Don?t sell-out, Shell-out!
by Thomas Mysliwiec

What do you get when you cross kung-fu fighting with a turtle, Turtix - a fantastically visual arcade platformer. You play as Turtix, a honor student at the School of Magic. However, things turn bleak when you cast a powerful spell that accidentally shatters the Amulet of Peace and Harmony. Now without the protection from the amulet your academy becomes ransacked and your fellow students kidnapped. It's time to set the score by embarking on a journey across five islands, each with their own beautiful theme, to gather the amulet shards and restore balance.

Like traditional side-scrolling adventure games, the goal of Turtix is to transverse from one area of the level to another jumping from platform to platform, avoiding enemies, traps, collecting gems, rescuing captive turtles, and overcome an island ?boss character? that guards a shard of the amulet.

Your turtle?s abilities become enhanced throughout the course of the game as you come across power-ups like the Fire Spell to dispose of far off enemies, Magic hearts to replenish your life meter, and 1 Ups that grant you an additional life to aid you on your quest. The ability to double jump also plays a key role. Double Jumping can be used to bring down enemies, explore hidden rooms or land on a teleporting pad that will warp you to another area of the level and ultimately to your goal.

Turtix offers two games modes, Story and Arcade. In Story Mode you?ll progresses one level of an island at a time, while on Arcade you can replay any level you?ve completed on the Easy, Normal or Hard difficulty settings. Not to be short handed on controls, Turtix also features support for keyboard, mouse and joystick (or any combination of the three).

Among the casual games in its class, Turtix sets a new standard in visuals! The worlds are multi-layered, soft, colorful and vibrant. Character animations have a charm to them and the world objects and platforms are all amusing to interact with. In fact, stay stationary long enough and you?ll find Turtix getting down with tunes from his hand held radio. My only worry for the game itself is that an action/adventure game of this quality might be lost to a wider audience of pick up and play users. If you have some time and can get comfortable with the more advanced control method I think Turtix is a wonderful game.