2006 has been a good year for Jack Tramiel's old grey box. The D-Bug group have been busy fixing and cracking loads of games to make them more compatible with the range of Atari computers (see the extras section), lots of previously missing titles have been found and there have been a few new releases too - most of which have come from the Paradize team.
Released at the same time as Nuclear Waste Dump, Znax is a simple and short puzzle game designed as a 'disk filler' and to test the group's new GFA library. It looks very similar to PopCap/Astraware's classic Bejeweled game, but instead of swapping the tiles around the screen to match up lines of three or more, in Znax the aim is to create the largest possible squares (or rectangles) using nodes of the same colour.
To do this, the player has to identify four tiles of the same colour in a square or rectangular shape, and simply click each corner with the mouse. If correct, the box selected will be filled with randomly selected tiles and your score will go up. Obviously, the larger the area, the higher your score is boosted.
Essentially Znax is a very simple little game, which is no surprise as it weighs in at only 82Kb in size. The game-play itself is time based - the player has an option of a two minute or five minute game in which to achieve the highest score they can. Nothing ground breaking, but it does prove to be fun to play and the presentation is top notch (as with all Paradize releases).
The in-game chip music is excellent quality and well-suited to the game, and the graphics (especially the colour palette) are colourful and refreshing. In conclusion, Znax is not a game that will keep you entertained for hours, but it makes a welcome and short-lived distraction from work.