eben dieses Spielfeld mit einem vorgegebenen Muster. Eure Aufgabe ist es jetzt, mit sowenig Zügen wie möglich dieses Muster nachzubilden. Was am Anfang noch recht schnell und easy geht, kann mit zunehmenden Leveln immer schwerer werden. Im späteren Spielverlauf kommen auch noch zwei neue Gameplay Features dazu. Das eine sind „Kristalle“, welche ab und zu auf dem Spielfeld auftauchen und von euch eingesammelt werden wollen. Habt ihr einige Kristalle gefunden, könnt ihr diese für besondere Aktionen benutzen. Etwa um ein beliebiges Feld umzudrehen. Die andere Funktion sind „Warp-Felder“, welche über einen Ein- sowie Ausgang verfügen und quer über das Spielfeld warpen. Neben dem normalen Puzzle Modus in drei Schwierigkeitsstufen (!) gibt es noch diverse Bonus Level sowie einen Timeattack Modus.

Für einen etwas besseren Eindruck hier mal der Trailer zum Spiel (klick)

Fazit:

Trixel macht deftig Spaß und richtig süchtig. Gerade für unterwegs ist Trixel perfekt und ohne Frage eines der besten Puzzlespiele auf dem iPhone/iPod touch. Die 2-3 Euro sollte man unbedingt locker machen.

Interview

Und hier nun wie versprochen mein Interview mit Daniel Boutros, Erfinder und Mitentwickler von Trixel.

Hey please tell our readers a bit about yourself ?

I started in the biz when I was 14, winning arcade fighting game tournaments and becoming a go-to expert for any magazine writing guides on Capcom and SNK fighting games. Worked on Maximum, C+VG and a few other magazines while I was at school. Carried on doing some press stuff while i did voluntary testing (played pre-release arcade games for free) at SNK and a few other studios until I was old enough to go to college. Produced a racing game on PSOne called Rapid Racer years ago as part of SCEE Soho Studio (then called Waverly House), then after a few years of partying and silliness, moved to L.A to pursue design seriously. Since then, worked with the Bitmap Brothers on the Speedball franchise, helped THQ with some stuff on the new UFC game, sold a concept to a Hollywood production house and began pursuing concept design sales more seriously. Then iPhone happened and here I am.

So how did you come up with the idea for Trixel?

A conversation with a friend of mine triggered it off. We were talking about super simplistic game design philosophy and how restricting yourself to focus on one super low-tech thing and keeping it simple is a great way to really force out strong, core mechanic ideas. It’s very hard to design like this, but it can facilitate some really amazingly fresh stuff, if you resist the urge to over-complicate.

At the time, I was filling in my concept booklet. This is a document where I flesh out those small ideas that pop in my head when talking with friends. I then polish my favourites and try to sell them to studios.

While this conversation was fresh in my head, I very fortunately got hold of World of Goo on Wii Ware and fell in love with it. Truly a beautiful game. I wanted to challenge myself to create something as elegantly simple, so after a few tries, I came up with what you now know as Trixel. That was the first stage of the concept.

Game concepts begin on paper, but you don’t see them for what they truly are until you prototype. As it happened, the original concept played out to be fairly bland once we had it prototyped.
Luckily, our main programmer Eran realised this before showing the team and he’d been cooking some ideas of his own. He suggested a few super tile ideas to start with and we started kicking those around, added some, trashed some, combined some and through a lot of quick iteration, ended up with what we have in Trixel.

Is it the first game you’ve done?

As part of Adept Games? Yes. As a designer? No. My main bread and butter for the last few years has been on the concept design, prototype design or systems design level. I spent a lot of time with various developers, concepting ideas then helping them formalise game design ideas into pitches they could use to sell projects.

Some of the developers had original ideas they wanted me to help them develop into prototypes, some just wanted fresh ideas from the outside. Some got sold and still haven’t been made. Some got sold and died. One is being worked into a film and game pitch by the guys who set up The Darkness game for Starbreeze to make. I did some early systems design work on the new UFC game, but I’m uncertain if it made it in, as that was a while ago… I did a lot of pitch work for and with The Bitmap Brothers who you may know for Speedball 2, Chaos Engine and Xenon. I helped them get it set up for Live Arcade, but had very little to do with implementation.

What does „TRIXEL“ stand for?

It was a weird blend of ‘Tile’ ‘Trick’ ‘Pixel’ that we from a list of ideas, since all the other names we wanted were taken. Saying that however, it was a unanimous ‘like’, so it wasn’t something that felt like a bitter compromise.

What other iPhone Games do you ,personally, like?

I absolutely ADORE Drop 7. Brilliant design. I wish the random code that spits out the grey spheres was better managed, as there were a few moments where I just got bombarded with them, but it’s close to perfection for me as far as puzzle game design goes. That’s a game that deserves top 10 status. I played Final Fantasy Crystal Defenders for a while and I occasionally come back to it. It’s one of the only TD games I’ve played that’s felt tuned and well considered to every detail, though it’s still tough as hell in the later maps. I also love the elegance of Monospace, Metasquare and Lock ‘n’ Roll. I’ve downloaded a lot of apps, but I’m really after something different I can’t get from console games.

What do you think of the App Store and Apples way of handling it?

Blown away from a dev standpoint. Seriously. The tools, the cost of entry, the way developers can price control and talk directly to the players is great. This is something I wanted from Nintendo for WiiWare. I really think they’d have an incredible selection of stuff if they’d opened the floodgates and brought the cost of entry down to ambitious outsiders. Obviously they’d hit the shovelware problem too, but there’s always culling / concept approvals systems for that.

The problem I currently have with app store is the way you navigate apps and how so much good stuff is burried away. I really don’t know what’s good and what isn’t as the user reviews seem out of whack with reality.

For example, some guy puts up an app saying “This app will tell you your name translated in 16 languages”. So you load up the app, type in your name and it runs off a list. Problem is, some guy thinks the interface is too ugly, so he marks it down. Another just thinks it’s a dumb idea, so he marks it down. The issue, is that these guys have no sense of what is review criteria. Surely we should be rating a product on how well it delivers what it promises, and whether it’s the best at what it does, not whether we think the background is too grey or the noises are too tinny…

Personally, I’d rather split the App Store up as an interface from iTunes Store, in another tab entirely. I’d like to see more options for finding things and a more customised UI. They’ll probably need a ‘genius’ algorithm to get all that setup however.

Can you give us a little „glimpse into the future“ – what are you planing to do next?

Remember that concept booklet? Well there’s 5 concepts in there I’m most in love with. They’re very different from one another and different from Trixel technically. That’s all I can say, but when we have something to show, I’ll make sure you know

And thats it, thank you for your time.

Thank you!

First come, first serve

Und weil Daniel so ein netter Mensch ist, hat er auch gleich noch 5 (!) Download Codes für sein Spiel locker gemacht. Und wie kommt ihr jetzt an einen der Codes? Ganz einfach – die ersten fünf Kommentare mit gültiger Mailadresse und dem Text “Ich will Trixel!” dürfen Trixel gratis herunterladen. Ihr bekommt den Code zugeschickt.

Getagget als iPhone, puzzle, trixel