Tiqal is set in the ancient times of the Mayans. Picture yourself, a young warrior with a goal of gaining respect from the gods, to save the village of Tiqal from attack and to restore peace in the Mayan civilisation.
You can easily fit this game under the puzzle genre and you can even classify this as Tetris 2.0 or Tetris mod as it has a very high resemblance to the classic game. It resembles a few features that both share which are: being very addictive, rising wall game racing against the time, resemble like blocks that you rotate to archive your goal.
What’s different from Tetris is that instead of forming horizontal clusters to deduct blocks in order to complete the levels, you form clusters of square blocks 2x2 or large. This in itself is a fresh new spin to the whole game as you try to see how big you can make these clusters, sometimes archiving 40-70 clusters.
What also sets it apart from Tetris is that it includes power-ups that will help you throughout your journey that are steadily increasing in difficulty. These power ups are sent throughout the game, they vary from things such as Serpent’s Crawl: decreasing or stoping brick spawning, Jaguar’s Strike: subtracting a certain colour from the whole wall, Gift of Tohil: launching a file ball to destroy the bricks in the surrounding areas and more. In over all there are around 13 power-ups introduced throughout the game to give you something to work for.
When you first start of you are on a basic level only using simple colours and brick formations and power-ups but as the game goes on you are steadily rewarded with new brick types, new power-ups and more colours that are sure to test out your skills as you find yourself deeply immersed in this game.
The visuals are quite spectacular since the classic Tetris, with brilliant flash animated backgrounds to each level you play. Everything is well coloured and bright for easy visibility, the special effects are fantastic especially conjoined with the music when you get a huge cluster of 30 or more which then reward you with the sounds of celebrations and fireworks. When forming clusters this large you are rewarded with little heart tokens dispensed the same way as the power-ups, these heart peaces help you gain extra lives, collecting 20 of them gets you a new life and the amount you receive depends on the size of the cluster.
When you’re at the stage when you’re in trouble when the wall reaches ¾ of the screen and gets into the danger area, the mood of the game changes dramatically with the soft and peaceful music changes into fast past epic music with the danger area flashing red to warn you, once out your are kindly rewarded with the nice peaceful music again.
Your sitting there in front of your Xbox playing this arcade game your drawn in, your eyes are glued to the TV as you play this very addictive and fun game, you think to yourself this can’t get better, but it does, throughout the game it has facts and lessons about Mayan life and culture turning this game into an education game, so when you’re playing it till 3:00 am and your mum goes to tell you off, you can rest easy and tell her you were taking a history lesson.
Tiqal is set out in stages; there are about 10 of them then consisting between 7-12 games
Now for the bad stuff, what annoys me throughout the game is the repetitiveness of the music, it is calming but it does the opposite, it makes you want to blast and over ride it with your own music, another is also the repetitiveness of the levels, there are 120 of them and they are all the same besides brick colour change and the starting structure that’s it, I guess they can’t do much more then that but maybe they could implement some basic modes such as Hexic HD’s survival mode. Besides those few points Tiqal is up to scratch.
To sum it all up the game is a decent game, it’s very enjoyable to sit down and exploring the game features and also learning at the same time, the game is very addictive so don’t expect to play for a short period of time, you’re in for a long journey, I would recommend this to everyone who finds puzzle games such as Tetris interesting and fun.
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Evan Lahti writes:
''The Mayan civilization's accomplishments are many: developing the calendar, advancing mathematics and astronomy, creating elaborate art and written language, and inspiring one of the better kid's game shows of our generation, Legends of the Hidden Temple. But for all their inventive, Mesoamerican dealings, makin' Tetris ain't an achievement they can claim.''
XboxOz360 writes:
"In a sense it's a double puzzle game as I am puzzled as to why its difficulty was made so easy, when the formula for a challenging game was in front of Slapdash's eyes. It is this underwhelming difficulty that separates the game away from the fun gameplay that was available.
If you do not purchase many Xbox Live Arcade games and enjoy easy games, then this game is an absolute must purchase. However, if you are a hardcore puzzle gamer then I suggest the trial as the difficulty will become far too easy and the gameplay will soon become stale..."
