Wetrix is a 3D puzzle video game developed by Zed Two, the studio of brothers Ste and John Pickford, for the Nintendo 64 and personal computers in 1998, and the Dreamcast and Game Boy Color in 1999 (as Wetrix+ and Wetrix GB respectively). The player's goal is to hold water bubbles falling on a 3D isometric landscape. To do this, enclosures are created with Uppers, which fall in a similar manner to Tetris blocks, that raise the ground. While water can be evaporated with fireballs, hazards such as Mines, Ice Cubes, and earthquakes also fall and ruin the player's construction.
The Pickfords conceived a Tetris-esque puzzle game out of a water demo they worked on for another one of their Zed Two games, the hack and slash Vampire Circus. For design, the biggest focus was on the basic elements' interaction with each other, as well as the puzzle game style's originality; the use of falling blocks was the only similarity between Wetrix and Tetris. Zed Two signed a two-game deal with Ocean Software, a week before its merge with Infogrames. It required the brothers to turn Vampire Circus into Taz Express (2000), while allowing the brothers free rein with Wetrix. The PC version was produced from January to October 1997 by the brothers themselves, while the Nintendo 64 port was developed with three additional programmers from around June to Christmas 1997.
The Nintendo 64 version sold over 105,000 units in the West, and just above 12,000 in Japan, while the PC version sold 30,000 copies. Wetrix was generally well-received by critics, who applauded its addictiveness and original concept but were critical of the limited camera mobility and divided on its difficulty, steep learning curve, and two-player mode. It garnered the highest rating for a review of a Western-developed title from the Japanese magazine Famitsu Weekly in years. The critical and commercial success motivated Imagineer, developers of the Game Boy Color port, to commission Zed Two to develop a sequel, the PlayStation 2 launch title Aqua Aqua, which made little alterations to the main gameplay.
Gameplay
Wetrix is an isometric puzzle video game where the player, on a square landscape, produces mounds to hold water bubbles falling from the sky. Uppers, pieces that raise a part of the landscape that come in the shapes of rectangles, squares, and T-shapes, create walls for the lakes, while Downers do the opposite. If there is no wall in its way, water will seep off the edges and into a drain represented by a water meter; the game ends once it is full. Fireballs pop up which can evaporate water, which gives the player an amount of points depending on how much water was vaporized. By evaporating water with fireballs, the player is also able to reduce the level of the drain in order to avoid losing. There are also hazards that ruin the player's structure, such as Mines which blast holes into the ground, Ice Cubes that freeze the water, and earthquakes that quickly turn the landscape flat once it is too high.
In addition to the regular Classic mode, Wetrix has Pro, which quickens the speed of the game, and Practice, which teaches basic rules. Challenge modes include those that end after a certain amount of time, such as one minute and five minutes, and others that must be survived within a number of pieces, including 100 and 500. There are also Handicap modes that start a game with a half-full water drain, an ice layer, Raised Land, Random Land, and Random Holes. The only multi-player feature is a two-player split screen battle mode, with the same goal as Classic but a different water meter with four colored spaces. One player can launch an attack at the other depending on which color space the water level is at; the meter also can not be lowered by evaporating a lake with a fireball.
Development
Origins
In the mid-1990s, brothers Ste and John Pickford, developers at Software Creations, were dissatisfied with the stillborn projects and perceived declining creativity at the studio. They left to form their own independent company, Zed Two, in an attempt to "re-learn game design from the very basics". The studio's first project was Vampire Circus, a 3D isometric hack and slash video game in the style of Gauntlet (1985). John conceived programming methods that would have taken the most advantage of the available technology, such as having hundreds of foes on the screen at a time, and animating environmental elements in a "dynamic" manner. The environmental animations would be incorporated by having almost every part of the level be inflammable, and including flowing water that reacts to the explosions.