slaggle dot com

I received a lot of new video games during the holiday season, one of which I am currently obsessing over almost as much as World of Warcraft. Yes, I know that is a bold statement, but it is true. I stayed up pretty late last night after raiding Karazhan playing this stupid game.

I’m talking about a game called Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords.

Puzzle Quest is a turn-based RPG. You have a character with a specific class that give you special abilities, health and mana, and trainable attributes. As you progress in levels and gain money, you can purchase upgrades to your citadel, buy a mount, use companions, and more.

The combat system is what is unique to the game. Combat is very much like playing Bejeweled, which really is what makes this game fun. You are presented a square filled with different colored circular tiles. The tiles can be colored, with each color representing a different type of mana that is used for your abilities. You also have tiles that grant experience, give you money, wildcards which act as point multipliers, and skull tiles which deal direct damage to your enemy.

Much like Bejeweled, you have to get three tiles of the same type in a row to activate them. So if you get three red tiles in a row, they leave the game board and you get +3 red mana. On your turn if you have enough of the right color of mana, you can use different spells/abilities that will either buff yourself or cause damage/debuffs to your enemy. Combat is ended when either you or your opponent reaches 0 health.

The storyline is kind of cheesy, but the quests are fun and always result in a challenging opponent. The AI is pretty intelligent and you will spend a lot of time cursing it for seeing a 4-in-a-row that you didn’t see coming. (Getting 4 tiles in a row results in a free turn).

I have the game on the Nintendo DS, but it is also available on the PSP, Wii, PS2, PC, and even on the XBox Live Arcade. It’s cheap to pick up and very addictive. I heartily recommend it, especially if you are looking for a new game for your portable gaming device.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 10:15 am and is filed under blog posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.