Puzzle Quest: Not Casual
I’ve been playing a lot of Puzzle Quest recently. It isn’t as sticky as some would have you believe — I think some of the people who say that it’s “incredibly addictive” haven’t played enough modern casual games. Which brings me to my surprise finding: even though it’s based on Bejeweled, Puzzle Quest is not intended for casual audiences.
That’s okay. It’s just not what I expected. When you first start a Puzzle Quest character, you’ll be fighting “battles” against bats and rats and vermin. Each “battle” is actually a game of Bejeweled, with you and the opponent taking turns. You’re going to lose. You’re�going to lose a LOT. Now, there’s no penalty for losing a battle, you can just try again. But they don’t baby you and let you win at first. In fact, the game gets much EASIER after a few hours of playing — not because you get better at Bejeweled (you don’t), but because you get better powers. By the time you’re fighting zombies and rogue wizards, you’re actually having more fun, because you have power-ups that can be combined in interesting ways.
It’s fine to make a Bejeweled game for hard-core gaming audiences. I’m happy that the game is receiving good word of mouth among RPG fans: it deserves it! But with only minor tweaks they could also have reached the casual gaming audience:
- Start out with fewer colors. Puzzle Quest starts with 7 matchable colors. This is a lot of colors for a Bejeweled game. They could have discarded a color or two (say, the “sacks of gold”) and made it much easier to find four-in-a-row matches.
- Make the monsters dumb at first. Since you and your opponent take turns on the board, you can’t really set up any clever moves — your opponent always takes advantage of your setup! The first few opponents should have been dumber. Let the AI get smarter as the game progresses.
- Start players out with more useful powers, even if they’re just temporary powers. Why does the level 2 rat have more impressive powers than a level 2 player?
- Give players more information about “leveling up”. Players have to make very difficult decisions when leveling up. Spending skill points the wrong way can ruin a character, forcing you to start over from scratch. There’s not nearly enough information for people to be able to make informed decisions about something so important. At the very least, the game should offer a “recommendation” about where to spend their skill points.
Hardcore players might call these changes “dumbing it down.” On the other hand, I don’t know anybody who actually had FUN during the first hour of gameplay. So if dumbing it down means “making it more fun”, isn’t that a worthwhile trade off?
Maybe not. This gets into the “casual mindset versus hardcore mindset” discussion, which is a topic for another day. Suffice it to say that a steep barrier to entry is appealing to some players. It creates a “we’re better than those peons” sense of pride, which is very important to some people who self-identify as hardcore gamers.
However, I have to imagine that when you’re making a game for Nintendo DS, you’re better off appealing to casual gamers than to the most hardcore niche. Or am I wrong about who owns a DS?
Also, the background music has to go.