Wetrix
Release Date - May, 1998 (EU)
Developer - Zed Two
Publisher - Ocean Software
Platform - Nintendo 64
Wetrix is one of those games that comes along every so often that just exemplifies the idea that sometimes the most simple concepts can be the most fun… and addictive. Picture something akin to Tetris, but on a 3D plane with a lot of rainfall and you’ll be on the way to Wetrix.
The concept is delightfully simple; manipulate the terrain of a small area to allow rainfall to pool. The more water you can capture by shaping the landscape, the more points you get when it eventually evaporates. It sounds easy enough, but the pace and some hazards thrown into the mix will mean your heart will be racing (and your brain working overtime).
Things start out simply enough…
To manipulate the landscape, you must make use of falling ‘blocks’ of various shapes that will either raise or lower the terrain in the same shape as the block. Because of the varying shapes (such as the standard ‘L’ and ‘T’ shapes), you’ll need to be careful with how they fall if you want to create effective enclosures for the water. Thankfully they can be rotated as they fall, but once they touch the ground, that’s it!
After a while, you’ll start to get ‘water’ drops mixed with the blocks. The water can be placed around the map and will start to pool wherever it lands. If there’s nothing to hold that water, or if it starts to overflow, it will leak over the edge of the map. Lose too much water to leaks, and it’s game over! You’ll only bank points when a meteor falls and evaporates the water you’ve accumulated (this evaporation also will buy you some more time as it evaporates leaked water too!).
A charming menu, and you’ve got your classic quick play mode along some challenges to undertake!
Before the meteors fall, you’ll want to pool as much water as you can for a ‘rainbow’ bonus. Rainbows are a reward for getting high volumes of water pooled up. By creating multiple ‘lakes’ (small enclosures of water) you’ll get a multiplier for each lake you have, too. If you make a lake deep enough, a cute rubber ducky will appear on the water which indicates yet another type of multiplier. As you can guess, the trick to racking up huge scores in Wetrix is trying to cram as many of these multipliers together as you can.
This wouldn’t be too hard on its own if not for the hazards that will also be mixed into your drops. Bombs will do pretty much what you’d expect, and blow up a chunk of terrain. If this destroys your lake enclosures or an important wall, get ready to leak a LOT of water very quickly. The other drop you’ll be dreading is the Ice Cube. An ice cube will freeze any body of water it touches, meaning it won’t be contributing to your score until it thaws over time. Not only that, but any further water dropped on an icy surface will also freeze, meaning your high score dreams may be significantly delayed, and you won’t get much respite from leaks either!
Your terrain will quickly become a mountain range of sorts, try to keep up!
Finally, if you build the terrain too high and neglect to lower it every now and then, you’ll be punished with an earthquake. You can see how close you are to getting one with a metre to the side of the screen, and it’s worth using bombs or the ‘lowering’ blocks to try and avoid building too high, even if it means losing a lake or two. An earthquake is a devastating set-back that will destroy huge swathes of the landscape, often in a way that you won’t be able to recover from!
The game came complete with a single player mode where the drops become incrementally faster as you chase for high-scores, but also a split screen mode for frantic two-player action.
I’m not good at this game. I see this screen a lot.
The graphics are simple for a Nintendo 64 game, but supremely functional and it ensures the game runs at a smooth rate as things get hectic. Elegant displays will let you know exactly where water is leaking, how close you are to an earthquake and what’s coming from the heavens next for you to manage. The music is enjoyable without being distracting and a special mention must be made of the announcer’s amazing voice. Sounding like a man who has at least three testicles, the deep and booming voice is an amazing contrast to the much more cute, cheerful and colourful aesthetic of the rest of the game. Of course, it’s also just another functional aspect of the game, warning you of incoming danger or alerting you to multipliers you’ve earned through clever placements.
Wetrix was the first game released by Zed Two, a developer founded by Ste and John Pickford, game creators whose credits in gaming date back to 1983. The game would be a success for the duo, selling over 100,000 copies on the Nintendo 64 in the West, with further sales to come from Japan and the PC version (also released in 1998). Critics applauded the game for the clever gameplay and a sequel titled Aqua Aqua for the PlayStation 2 in the year 2000. Wetrix to this day remains a loved curiosity and a hidden gem for anyone looking for some rock-hard puzzle action.
“Is the world ending?”
“No babe, it’s just Wetrix…”