Your mission in QBz (pronounced Cubes ) is simple, all you need to do is to
remove all QBz from the playfield, once it is done, you proceed with the next
level.

The game can be either played as a strategy game, were you must get a certain
amount of points to reach the next level, if you fail, its game over. Or on
the other side, you can play it more like an “action” game, were you play
against the time. And if you don’t play it at an easy difficulty, you don’t
have time to think there.

Once you start a game, you will be presented with your playfield, which
consists of 4×4 or up to 14×14 QBz. There are three different colors available
(in easy difficulty), four in normal, and five in hard. Now all you need to do
is to click on any of the QBz, which has at least one of the same color
adjacent (horizontal or vertical). Then these specific QBz will vanish and you
score, but the more of them you can remove at the same time, the better you
score. If you try to remove a single QB, you get a penalty of 1000 points
(removed). Once all possible combinations are gone, the level is completed.
Now you get bonus points depending on how many percent of the playfield you
cleared, if you cleared them all, you will see a special “Perfect Clear”
sequence.

To help you on your mission, you have three buttons at your control. Two of
them will rotate the QBz in the playfield, either left or right. The other
button will randomize them all. All of these buttons are only accessible three
times per level. So if you rotated the playfield three times to the left, you
can’t randomize it any more.

To maximize the replay-value, the game can be played at 96 different ways.
This is a result of 13 game options from 4 different categories, which you can
be combined the way you like it.

The 13 game options are:

4 game modes with “time challenge” (playing against time on different sized
playfields), “gigantic time” (only 14×14 playfields), “points challenge”
(playing for a certain point limit on different sized playfields), and
“gigantic points” (only 14×14 playfields).

2 mix modes with “today’s game” and “random mix” (the first will generate
similar games on the same day, changing the pattern from day to day, while the
last will always randomize).

4 level amounts with “3 levels”, “5 levels”, “10 levels”, and “infinite”
(choose how many games you want to play in one row).

3 skill levels with “easy”, “normal”, and “pro” (increasing color per game,
from 3 to 5; decreasing time in time modes; increasing points needed in points
modes).

In addition to this all, the game offers multiple local highscores, one for
each game mode. And furthermore, even an Internet based world wide highscore.

QBz