Upgraded Jezzball
When I first saw Fortix, I said to myself: "Hey, Jezzball with a theme!" However, it's both more and less than its inspiration.
Instead of balls, however, you're interrupted by dragons. And Instead of clicking and having a line drawn straight across the play field (as in Jezzball), you create the size of the captured areas yourself by moving your character from a top-down perspective. Therefore, you can make the areas you capture as large or small as you'd like.
In some ways, this makes the game kind of easy. You can slowly work your way across an area (limited somewhat by the time limit for each level), capturing small pieces one at a time, until you capture a massive tract of land. However, this mechanic also allows the game to have terrain-based challenges. Your character moves tremendously slowly through marsh-type land, and some levels also contain walls that are impassible.
I loved the power-ups that your character has access to in-game (by capturing specific areas when they appear). Two of the most powerful are one that freezes time for a moment, and one that markedly increases your character's movement speed for a time. I loved plotting strategies for capturing large pieces of land, especially when capture is followed by such a triumphant sound effect and large corresponding increase to your score total.
The only other negative aspect of the game is that it's quite old at this point. Therefore, when I tried to launch it on my modern dual-monitor setup it made my screens go all wonky.
However, if you remember liking Jezzball (the Microsoft Entertainment Pack 4 classic), you'll like Fortix. I'm excited to try the sequel!
