Back in the 80s and 90s, there was a game called Stix that I remember playing on the C64. And later on in the early 2000s via the VICE emulator. It's a simple concept of trying to fill in the screen with a single colour by marking off sections with the player 'dot' while avoiding getting hit.

Fortix 2 takes this to modern graphics and adds in various powerups and a variety of enemies to counter. I had it sitting around from a Bundle Stars bundle for ages before realising this was a game type I remember loving as a kid.

The premise of Fortix expands on Stix but remains the same simple premise. In this game, you are a knight and there is some evil dude called Xitrof doing bad things. By walking out and squaring off area of the world, you can claim it for the forces of good.

Something like that. To be honest, the story is not really there at all. You are given a tiny bit at the start and a little bit of lore when new enemies are introduced and that is it. Go out and square off the land!

And this is for the best as there's not much you can do with this concept. For what is there it is totally inoffensive and you can click past it in a second. A number of indie games quickly get up their own arse in the level of pretentious crap they do for world building, here it is just a frame to explain the graphical theme.

Levels start off as large open fields. To claim it, you have to walk out of the edges into a path and back to another part of the side (or different side). The smallest of the two areas closed off is claimed by you and will change colour.

Once claimed, you can't walk back into it. This creates a self setting difficulty as the game progresses as the amount of room you have left is what you leave yourself.
Like Stix, you get points for closing off larger areas, and every 100,000 you get a bonus life. They're not really needed as getting a perfect run is on the easy side, but it is nice that it is there.

Claiming land will not win you the level however. To win; you need to claim off areas containing banners to remove Xitrof's influence, and claim areas with turrets to destroy them. Turrets can also be destroyed by claiming catapults, which target the nearest turret and insta-kill it for you.

The first few levels are easy, and many can be completed with one one or two path walks. Soon you are introduced to walls, areas you can't walk over be default, but can still add to the claimed areas if you can encapsulate them.

To give the player some challenge, you have to fence off or avoid various enemies. For a change, Dragons, those giant beauties of power usually reserved for a boss fight or the discovery later on that you should never of done that deal, are 'giant stupid beasts' and low level enemies. Greens fly around the map and bounce off borders and claimed land. Fencing them off will cause them to vanish in a puff of smoke, with zero loot.

Other basic enemies are ogres/trolls... Something big, stupid, slow, and orange. They're even less of a threat than the green dragons, and are only annoying in that they are so slow that you have to wait on some areas to get past them to claim the land beneath them and remove them from the game.

Later on, different dragons are introduced that can spit fire at you. As long as you are on the baseline and not trying to claim land you suffer no life loss. Bats on the other hand, will fly along your baseline and if they touch you, you DIE. So the trick is to jump out into claim territory and avoid them. Or skip ahead and claim the area adjacent the baseline to remove.

Along with turrets pumping out bullets, all of this combined starts to make you plan the moves out. It is more a game of being slow and turtling than twitch, and restarting a level can be done in <2 seconds for those wanting perfection.

Further into the game it introduced a key/lock system. Blocking you from moving into various areas until you collect a key to auto unlock a gate elsewhere on the map. Thankfully you don't have to bring the key to the gate as these levels are poorly utilised and too few. This is something that could of been done differently or expanded upon, but I do appreciate that it is there.

To counter all of this is the stars. Powerups which if you can claim will give you s small time limited bonus. This might be invincibility. A boost to your walking speed. Or the power of flight, which is really the power to walk over walls.

To be honest, the only time I really used them was for grabbing a few achievements that are easier when you have a certain one active. More often than not, they simply caused life loss as they take your attenction away from the threats on the level.

Fortix 2 has the fun of the game I remember from the 1980s with graphics more set for a modern gaming audience. And it changes things up enough so that there is more to do and spend you time with than a little arcade title you'd spend a few minutes with.

Along with different difficulty levels providing harder challenges, such as fewer lives and a timer countdown, there is also Zombies. This mode changes the game up a little with enemies that can kill you on the baseline and claim line, and will continue to spawn until to claim off their grave/tombstone. To be honest, it is rather frustrating, but provides an actual challenge compared to the ease of the main campaign.

I do want to reiterate what I mentioned on Twitter. The final boss battle is a load of bullshit. It is one of these games that decides to give you the middle finger on what you have learnt and your play pacing style and just through everything at you. Trine comes to mind here. It is not hard, just annoying, and takes far longer to complete than it should.

The game also lock crashes on completion. Had to Alt-Tab out and find the error window to close it down.

But it is fun, and selling for $1.99USD with the original is up there for 99c. Simple enough to spend an afternoon with and take a break from something else for a while.

Game Acquisition: Purchased on sale (Bundle Stars)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 20 August 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP SP3 / Vista / 7
Processor: 1.5Ghz or faster
Memory: 512Mb
Hard Disk Space: 300Mb
Video Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible video card with minimum 128Mb memory with Pixel Shader 2.0 and Vertex Shader 2.0 support
DirectX®: 9.0c
Sound: DirectX 9.0c Compatible sound card