Puzzle Quest: Galactrix (Nintendo DS)

A sequel to last year's Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, PUZZLE QUEST: GALATRIX maintains the series' signature puzzles-meet-role-playing style. This time, instead of a medieval fantasy context, the game is set in space. Players assume the role of a rookie pilot who must traverse the galaxy negotiating colonial and corporate strife. In the process, you'll mine for riches, battle hostile ships, unlock portals to new territories, and grow in skill and power. And whether battling enemy vessels, haggling for new gear, mining for valuable minerals, or hacking a gateway into a new realm, you'll use a puzzle board to accomplish your goal. Similar to popular Online and mobile game, Bewjeweled, the player moves adjacent colored hexagons to form three in a row.

Players chose a male or female character and set off on adventures, moving across a huge galaxy, fighting against other ships, accepting missions (and side-missions), and mining for precious minerals. Completion of missions and tasks earns the player experience and cargo, redeemable for ship upgrades. Each mission is played out in the puzzle space; in battles, you strategically weaken an opponents defenses while maintaining your own.

It's difficult to do justice in words to just how absorbing this game is. The puzzles are very satisfying, and build in sophistication as the story progresses. Because the hexagonal shapes can be aligned from several angles, they also replenish from multiple directions, a point that factors into strategy. What's more, the type of hexagons matched represent uniquely different point values, so playing involves scanning quickly for patterns.

To add to the experience, leveling up your skills, upgrading your ships, and bartering for deals is all lots of fun. Finally, the story, told in dialogue with talk balloons and still graphics, has far more depth than you'd expect. In fact, a simple image and a bit of text sometimes offers a more compelling narrative than sophisticated computer graphics because the player must imagine the details.These characters and situations evoke Star Wars memories in terms of variety and moral spectrum.