GDC 2010 – Puzzle Quest 2

Puzzle Quest 2 kind of slipped past my radar during GDC, but a friend told me that it had been announced and shown, so I decided to dig up the info available.

Being a fan of the first one, I was glad to hear there would be a bigger focus on the RPG and story part of the game, while keeping the game mechanics unchanged. The change in mechanics in Galactrix was what turned me off.

You’ll start by choosing your class and gender, either a Templar, Sorcerer, Barbarian, or Assassin. Some of the new mechanics involve being able to use your weapon via the new gauntlet tile. Let’s say you have an axe as a weapon, and it takes 3 gauntlet to deal 5 damage -> like skills, once you get enough gauntlet your weapon will light up and you’ll be able to trigger it to deal some damage.

The overworld map is gone, with the game taking place in a single town and its deep dungeon. So this would make it a dungeon crawler. The quest you’ll get in town will send you exploring the depths of the dungeon. Once in the dungeon, you can either focus on doing your quest or just killing monsters that are on the screen. Once you engage a monster, the battle begins in regular puzzle quest fashion, on the battle grid.

The game is coming out on the DS and XBLA this spring, with some minor difference.
On the DS you can only carry 27 items compared to the unlimited storage of the XBLA game. Multiplayer is adhoc on the DS and online on the 360.