Q-Lat 3

By: Derek Yu

On: August 2nd, 2009

You’ll recall that during our Classic Games Week we covered Q-Lat 2, an old marble-painting game by Piste Games (best known for the Pekka Kana series). Well, the good news is that the developers have entered Q-Lat 3 into this year’s Assembly game competition! You can download the game along with the other 16 entries here, at Assembly’s website.

The basic game mechanics in Q-Lat 3 are the same as the previous games – if a marble hits another marble at a faster velocity, then the second marble changes color. The goal is to turn all the marbles to the same color. You can earn combo points for successive hits, and there is also a time bonus and a 1000 point color bonus. You’ll also be facing a number of obstacles, including holes, lasers, conveyor belts, and the dangerous frictionless black marbles.

It’s a really good-looking and entertaining game, which is why it’s a shame that the balancing seems so wonky. Currently there’s very little scoring incentive to try to get to the next level, since doing so generally requires precision that nets you a lot fewer points than simply bashing marbles about trying to get combos. Plus, there’s an inordinate amount of luck involved – levels vary a lot in terms of difficulty and you get way too many extra player marbles which are basically game enders.

I read on Piste’s blog that they’re planning on releasing a patch Monday that lowers the frequency of extra player balls, which is good (personally, I’d consider making them a power-down that you have to roll over). I think the levels should also have a difficulty associated with them, with a higher chance of encountering tough levels later on. That would make reaching those levels more exciting, too. It might also help to increase the time bonuses, to balance out the currently too-powerful combo bonuses.

Otherwise, this game has a lot of potential to be something I’d play often.