Over the weekend I picked up a copy of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of War Lords for the DS (also available on the PSP, and soon PC).
Puzzle Quest is a solid combination RPG/Puzzle game, and because of that combination is very addictive.
The RPG elements of Puzzle Quest are kind of you standard fare. You pick a class (Warrior, Druid, Knight, or Wizard)
Once you pick a class you can begin the story mode of this RPG. The story consists of picking up standard quests such as, “Go to the sewers, and kill the leader of a Rat cult”, or “Go investigate the Orc camp to the north”. These quests are really just excuses to engage in “Puzzle Battles” with various baddies.

The Puzzle battles in Puzzle Quest, take place on a 8 x 8 board, against a AI opponent. The game play is simple to pick up, but can become challenging.
Where the puzzles become cool is in trying to get chains of 4+ pieces (that will grant you another turn, and grant bonus’ to mana, XP , and gold ) and deciding what to complete, if you want to get a quick hit in chain 3 skulls, if you want to store up some mana for a spell next turn then focus on completing those. Chaining puzzle combos can turn the tied of a battle in a big way!
A Victory will grant your character a decent amount XP and gold (less if you loose). When you level up you are granted skill points that can be put into mana specialization, combat damage, and other stats.
You can also spend gold on new armor, rumor sub quests, and you Citadel.
The citadel will allow you to create buildings that allow you to train mounts, build a training Dungeon, and a Mage tower that allows you to learn spells from captured opponents.
For a Puzzle game there is just so much depth to this game it’s almost staggering at times.
There are some downsides to Puzzle Quest, the AI at times can be brutal (sometimes cheap), and on the DS the presentation seems a bit cramped.
All in all this is a solid pick up and play game for either your Nintendo DS, PSP, and soon on the PC.
Be careful if you’re playing this on the train, you might just miss your stop!

Puzzle Quest Demo

It appears that reports of a systemic hack of Bungie.net to obtain a slew of Xbox Live accounts may be blown out of proportion.Microsoft sent their official response to this morning’s story to me just a bit ago:

Microsoft Responds to Live Hack Concerns - Kotaku

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According to a group of Xbox 360 gamers and Kevin Finisterre, a security researcher at Digital Munition, there are rumors that Bungie.Net was hacked and that a portion of Xbox Live was taken over. This hack allowed people to control gamer tags and either steal their points or purchase more points through the accounts.Finisterre says that he called Microsoft Tech and they confirmed that “accounts are being stolen and that “Hackers have control of Xbox live and there is nothing we can do about it”

Xbox Live Hacked, Accounts Stolen - Kotaku

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With linear stories you want to start amplifying. In Star Wars, it all comes down to these two possibilities – the rebels are crushed, or the Death Star blows up. One of the fundamental things I’ve found as an interactive storyteller is that in linear stories the director knows the future. He or she knows the minor details that are important to present to you. But we [interactive storytellers] don’t know those things. Ours are chaotic systems. Very minor initial conditions can lead to wide-ranging end conditions.

In a linear drama you can show the causal chain; in interactive drama you can’t so much. We’re playing with it in movies in interesting ways: interesting sub-plots (Magnolia); one of the things that keeps your interest is your wondering how these back stories are going to come together. This is a common thing that people do with causal change. Timecode is another version of this. It’s parallel multi-threaded storytelling.

Wonderland: SXSW: Will Wright Keynote

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