While the behemoths of the video game industry toil over the next Pokémon edition or Final Fantasy spin-off, developers Infinite Interactive have been readying what could be this year’s most unique RPG for the DS. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords marries the depth and detailed story lines of the role-playing genre with the pick-up-and-play nature of a puzzle game.

Please don’t mistake the title as just a budget puzzler with a simple RPG shell. Set in the Warlords universe, Puzzle Quest promises enough empire-building and character customization to fill out a 40+ hour experience. Read on for the first half of our two-part interview with Infinite Interactive’s Steve Fawkner where we talk about about quest item sets, capturing monsters to use them as mounts, and other crazy features that have no business being in a puzzle game.

Part 1 & Part 2

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
Publisher: D3Publisher
Platforms: DS, PSP
Release Date: March 20th, 2007 (USA)
Gameplay Modes: Single-player, Instant Action or Multiplayer (Local, not online)

4 Color Rebellion: Can you give us a little more background on this eccentric game’s history? We understand that Puzzle Quest was originally a PC-only title (Warlords Champions). How did the game find its way to D3P, developed for handheld platforms?

Steve Fawkner: Puzzle Quest was originally developed on PC (where it was indeed known as Warlords Champions), but it was always our goal to bring it to Nintendo DS & Sony PSP. With that in mind, we developed the game in such a way that the design and interface were friendly to all platforms.

We met with Brian Christian and Careen Yapp of D3Publisher of America, Inc. when they were in Australia in late 2005 and I think that we all thought that a partnership seemed like a good fit between our two companies – they were looking for experienced developers with fresh ideas for gameplay, and we were looking for a publisher who wasn’t afraid to take a chance on a product that is just a little different to everything else out there.

A lot of people have asked us why we changed the name to Puzzle Quest. This was a tough decision, but we felt that people had an expectation that a “Warlords” title would look and play like a strategy game. So we shuffled some words around, still kept the “Warlords” in there as “Challenge of the Warlords” (since the game does take place in Etheria, the Warlords universe), and dropped in a new title “Puzzle Quest,” which is a better indication of the primary style of gameplay.

Puzzle Quest will be published for both the Nintendo DS and PSP–with X360 and PC versions also recently announced. Obviously, the DS will have the advantages of touch-screen functionality and being able to separate player data from the puzzles. Are there other differences? Will the DS version lose some of the overworld’s visual flair and puzzle “effects” seen in the PSP trailer?

Puzzle Quest has only been officially announced for the DS & PSP at this time. PC and Xbox 360 versions have not been announced, but the game may find its way onto those platforms at a future date. The 2d art in the game is especially detailed and looks brilliant on both the DS and PSP screens. It has been created in a very high resolution, so if we do go to PC and Xbox 360 later, it will look good on larger displays too. Once again, our effect systems were implemented in a multi-platform friendly manner, so that you’re seeing most of the same stuff on the DS that you get in the PSP version, just slightly smaller. Any small loss of quality on DS is more than made up for by the fact that you get to use the stylus – it is such a good way to play the game.

Some might confuse the combat system as a simple rehash of Bejewled-style match-three puzzlers. How does the combat’s depth go beyond just chaining combos to deal damage or cast spells?

Well we’ve certainly been inspired by match-three style games like Bejeweled. That’s a good thing – it means the game is instantly familiar and accessible to a large audience. My biggest complaint about those type of games is that when I finish, I have to start all over again from zero, and the experience is mostly identical. What I really wanted to play was a match-three puzzler that gave me a sense of progression, so that not only did I get better at the actual puzzle, but over the course of 40-60 hours I would find dozens of new things that I could do within the puzzle.

The combat works like this: there are 7 types of Gems (and wild cards, but I’ll leave them alone for now). Each gem has an effect when you match it. The four different colored mana gems give you mana to help you cast spells during battle. Gold coins give you money to upgrade your character’s items after a battle. Stars give you experience so that you can gain higher levels, and fight tougher monsters. And lastly, Skulls will damage your opponent.

So every time I make a move, I have to weigh up a number of considerations: Can I damage my enemy with skulls? Do I need to get mana for spells? Should I cast one of my own spells? Will this move line up something for my opponent that I don’t want him to get? Can I do a special move, like match 4-of-a-kind?

Like chess, it is at once very simple to find a move, but a lot more complex to find the perfect move. Even though there is a high degree of random events with gems falling down, there is very little luck involved in the game. The better of two players will almost always beat the other.

There are puzzle mini-games for non-combat tasks like forging customized items. What are the other mini-games, and how are they implemented?

