Fortix

Overview

Fortix is an arcade puzzle title from Nemesys Team Studio. The evil Xitrof has taken over the once fertile land of Fortiana, and the player (as the Knight Fortix) must recapture castles on a variety of maps while avoiding dragons, bats, and turrets.

The game was originally released for the PSP (as a Mini) and the PC in 2009. Nemesys opted to re-balanced the game (targetting a broader audience) in March 2010 for the PSP and April 2010 on Steam. A Mac version of Fortix was also released on Steam.

Gameplay

Like Qix, the player controls a knight who begins the level on the outside "wall". To capture portions of the play field, the player must move away from the wall, "fence" in a portion of the playfield, and close the line at a different point in the wall. Points are awarded as portions of the play field are captured. If the knight or its line is touched by an enemy or projectile, a life is lost.

Unlike Qix, the goal in Fortix is to capture any fortresses that are located on the map, regardless of the percentage of the play field captured. Many of the fortresses contain "Turrets" that will fire cannon balls at the player. These "Turrets" can be destroyed either by capturing them, or by capturing a "trigger", which causes a friendly catapult on the map to reposition and fire. When you progress further into the game, some of these "Turrets" become "Ancient Turrets". These turrets act the same way as the normal "Turret" but the only to destroy them is to capture the land they are on.

There are four difficulties to choose from: Easy, Normal, Hard and Impossible. Going up each difficulty increases the speed of the dragons and the projectiles. When played on Easy, enemy dragons and projectiles move slow, making it easy to dodge. When played on Impossible, enemy dragons and projectiles move very fast making it difficult to dodge.

Three types of dragons can appear on a given level: The Green Dragon, who flies around freely around the map; The Bone Dragon, who is a little faster than the Green Dragon but also tracks you down whenever you leave your captured line; and The Black Dragon, who has the same attributes as the Bone Dragon but also shoots out three fireballs every so often. Unlike the main enemy in Qix, dragons can be captured as part of the play field. A fourth enemy, The Blood Bat, is the only enemy that can kill the player while they are on the wall. Other obstacles include free-standing stone walls, which the knight cannot pass through, and various terrains like bodies of water and marshes, which will slow down the knight's movement speed if walked on.

The main boss and evil dragon, Xitrof, will fly freely across the map while shooting a fast homing magic projectile, and lay eggs that will eventually hatch Green Dragons.

Powerups will occasionally appear and must be captured to activate. Powerups can award additional lives, invulnerability, increased speed, or freezing of the dragon and/or, turret projectile.

PC System Requirements

• Operating system: Windows XP SP2
• Processor: Minimum 1Ghz
• Memory: Minimum 512Mb
• Hard disk space: 110Mb
• Video: DirectX 9.0c Compatible video card with minimum 64Mb memory
• Sound: DirectX 9.0c Compatible sound card
• DirectX®: 9.0c

Mac System Requirements

• Operating system: 10.5.8, or later
• Processor: Intel Core Duo
• Memory: 512 MB
• Graphics: 64 MB
• Hard Drive: 190 MB