Puzzle Quest, the match-3 RPG that invented and defined the genre to this day, is finally receiving the love and care it deserves. For the first time, the game—and its many additions—is getting a remaster, boosted to HD, and released to run properly on your personal favorite gaming platform. Even better, it’s out as soon as September 18!
In 2007, when Steam was just a tiny baby, a match-3 RPG sprang out of nowhere. Puzzle Quest, by developers Infinite Interactive, casually invented an entire new genre, and immediately did it better than anyone else ever would. It was an early smash hit on Steam, before even the launch of BioShock on the digital platform made the rest of the world take notice of Valve’s store, walking through the door PopCap had opened just months earlier with Peggle. And wow it was great.
Of course match-3 games were already a big deal. PopCap’s Bejeweled had taken care of that years earlier, following of course the path from Tetris to Dr. Mario to Puzzle Bobble. 1994 Russian DOS game Shariki takes the title of the first true match-3 game, but it was 2001’s Bejeweled that brought the concept into the mainstream, followed by the likes of the blissfully wonderful Zoo Keeper on DS in 2003. So by 2007, while it was still long before King’s Candy Crush Saga would ruin everything with its free-to-play shenanigans, a billion Bejeweled clones meant match-3 was everywhere. It only took a genius to say, “Yes, but what if it were an RPG?”
That’s Puzzle Quest, where the matching of the three becomes an aggressive act, used to attack your computer opponent in battles with spells and wallops, while collecting treasure and just generally feeling a zen marvelousness. In between each match, you moved around a properly RPG-like map, talked to D&D-like characters, and were told a story that gave meaning and purpose to your puzzling. This was largely thanks to the Warlords setting created by Puzzle Quest lead Steve Fawkner, an RPG gaming series that began in 1990 with the eponymous Warlords. It was just splendid, and best of all, can still be bought and played today. (Should Steam ever recover from the launch of Silksong, anyway.) But man, it looks like a stray dog some 18 years later, which is why I’m so damned delighted about the reveal of Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition.
This new revision includes the game’s 2008 expansion Revenge of the Plague Lords, as well as the new content that was created for the 2019 Switch port, Puzzle Quest: The Legend Returns. On top of that, there’s a new class being added, and the mysterious addition of “much more.” And gosh, it looks so shiny and new, and yet as wonderfully cluttered as it always was. This is being developed by Infinity Plus Two, the rebrand of the original Infinity Interactive that appeared in 2019, presumably with Steve Fawkner still at the helm.
Best of all, this is proper old-fashioned match-3 gaming, without all the microtransaction bullshit and ad-fueled misery that dominates the genre today. Infinity also created the extraordinary Gems of War, a live-service re-imagining of the same format that’s still receiving huge updates and new content ten years after its launch. (My 10-year-old recently became astonishingly obsessed with it, and plays at a level I cannot fathom, but that comes with the constant disappointment of my refusing to pay for all three of its simultaneous battle passes every month, let alone the eight trillion “offers” it pops up with as you’re playing. (I pay for one battle pass, I’m not a monster.))
Of course Puzzle Quest went on to receive its own sequels, including numbered follow-ups 2 and 3 and a sci-fi version called Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, as well as F2P-riddled Marvel Puzzle Quest developed by Demiurge Studios. There was even a Magic: The Gathering – Puzzle Quest, although I admit I’d never heard of that one until researching for this article. It’d be lovely to see PQ 2 and 3, and perhaps even Galactrix getting the same treatment soon. Let’s hope this first game’s rebirth is enough of a success. It’s coming out on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and X/S, Switch and PC (no word on a mobile version yet), so there are plenty of ways to play it come September 18.