Quadralien Download (1988 Puzzle Game)

Quadralien is a real-time puzzle game in the tradition of Sokoban.

The future: Mankind's space stations throughout the solar system are powered by a huge space reactor, called Astra. Astra is about to break down. The enemy race of Quadraliens has captured the reactor; now, contamination is rising and total failure is imminent. The last chance are six remotely controlled droids, which are to clean Astra and destroy the Quadrailen mother in Astras core.

You're controlling two robots in each of the 19 levels, cleaning up the contamination on your way. Gameplay is a variation of Sokoban: You've got to push spheres in the right direction to clear the way. However, the spheres are magnetically charged, meaning that they repell or attract each other. You've got to consider chain reactions.

Before entering a level, you may chose which robots to take with you. Each droid has different abilities, like higher range of movement, higher capacity to carry contaminated materials, or a magnetic charge of its own. You can blast your way out of hopeless situations with a limited number of detonators, and you may restart every level with already removed contamination staying removed. However, there's a time limit for the whole game in form of reactor core temperature and energy, so be quick!

Quadralien is a very unique action/puzzle hybrid that combines robotic programming with dexterity. The plot is an interesting sci-fi meltdown scenario: Astra, the last and largest of mankind's fission reactors is rapidly breaking down from an invasion by (duh) alien race Quadralien. It is your job to prevent the breakdown of Astra, and find and destroy the Quadralien Mother.

The game is played from an effective bird's-eye-view perspective, which allows you to scroll to see the entire level of the reactor. For each level, you must reach a target score by using the droids to perform various functions, such as activate a Geiger scanner, absorb radioactivity, or detonate explosives. There are 6 droids in the game, only 2 of which can be used on any level. The fun and challenge, therefore, is to figure out which droid to use where, since each droid has a different characteristics that make them ideal for a specific environment. The reactor can be shut down only when the core temperature is raised to an appropriate level, and this is accomplished by sending water barrels down chutes or reducing the Entropy level. This means that you must carefully maneuver the droids to move those barrels, while avoiding dangerous objects such as an earthing box which can drain all your droid's power.

If it weren't for extremely difficult last levels that are impossible except for those with perfect hand-eye-brain coordination, Quadralien's unique mix of action, logic, and puzzle elements would have earned a Top Dog status. As it stands, though, it's still an immensely enjoyable, addictive action/puzzle mix that is definitely worth a try. Puzzle experts in particular will likely find the game a good challenge.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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