Blaxx

Originally released in 1991 for the Atari ST (and since making an appearance in 1998 as a Java applet on the internet), Blaxx plays vaguely like a cross between pool and Pac-Man.

To put it more plainly, this is a puzzle game with colourful visuals and some neat ideas that still stand up some 16-years after the game's debut.

You're given control of a spinning gizmo (the 'Blaxx', we think). You can send it whizzing up, down, left and right – but once it starts moving, it won't stop until it hits something. And the somethings that you have to hit are black balls dotted around the level map, in order to cannon them into corresponding red crosses to make both ball and cross disappear. Clear all the balls and you're on to the next level.

Easy enough, right? Well, the puzzling part is that the balls and cross marks are arranged in such a way as to require the careful planning of which way you send Blaxx. As soon as you hit a ball it goes rolling away, stopping Blaxx dead in its tracks at the point of impact. Send the balls the wrong direction and they can get stuck up against walls or in corners, meaning you'll have to restart the level.

In this regard Blaxx is quite crude. It's annoying when you tap a ball the wrong way and it ends up stuck, especially when the only solution available is to start all over again.

More positively, the levels come in all shapes, sizes and degrees of complexity, and feature a few obstacles to your progress in order to spice the gameplay up a little. Probably the most interesting of these are the portals that teleport Blaxx and the balls across the map, enabling some nice bits of puzzling where a ball must be warped in order for it to hit a red cross and disappear.

There are also either fixed or rotating direction arrows that re-route moving pieces to whichever way they're pointing, plus blocks that can only hit three times before requiring the level to be restarted.

Still, these variations – and the general set-up on the levels – are rarely combined in such a way to leave you impressed by Blaxx's design. Sure there are levels that put a smile on your face when you realise how things have been set-up, but there are several more that are almost mind-numbing in their simplicity. We didn't want the maps to be harder, so much as cleverer – a few more moments to make us cry out, "That was cool!"

You also don't get anything beyond the core game mode in Blaxx. That's one mode, and one set of missions. We could live with that if there was more feedback on your performance: it doesn't matter whether you complete a mission the first time you play or the hundredth, or how fast you complete it, or how many moves you use to do it in. You're left feeling like there's something missing: those bits and pieces of window-dressing that make a game feel, well, gamey.

Blaxx has some nice ideas: the basic puzzle concept of knocking the balls around is good, and we like the colourful graphics. The game just cries out for a little bit more… something – whether that's better level design or better feedback, we're not sure. It's good, but not that good.