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/ / \ \ ____ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ __
/ / \ \ | _ \ | | / \ | | | | | | / _|\ \ / /
/___/ \___\ | | \ || || O || | | '_| || |_ \ \/ /
\ \ / / | |_/ || || _ || \_ | ,-| || |_ / /\ \
\ \ / / |_|__/ |_||_|_| \__||_| |_| \__|/_/ \_\
\ \_____/ /
\ / \ / bit Generations
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[TOC]
INTRODUCTION [INTR]
GAMEPLAY [GAME]
Endless Mode [ENDL]
Versus Mode [VERS]
TIPS [TIPS]
CREDITS [CRED]
Change Log [CLOG]
Copyright [COPY]
[COT]
_________________________________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION [INTR]
_________________________________________________________________________
Dialhex is a puzzle game for the Gameboy Advance, released in Japan on
July 13th, 2006. It can be considered a "falling block" game, although
what falls is actually triangles. It is part of Nintendo's "boutique"
bit Generations line of games, which feature minimalist but polished
game designs and low prices.
As of February 2007, Dialhex is only for sale in Japan (though it was
submitted to the ESRB for rating in North America). It is available
for $15-25 (plus shipping) through various importers, along with other
bit Generations titles. I bought it from
http://www.play-asia.com.
There is no region coding, all in-game text is in English, and the
manual is totally superfluous.
_________________________________________________________________________
GAMEPLAY [GAME]
_________________________________________________________________________
Triangles of different colors fall from the top of a hexagonal
board. As they hit the bottom they slide downwards until they hit
another triangle or the bottom of the board. With the directional pad,
you control a hexagonal cursor. L and R (or A and B) cause the cursor
to rotate the triangles it hovers over. By rotating the pieces to
form hexagons of a solid single color, that hexagon will
disappear. Holding down both L and R (or A and B) will make the
triangles fall faster.
As you create hexagons more colors are added. You start with orange
and green. Whenever you create a total of six hexagons of some color a
new color is added, up to eight total colors: Green, orange, yellow,
dark green, red, blue, purple, and cyan. New triangles also start
dropping faster. The game ends when the field fills up or you've made
six cyan hexagons.
Triangles inside your cursor will not fall, so you can use the cursor
to "lift" triangles into place. It also means that if you rotate
something and want it to fall you'll have to move the cursor out of
the way.
There are two kinds of special triangles. When you form a hexagon with
a triangle that flashes between white and another color all triangles
of that color will disappear from the field. If you're lucky this will
cascade for a bit and clear out some more hexagons of other colors. If
you form a hexagon with a triangle that flashes between black and
another color, a hole opens up in the playing field where you cleared
the hexagon, and pieces will slide through it and disappear. When the
field is very full this can empty it fast, but if you're not under
pressure it's usually just frustrating to lose all the triangles of
the color you're working on.
Start will pause the game. You can either continue, quit to the main
menu, or put your GBA/DS into sleep mode to conserve power.
Endless Mode [ENDL]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once you've made it halfway through Solo mode, by clearing six dark
green hexagons, Endless mode unlocks. Endless mode just keeps getting
faster until you fail. It keeps a record of the most hexagons you've
cleared in a single game.
Versus Mode [VERS]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I play this on a DS which doesn't support the GBA Link cable, so I
have no idea how this works.
_________________________________________________________________________
TIPS [TIPS]
_________________________________________________________________________
One thing that makes Dialhex different from many other falling block
games is that you must sometimes backtrack to clear a hexagon. If you
have five out of six blocks of the same color, you can't rotate the
final block in without first rotating one of the existing ones
out. Try to construct hexagons as three sets of two triangles since
you'll always need to be rotating two triangles at once.
As the field fills up it's much more important to work to clear
anything than to try to clear the currently active color. However,
when the field is low, remember that there's not much benefit to
working on colors you've already finished.
Each color has a distinctive pitch to the "plink" it makes when it
falls. After playing a lot you can work on clearing hexagons quickly
without having to look up to see if the color that just fell is the
one you're looking for.
_________________________________________________________________________
CREDITS [CRED]
_________________________________________________________________________
Dialhex is a trademark of Nintendo.
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n08/bit_g/dialhex/index.html
Change Log [CLOG]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
2007.02.18:
* Initial FAQ.
Copyright [COPY]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2007 Joe Wreschnig. This document may be freely used,
copied, and/or modified, in any medium, as long as this notice remains
intact. New versions are uploaded to GameFAQs.
