Wetrix

About Wetrix

Wetrix (1998) is Zed Two's 3D puzzle game, born from a water physics demo, in which players raise falling land pieces into walls to hold rain on an isometric landscape.

Wetrix in Depth

On a square isometric landscape, water bubbles fall from the sky, and the player must build mounds to hold it. Uppers, pieces shaped like rectangles, squares and Ts, raise parts of the land to form walls for lakes, falling much like Tetris blocks, while Downers lower it. Any water without a wall in its way spills off the edge into a drain shown as a water meter, and the game ends when the meter is full. Fireballs evaporate water for points depending on how much is vaporised, which also lowers the drain. Hazards wreck the player's work: Mines blast holes in the ground, Ice Cubes freeze the water, and earthquakes flatten the landscape once it rises too high.

Besides the standard Classic mode there is a faster Pro mode and a Practice mode that teaches the rules. Challenge modes end after one or five minutes or must be survived over a set number of pieces, such as 100 or 500, and Handicap modes start with a half-full drain, a layer of ice, raised or random land, or random holes. The only multiplayer is a two-player split-screen battle with a four-colour water meter: depending on the colour the water reaches, a player can launch an attack on the other, and evaporating a lake does not lower the meter. Critics applauded its addictiveness and originality but criticised the limited camera and were divided on its difficulty.

Making Wetrix

Ste and John Pickford left Software Creations to form Zed Two and "re-learn game design from the very basics". While Ste drew backgrounds and monsters for Vampire Circus, John built a demo of water flowing as a dynamic fluid over a shifting grid, which the brothers enjoyed so much they turned it into a puzzle game. Publishers wanted big, expensive games, but Ocean signed a two-game deal a week before merging with Infogrames, turning Vampire Circus into Taz Express while giving the brothers free rein on Wetrix. They made the PC version themselves from January to October 1997, and the Nintendo 64 port with three more programmers through Christmas 1997. The N64 version sold over 105,000 copies in the West and the PC version 30,000; Dreamcast and Game Boy Color versions followed in 1999.