Puzzle Chronicles to arrive next month
It's the new one from the Puzzle Quest lot.
Konami has announced that Puzzle Chronicles will be released for DS and PSP on 18th February. A downloadable version will follow via PSN and XBLA.
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
Key events
11th June 2009
24th February 2009
9th February 2009
17th March 2008
25th February 2008
11th February 2008
PSN update: VidZone launches today
Also: Puzzle Quest! WipEout! Wolfenstein!
There be treasure on the PlayStation Store today, lead by the free online music video streaming service VidZone.
Futuristic Puzzle Quest sequel Galactrix finally shows up, as does Wolfenstein 3D. Both are out on Xbox Live Arcade but we've only reviewed Puzzle Quest: Galactrix so far. SEGA's Gunstar Heroes is up for grabs, as is a demo for the black-hearted Overlord II, which tramples peasants with whimsy.
The PSP is offered a quartet of previously UMD-only games - the best being WipEout Pulse - and there's a slew of content for existing PS3 games.
PQ Galactrix dated for Xbox Live
Out next Wednesday.
D3Publisher has announced that Puzzle Quest: Galactrix will be released for Xbox Live Arcade on 8th April, with a PSN version to follow at an unspecified date.
A small step or a giant leap?
Developers of casual games usually relish the chance to de-nerd the hobby on whose periphery they operate. For example, PopCap litters its titles with unicorns and rainbows without apology. They feature characters and colours which rarely get a look-in when it comes to contemporary gaming's brown, bloom-soaked vistas. It's understandable. If you're going to design a game to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, why dress it up like something that just stepped out of Forbidden Planet?
By contrast, Puzzle Quest developer Infinite Interactive celebrates geekery. The first game may have had a straightforward colour-matching mechanic at its core, but the setting was pure Dungeons and Dragons. All giant clicking spiders and pointy wizard hats, it was as nerdish and traditional a gaming scenario as you could imagine.
Galactrix is just as content to settle into orthodox geek territory, with the sort of sci-fi set-up that's been familiar from Elite right through to Mass Effect. This time, however, it's more difficult to call the underlying game in any way casual.
Development unaffected, says D3P.
Namco Bandai has announced its intention to acquire D3, the company that owns D3Publisher, which handles Puzzle Quest, Eat Lead and Ben 10 games.
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix gets release date
It's out on PC and DS next month.
D3Publisher has told Eurogamer that Puzzle Quest: Galactrix will be released for PC and DS next month.
It is of course a sequel to the original Puzzle Quest, which involved collecting gems, firing weapons and exploding mines, that sort of thing. The sort of thing which can prove highly addictive, as Tom found out.
The new game has a sci-fi theme, as you may just have guessed. A Flash demo is already available.
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix heading to PSN
D3P confirms Flash demo website hint.
D3Publisher has confirmed to Eurogamer that Puzzle Quest: Galactrix will be released on PlayStation 3 as well as Xbox Live Arcade, PC and DS.
Puzzle Quest Galactrix Flash demo
Highest cunning starts first.
Infinite Interactive's upcoming Puzzle Quest Galactrix is now available to sample thanks to a Flash demo that allows you to play through a typical battle.
Bejeweled is most popular this century
25 million sold, 6 billion hours played.
PopCap Games has claimed that Bejeweled is the most popular casual series of the century, with Bejeweled and Bejeweled 2 collectively selling over 25 million units since early 2000.
Puzzle Quest goes to space.
Puzzle Quest goes to space.
Puzzle Quest XBLA to get expansion
And you can help name it.
D3Publisher has promised a ginormous expansion for Puzzle Quest on Live Arcade this spring.
The publisher wants help naming it, too; starting today and ending on Friday you can submit ideas via the official website. Rather a frustating site, that.
Fresh additions are professions Bard, Rogue, Ranger and Warlock, as well as an undiscovered area containing 25 quests.
Science-fiction follow-up this year.
When D3Publisher revealed that a Puzzle Quest follow-up would be released in 2008, we guessed that it might be something we'd already heard about - and we were right, although it wasn't Deathbringer, as we suspected, but Galactrix.
Now known as Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, and due out on PC, Xbox Live Arcade and DS this year, and according to GameSpot it's like the original PQ except it's gone all far-future science-fiction and the puzzle gameplay is set on a hexagonal grid with shifting gravity.
The idea is still that you create lines of three tiles of the same colour to bank whatever resource they represent, but that the resulting gap is not always filled from the same direction. If you're in orbit around a planet as you fight, for example, things may slide in from the bottom left rather than above. Other times, there's no gravity at all.
D3Publisher spills beans (sorry, gems).
A sequel of some sort to Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords will be released in 2008, says D3Publisher.
Buried at the bottom of a press release announcing a new European MD, it says: "The company will also be releasing video games based on Aardman's popular Shaun the Sheep character in 2008, alongside the eagerly-awaited follow-ups to the best-selling Ben 10 and Puzzle Quest."
So, Puzzle Quest 2?