Puzzle Quest pretty much rocks

Last week, a copy of a weird-looking little DS game called Puzzle Quest showed up on my doorstep. It's not an entirely unusual happening, so I chucked the game in my bag thinking I'd give it a go last weekend. Sadly, I didn't actually fire up the game until I read Wednesday's Penny-Arcade whilst procrastinating before writing the final chunks of my Linux feature for the June issue. Naturally, Tycho's melifluous prose compelled me to wrest the shrink wrap from the PQ package, and insert the game in my DS.

Fast forward four hours.

When next I look up, it's been dark for several hours and the dog peed relieved herself on the floor. So what if it's dark and my dog soiled the rug, Sad Prince William--my wizard--hit level 12. What Infinite Interactive has done is take a fairly boring standard RPG and replace the traditional D&D style dice rolls with a two-player game of Bejeweled. When you match up sets of jewels, you gain mana. There are seven types of jewels, four give you different types of mana when you match them, one gives you raw exp, one gives you gold, and the final one damages your opponent. When you collect enough mana, you can use it to cast spells, which damage the baddies or give you standard RPG-esque buffs.

Combining something as addictive as Bejeweled with a good-old-fashioned level grind is pure evil and I love it. But Will, why are you writing about this on Maximum PC's website when it's a DS and PSP game? Well, gentle reader, the answer is simple. The game has a PC-only demo. Go. Scoot. Play it now!

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puzzle, casual, bejeweled

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