Previous Next

If you're looking for an exciting and graphically excellent arcade game that doesn't involve annihilating aliens, then look no further. Stix is a superb version of Qix and will have you glued to your joystick.

The Stix is a highly volatile bundle of energy trapped within the confines of your screen. You must restrict its frenetic activity by building force fields around it, gradually reducing the area it can operate in. These barriers are constructed with your field synthesiser. Two particles, a quark and an antiquark, travel in opposite directions around the perimeter of the innermost field. Once of your four synthesisers is destroyed if it collides with a quark.

If you pause while building a force field, an energy ripple strikes - it's like trying to flee from a fast burning fuse. It will destroy your synthesiser if it catches you before you complete the field. If the Six touches any part of an incomplete force field, bang goes another synthesiser. Meanwhile your energy level is going down. Filling 75 per cent or more of the area with force fields takes you to the next dimension.

Although it may sound complicated, Stix is very easy to play. Your synthesiser is controlled by joystick movement or by the keyboard. Holding down the fire button and moving the joystick sets you off across the screen, a thick line indicating the boundary of the field you are constructing. Keeping the button depressed will earn you extra points but the field is drawn faster if you release it.

On completion of the boundary, there is a slight pause while the field is filled with colour. Off you go again, all the while dodging the quarks, making sure the flying Stix doesn't hit an incomplete perimeter, and not pausing for fear of the dreaded energy ripple.

Achieving the required percentage in-fill takes you to the next screen where the action is faster, more colourful, and even less predictable.

One major quibble - the score is shown none to clearly. Nevertheless, the graphical representation and animation of the Stix is masterly, as are the use of colour and sound. It has an aesthetic quality which, combined with the challenge make it a compulsive game.

Nobody in my family could resist it and neither will you. Supersoft has produced a masterpiece.