Puzzle Quest coming to XBLA

I love this game.

If you haven't heard about the game, its an interesting blend of puzzle and RPG, the gameplay is bejewelled where you swap gems on a board, however you're playing against a computer AI opponent, usually an orge or skeleton or other typical RPG fare, so you take one turn and then he takes a turn. On your turn when you clear 3 or more coloured gems you keep them and use them as spells on your opponent. There are also skulls on the board where you clear 3 or more of them which do damage to your opponent. As well as that there's money and experience points to collect. Your opponent's life is measured with a hit point bar just like in real RPGs. Off the gameboard, there's a long story to give relevance to the puzzle battles, there's armour and weapons to outfit your character and much upgrading of your citadel to do to train mounts, upgrade skills and learn new spells.

Two weeks ago I went to the Puzzle Quest: meet the developers talk (in Melbourne at the Atari building), where Steve Fawkner, lead programmer of Infinite Interactive talked at length about the development process. He said the game came from his addiction of bejewelled and his love of RPGs. For those that haven't heard of Infinite Interactive they are the people behind the Warlords games. He's hoping the game will do well in Japan, and was one of the primary reasons why he went for the half manga, half american comic book style of characters in the game, so it could appeal to both audiences. Initially the game was hard to sell to publishers because the puzzle genre and RPG format had never been done before, but when he showed it to D3 they had no hesitancy in picking up the game.

The game is to come out around May 16th for the PSP and DS, one of the primary reasons its coming out so late is that the OFLC haven't rated the game yet, which Steve was very disappointed about, because it was hard for him to keep up the 'buzz' of the game, since the American reviews. But he also acknowledges the fact that this will continue the 'overall' buzz with forthcoming Xbox Live Arcade and PC releases, although he never actually said they were coming, he hinted very strongly that its the publisher that makes the call on whether the game will see the light of day.

At the end of the talk, there were some giveaways, I scored 1 of the 4 copies of Puzzle Quest (a PSP version) and was totally estactic as I never win anything. I already had the DS version so I can definitely do a bit of a comparison. Personally, its a fantastic pick up anywhere game, games only take 10 minutes long and because the PSP saves your progress when you switch the power off, you can get straight into the game, very useful. The PSP version has great graphics, unlimited character saves and more music however has a big bug where the bonuses you get from the characters that join your party don't work. Having played both versions - its frustrating but not critical and makes the game a bit more challenging.

The DS version uses stylus control for the entire game, the graphics aren't as nice, because there's less music - it gets more repetitive quickly. There are only 2 character save slots because of the limited cartridge space. Steve Fawkner acknowledges that 2 character saves weren't really enough, but the publisher kept strongly hinting to him to decrease the size of the cartridge, initially Steve wanted to go for a 128Mbit cart, but the developer told him the cost difference between that and a 64, and from a 64 to 32 were substantial, and because he was a PC developer and didnt really know much about DS development, they went with the smaller cartridge where the further into development they went, the more they realised they needed the bigger cart, so the graphics were compressed alot, less music was used etc etc.

Regardless both games sport the same gameplay, same story, same content in the game so nobody would be really missing out. I do think the PSP version is a little better only for the graphics upgrade. Anyways - go get it, great new game and finally some innovation in the world of video games.

Finally if you need any more reason to play this - my girlfriends put in at least 50 hours on the DS version and she's not a gamer type. She plays the Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon and Dynasty Warriors and thats about it!

Thanks mate.

LOL - I'm at work, thought it would take 10 minutes, took half an hour. yikes. well i stayed freaking late yesterday anyways....

I would have sent it into PALGN if I had taken photos of the event though, but overall, it was just a few chairs, Steve and a powerpoint presentation, so nothing too special.