_________ /\ /\ / \_____/ \ / / \ \ ____ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ __ / / \ \ | _ \ | | / \ | | | | | | / _|\ \ / / /___/ \___\ | | \ || || O || | | '_| || |_ \ \/ / \ \ / / | |_/ || || _ || \_ | ,-| || |_ / /\ \ \ \ / / |_|__/ |_||_|_| \__||_| |_| \__|/_/ \_\ \ \_____/ / \ / \ / bit Generations \/_______\/ [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.