Dec 3, 2010 | Two Tribes
Rush is a Puzzle game of directional control. I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember the game it reminds me of but the best I could come up with is Chu Chu Rocket. It’s not really a clone of Chu Chu Rocket though it does sort of share the same basic premise of gameplay. Basically, there are cube spawners laid out on a 3D board, the object is to lead the cubes to a collector of the same color. You have a limited number of tiles to use to accomplish this task and you’ll always have enough tiles to solve the puzzle exactly. The trick is keeping the cubes from falling off the edge of the playing area and keeping them from colliding with one another. This will often involve careful timing and the use of less obvious solutions to keep the cubes from hitting each other.
There are a few different types of tiles available to accomplish this task. Regular arrows will cause blocks to change direction immediately as if they were continuing in a regular line. There are also separator blocks which will alternate which direction blocks are sent as they arrive. Also available are conveyors which will slide a block in a particular direction without changing it’s natural direction of travel. For timing purposes there are stop signs, which will hold tiles for a short period of time. Finally there are walls themselves, which will cause a cube to turn but also add a short delay.
The three dimensional aspect comes heavily into play in the later levels. You’ll be required to rotate the view around to get all of the angles and often trial and error is needed to discern the proper placement of the directional tiles on the board. Often you’ll want to drop a cube off a cliff to a lower level, just so long as it doesn’t fall off completely. If you are good at thinking in multiple dimensions, including time, many of the puzzles will come off as pretty obvious and the game is a bit easy at times. If you get stuck however you can use one of two hints. One will tell you which of the tiles you’ve placed are correct, the other will tell you which spaces are supposed to have tiles on them. Neither will give you an instant solution, but they are both useful if you get stuck.
Graphically the game isn’t too bad. It’s simplistic but it serves it’s purpose. everything runs smoothly and when a large number of blocks are chugging along it looks fairly impressive. The one real complaint I have, other than the occasional easy difficulty. is that there isn’t a fast forward feature. Several of the levels seem like they are just endlessly pumping out blocks when the solution is extremely simple. This can lead to simply sitting and waiting for a good time as blocks parade into the catch. It’s a bit of a pain and being able to speed up the action would be nice.
Overall Rush is a decent puzzle game and there are enough levels to keep you busy without having so many that the game seems overwhelming. Still the appeal is mostly for people interested in puzzle style games.
I also can’t immediately come up with something else that this game feels like it’s knocking off, which is often a problem plaguing puzzle games.
