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Game: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords Developer: Infinite Interactive

Casual gaming meets high fantasy. We take a look at Infinite Interactive’s latest accomplishment …

When it comes to countries of the world, the now defunct U.S.S.R has got a lot to answer for. Although it is more commonly associated with sub-standard nuclear reactors, ethnic conflicts and vodka that can drop a horse at twenty paces, it’s also the birth place of Alexey Pajitnov, designer of the “match the coloured falling blocks” puzzle, Tetris. Since its inception in 1985, Alexey’s creation has mutated into numerous casual gaming formats ranging from PopCap’s Bejeweled and Bookworm series of games to Alexey’s own Hexic that was bundled with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game system.

While most of the derivatives of Tetris have closely matched the simple game-play of the original, the depth of these titles has remained consistently limited. After all, there are only so many ways you can match up rows of coloured falling blocks, aren’t there? Steve Faulkner, designer of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (PQ) would have us believe otherwise. His latest creation melds classic Bejeweled style game-play with his own world of Etheria to create a maliciously, addictive casual fantasy role-playing experience.

The game starts off with your inexperienced character twiddling her thumbs within the rather secluded environs of your home town, Bartonia. Unfortunately, all is not well within the realm. Orcs and other servants of chaos are filtering into the land, capturing Bartonia’s citizenry and making off with them into the northern wastes. Your ultimate objective is to discover the power controlling these evil machinations and put an end to the involuntary migration of the local populace. While the plot may not be a Raymond E. Feist fantasy masterpiece, it suffices to keep the game flowing and there are enough threads to the storyline to keep you involved.

You move your character throughout a plain, yet colourful map of Etheria via a point-too-point movement system that features all the key locations within the world. As you’d expect with any fantasy RPG, there are plenty of dungeons and crypts to explore, NPCs to interact with, and a multitude of quests to complete that will develop and expand upon the unfolding saga. All of this is accomplished with an intuitive point and click interface with a single button mouse.

As any RPG fan knows, exploring dank crypts and undertaking perilous quests usually results in you encountering something large and malevolent that has you shortlisted for its next snack. When these conflicts occur, the battles are fought out using a highly modified Bejeweled-like mini-game to resolve the outcome. It’s these frequent events that make PQ the absorbing game that it is.

Each character, NPC and monster within the game possesses eight numbered statistics that measure their life, experience, treasure and aptitude with four different magical fields (Earth, Fire, Air and Water magic.) There are also a half-dozen or so unique skills or spells available to each character or monster class.

Combat starts with an 8 by 8 grid displayed on screen, each cell filled with one of a variety of different types of playing tiles. The rules are simple: each player takes turns clicking on a single tile and moving it to an adjacent square (vertical or horizontal,) with the intent of creating a contiguous line of 3 or more identical tiles. Successfully creating a line causes those tiles to disappear while fresh tiles drop from above to refill the grid. Each tile you clear endows you with certain benefits depending on the tile type.

Matching 3 or more Green, Red, Yellow or Blue tiles adds mana to your character’s mana pool for Earth, Fire, Air or Water magic respectively. By accumulating enough mana of the requisite types, you can eventually start casting spells to damage your opponent, buff your abilities or even change tiles on the playing field. Matching any other tile type grants specific bonuses or penalties to each player, such as inflicting damage on your opponent or gaining gold or experience points. If you successfully match lines of 4 or more tiles, you are allowed to take another turn. You can then either move another tile or cast one of your spells if you have enough mana of the correct type. When one of the protagonist’s life points has been reduced to zero, the other combatant is declared the victor. Fortunately, death is not permanent for your in-game personae; losing a battle merely returns you to the main map, ready to challenge the foe once again at your leisure.

What provides PQ with the level of depth and challenge to keep players riveted to their seats is the sheer variety of monsters, spells and characters present in the game. As each combatant has their own unique powers and abilities, choosing the correct move to make or spell to cast becomes a painstaking exercise in compromise, sacrifice and/or sheer bloody luck.

Do you prevent your opponent from gathering yellow mana, so that she cannot cast the Fireball spell she has nearly prepared? Your own offensive Death Dive spell uses yellow mana that remains on the playing field; perhaps you should leave it and hope that your opponent doesn’t want the mana for herself? Should I just ignore mana this turn and match up those 3 skulls to knock a few more life points off my foe? It’s this near-infinite potpourri of events, situations and choices that make each battle such a rewarding experience and each victory a moment to savour.

Derivatives of the aforementioned combat system are also used to resolve other events within the game that you will trigger as you explore the world of Etheria. You can locate mystical runes scattered across the world which can eventually be crafted into magical artefacts that will boost your abilities. You can capture opposing creatures in order to learn their unique spells and abilities or use them as a mount to help you in your quest. You can even lay siege to citadels (in true Warlords fashion) to provide a steady source of tribute to fill your coffers. Each of these actions triggers a mini-game for you to complete; some timed and some that are simple puzzles that need solving with no opponent to thwart you.

Given such a wide range of game variables, programming AI routines to effectively execute each battle was going to be a challenge in its own right. Fortunately the development team have managed to create a competent AI opponent. While you will encounter the odd glitch where a potential battle winning move is not executed, these events are few and far between.

If you don’t have the time or inclination to complete your epic quest, Instant Action mode is available to allow you to practice against the foes you have discovered so far. There are game options to scale opponents to match your own character (similar to Bethesda’s Morrowind RPG) if you want to be persistently challenged. Multiplayer options to challenge your friends are also present, but no lobby or matchmaking service is available; you’ll have to share IP address information via one of the many third party applications available on the net. There is no game manual included (at least in the Steam version) but the in-game tutorial has been perfectly constructed to get you playing with a minimum of fuss.

There are a few minor issues that occasionally detract from the gaming experience. There is a lot of randomness in the way in which tiles drop into the playing field and it is quite possible to witness a half-dozen or more sequential moves by the AI due to pieces repeatedly dropping into sequences of 4 or more. Losing 60 life points before you can react can be depressing but thankfully, it’s a rare occurrence. The limited number of soundtracks will probably result in you turning off the music after a few hours of gaming (or perhaps replacing the .ogg files with your favourite tunes.) The graphics and visuals are functional if plain (the image of you riding a Giant Rat borders on the explicit!) and the relatively few cut-scenes are stills (similar to those you may have seen in Bungie’s Myth series of real-time strategy titles.) You can indulge in “gold farming” after you capture a few citadels, but I’ve yet to find much use for gold. You can tweak your character skills after each “level up” but as you can only gain two points per level, you won’t be buffing your character to obscene abilities in a hurry. In addition, store items are typically average in quality; you’re better off crafting some uber-items yourself when you find the more powerful runes later in the game.

Despite the aforementioned minor glitches, the game as a whole still comes up a winner. PQ is a perfect example of how a collection of simplistic gaming mechanics can be blended into a synergy of powerful game play and un-adulterated addiction! There’s a good 30-40 hours of entertainment here just playing through the main quest and plenty of opportunity to try out a different character class for another run after that. With a couple of recent gaming industry awards sitting on the shelf, and a sci-fi sequel already in development, the future of the PQ franchise looks highly promising. Do yourself a favour and buy/download the game for your favourite gaming platform today; you won’t be disappointed.