Rock, Paper, Shotgun

In case anyone’s wondering how to get a story on RPS, it’s all about jumping up and down and demanding. Eurogamer’s Tom Bramwell has executed this with grace and finesse, and thus I’m forced to write about the forthcoming Neopets Puzzle Adventure.

It’s the sort of name your eyes glide right past when scanning a list of press releases. The idea of Neopets fills me with a sense of horror (other than reminding me of the happy time I fed my little sister’s Tamagotchi until it died of fullness). But the key words here are, “From the people who made Puzzle Quest, Infinite Interactive.”

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While, as evidenced, Jim was running around like a TF2 scout at GDC, he didn’t see everything. GameSpot UK managed to get some time seeing the new Puzzle Quest spin-off, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. ENVY. We possess ENVY.

Putting aside the Euro-Sci-Fi graphics, the biggest change is that the game’s based around a hex-based board with a more unusual gravity. For example, in a deep space level with no gravity, the gems will fall in the direction they’ve been matched, rather than just straight on down. Which makes sense. As it’s in space, and there’s only momentum and stuff. Also, instead of a single character class, you can gain different ships, which act like proxy character classes, with individual bits and pieces. They haven’t mentioned anything about there being no cheating, but we suspect there won’t be any, as there never was. No, really.

There’s also footage for the game, which features Puzzle Quest designer Steve Fawkner talking about the game in an impressively fashionable leather jacket. At least for a game designer, anyway. That’s here.

This isn’t about Valve either. Because you know, games are busy.

Kieron posted a couple of days ago about the freshly confirmed release date for Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, on the 22nd Oct. Turns out their “confirmation” wasn’t enormously accurate, what with the game being on Gamersgate today.

It’s a teeny weeny download of only 85.8MB (exactly six Peggles) (don’t believe the 58.94MB (4.12P) lie on the game’s main page), but you do have to jump through the fiery hoops of Gamersgate’s registration, then paying, then downloading their downloader, then downloading the game proper, then installing it. Which doesn’t take long, but blimey.

But hooray! This year’s Trinity of Puzzle Games is complete.

The PC Demo’s been online for months, which was leading me to wonder what on earth was delaying the full version. Thankfully, it’s all sorted out, and will be out on the 22nd in the US. This is a good thing.

Puzzle Quest joins Peggle and Bookworm Adventures, becoming the third part of the holy Puzzle Trinity this year. Peggle (available to download here, weighing in at 14.3 MB or the size of 1 Peggle) is the one which has innovated in terms of mechanisms – mashing Pachinko into an inversed Puzzle Bobble. Bookworm Adventures and Puzzle Quest innovate in terms of structure. In Puzzle Quest’s case, it takes a simple RPG/Quest game and where they’d normally have battles, inserts games of Zoo Keeper. Shockingly, it works brilliantly. And, to add to the absurdity, the whole thing is set place in the none-more-PC-ier Warlords universe.