By Devonne Tourre, Managing Editor of Design
Remember the Y2K aesthetic? When everything was designed to be as glossy, shiny, and futuristic as possi- ble? Those transparent game consoles, digital, sleek and circular designs–– those were all left in the late ’90s and early 2000s. While there are some examples popping up here and there in 2019, one of them is now a video game––enter “CROSSNIQ+.”
Its gameplay is simple. You move tiles around on a board to form a cross, and you keep going until you run out of time. “CROSSNIQ,” the original game this is based on, had this as its only game mode, and “CROSSNIQ+” keeps this idea and expounds on it more with modes such as Time Attack, Chillout and Versus.
The core gameplay revolves around Endless Mode, where the player moves tiles around on a board to form a cross. The player can customize the board size to their liking as well as three colors for their tiles. As the player is forming their crosses, a timer counts down. When a cross is made, the timer resets. Make more crosses, and the timer goes down even faster as the player levels up.
Chillout Mode is the flipside of this mode, you’re making crosses against a nice, calming background with the sounds of the ocean playing in the background. There’s no timer to freak out about, either. This mode lives up to the name by asking players to chill out and peacefully play the game.
Time Attack mode sees the timer being on a set amount, and the player plays until that timer crawls to zero. The player is trying to rack up as many points as possible by making as many crosses as you can.
In Versus Mode, you play against a friend in local multiplayer. You pick a character, how many rounds you want to play, and you’re off! You can use items to defend yourself against your opponent, as well as special moves that have crazy effects such as darkening your board or reversing your controllers. I played with my suite mate, and watching my two friends play was honestly the most fun time I had playing a video game in a long time.
This game isn’t without its flaws, however. Its loading times are notice- ably long, and you’re going to be see- ing that loading screen a lot. I wish that there was a more intuitive way of choosing our tile colors, and while choosing any music track I want on the loading screen is cool, I wish I could change it on the y in the pause menu instead, just to vary it up a bit. One more thing––In Versus Mode, our controls would lock up when one of us would use an item against the other. It doesn’t suit the game’s fast paced action.
“CROSSNIQ+” is an addicting puzzle game that is easy to pick up and play––but don’t expect to put it down anytime soon.
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