Puzzle Quest takes to space

I’ve lost more hours to Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords than I’m willing to admit. While my wife was in labour for twelve hours, though, the game was a godsend.

It’s a curious blend of puzzle gaming - like Bejeweled - and RPG gaming - like old-skool Final Fantasy - that has really made the most of genre-blending.

I’ve been playing PQ on my PSP - it was also created for the DS - but when the game’s publisher, D3Publisher, realized they had a sleeper hit on their hands, they wisely ported it to PS2 and on Xbox LIVE Arcade, too.

Well, D3 has just announced that the popular game is becoming a franchise with the release of Puzzle Quest: Galactrix.

This new game takes puts the hexagonal puzzle pieces and places them in a science fiction, space-aged context. The board, the publishers said in a release, “heeds to gravity according to a player’s location in the game universe.” Sounds like a new and interesting mechanic to me.

The new game is scheduled for release this fall, and will be available on Xbox LIVE Arcade, PC, and the Nintendo DS.