There are 4 different types of mini-games, each one based around a variation of match-three play, but many having special gems or victory conditions.

Capturing Monsters is one of my favorites. Each monster has a different puzzle that must be solved. The puzzle consists of gems prearranged on a grid, and you must clear the grid by doing match-three moves. Some of the tougher monsters have very tricky puzzles. Once you’ve captured a monster, you can either learn his spells or ride him as a mount.

Training Mounts is the next mini-game. Here you train previously captured monsters to higher levels. Higher-level mounts give you bonuses in battle, and also allow you to bypass weaker monsters on the world map (in the story). This mini-game is like a regular battle but played against a timer. The timer gets shorter and shorter as the Mounts get higher and higher level.

Learning Spells from monsters is another mini-game. If you want to customize your hero’s spell list and get really powerful, it’s a definite plus to get a few monsters’ spells to help you out. In this game, you match-three once again, but you are trying to reach a target amount of mana & scrolls (scrolls are rare gems that are only created when you match 4-of-a-kind or 5-of-a-kind with other gems types). Simple spells only require a few scrolls, but the most powerful spells might require 10 to 15.

The last mini-game is for Forging Items. If you have picked up some Runes on the world map, then you can create new magic items use. The more powerful runes will allow better and better items. In this mini-game, special “Hammer & Anvil” gems will occasionally drop and your task is to destroy a certain number of them before you run out of moves. Easy items only require two or three “Hammer & Anvils” to be destroyed. The ultimate godlike items require over 20 “Hammer & Anvils” and can easily take an hour to create!

Can you give us examples of any particularly interesting items or spells that gamers will be driven to obtain and equip their character with?

There are 160 standard items (as well as almost 2000 creatable ones). There are also 130 spells. So, as you can imagine, there are many possibilities for how you customize your hero.

One of my favorite hero builds involves completing a set of quests for Drong the Ogre in Act II of the game. Each time you complete a quest he gives an item from the “Blood” set: the Earthblood Cloak, the Wyrmblood Stone, the Trollblood Staff and the Ogreblood Helm. These four items all increase your Spell Resistance whenever the enemy casts a spell. Late in the game when you are fighting some heavy spellcasters like the Arkliche, these items can be invaluable.

As for spells… I go straight for a Troll, try to capture him and learn the Regeneration spell – it’s very handy for staying alive!

Players will be able to capture cities and build castles. Can you explain the mechanics behind this and how the “empire-building” features affect gameplay?

You start the game owning a single city: Bartonia. This gives you 100 Gold every month when you visit it. Each extra city you capture also starts giving you a monthly Gold bonus when you visit.

The great thing about captured cities though is that you can perform special functions at them, like playing the minigames. So you really do want to capture a few cities as you play, just so you don’t need to constantly travel back to Bartonia

Instead of suffering an XP/gold penalty or having to reload the game after losing a battle, players receive a fraction of the reward and are given the option for a rematch. While some might feel that this makes the game too easy, it’s a boon for portable gamers who don’t want to see even a few of their minutes wasted after a loss. RPGs aren’t usually suited for short bursts of gameplay, but Puzzle Quest’s nature makes this title an exception to that rule. What other active measures does Puzzle Quest take that cater to the portable gaming experience?

This type of feature has been a hallmark of the Warlords games. It’s kind of a personal thing with me. I hate having to save a game before a big fight and then reload if/when I lose. It breaks all the immersion for me and interrupts the flow of play. So a loss in Puzzle Quest is still a penalty… you’ve spent 10 minutes of your time and not progressed… but I don’t see why we should penalize a player further by making them go back through a load-game screen.

Puzzle Quest is all about being friendly and pleasant to play. We’ve spent 12 months really just polishing the interface so you can put it down for a week and then pick it up again and instantly continue playing. All quests will constantly show you where to go to complete them, detailed info about those quests is instantly at hand with a single click, and pop-up help is available on everything in the game with another single click.

You can see a lot of this friendly interface design while playing the current generation of RPGs and MMOs on the PC, and it always surprises me that more of this stuff doesn’t find its way onto console and handheld games.

End of Interview (Part 1)

Make sure to check out part two of our interview with Infinite Interactive. We’ll dig up details on their next hybrid game for the DS, Galactrix. We’ll also get an update on their Warlords DS port. And if you promise to be good little children, maybe we’ll tell you about their plans with developing games for the Wii!

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords official site
Puzzle Quest interview at Siliconera
Puzzle Quest trailer (PSP)

Infinite Interactive’s Official Site