Demo Review: Puzzle Quest

Wow. What a surprise this game turned out to be.

Take lame idea like a make-3-in-a-row puzzle game (that's been done to death!), mix in a role playing game, a dash of table-top card game "mana" and you have yourself a fresh new hybrid experience.

The game works like this: swap two items around on the grid to make rows of three or more. Rows of colored mana gems give you power to cast spells (attack, defense, mana multiplying, etc). Rows of coins give you money to buy swords and armor and more spells. Rows of purple stars give you experience points to be more powerfull and "learn" new spells.

But the fun part is making rows of skulls. Make a row of these and an attack is dealt to your opponent, decreasing his health points.

If you can get four or more in a row, you get an extra turn. If there are no moves available, the computer will wipe the screen and refresh it with a new board.

I love games based on mana (expendable resources) to be able to do things. I'm a fan of Magic: The Gathering card game, so it was nice to learn that is how the game functions.

Having a text based story to follow isn't idea, but other elements like the music and sound effects are really well done. Not to cheesy or annoying. Things like the drums in the music sound good on my surround sound, but probably not something people notice on the DS or PSP (on which it's also available).

There is a lot going on the screen at times though. If one of your moves triggers two or three row creations, the graphic effects of attacks and rows disappearing makes a hard background to read the text that also pops up on.

Nicole got the bug and is playing through the demo now. I'm pretty sure we're going to buy the Xbox Live version. It's cheaper than a retail box for the DS ($15 vs $30), but it would be pretty nice to take this on the road or to..*cough*work*cough*.

I'm also assuming that since it's on Xbox Live, you can play with any of your friends and talk trash at the same time. I've only seen one other person playing it, but he's a good friend whom I'm sure wouldn't mind getting his butt handed to him.