Preview: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix

First off, there's not much to say that hasn't already been said. Chad saw the game at GDC and Colette saw it at E3. Both of those lovely people gave fantastic previews so I'll just try to keep this short and sweet. 

The demo started off with my ship in one of the many Galaxies that you'll get to explore in Galactrix. I went to the nearest planet and began to investigate what was there. As I clicked on the planet, a small exchange kicked in, with a crewmember telling me that we would get attacked if we went to this planet. I ignored my crewmember's warning and initiated a battle with the lone guard of this world.

The scene then transformed into the upgraded Puzzle Quest battlefield, where you have to match three or more colored icons in a straight line (vertically, horizontally, and diagonally) in order to defeat your opponents. Clearing different colored pieces will give players a power up, such as the new purple piece that gives players shielding.

In the original Puzzle Quest, new pieces would only fall in from the top. Now, gravity plays a role and pieces will fall in from the top, as well as from the left and right, depending where you just cleared a line from. It's kind of hard to explain, but trust me -- once you see this in action, it will make perfect sense.

After narrowly defeating my opponent, I went through another cutscene and explored some more of this galaxy. I got into a couple of more matches. One involved me having to clear specific tiles to find cargo parts, which I could use to add to my ship or sell off to buy other parts. The other match involved me having to clear specific amounts of colored tiles before time ran out.

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is meant to be a casual RPG affair, yet it has enough content in it to satisfy hardcore players. There will 150 items in the game you can find to use and over 30 ships can be discovered, too.

The universe you’ll be able to explore is huge. If you just follow the storyline, you’ll only end up exploring half of the game. There are a bunch of side quests to go on at any time and plenty of hidden systems to uncover.

I cannot wait to get my hands on the final game now. I don't care about the story; I just want to play the actual puzzle aspect. In fact, I haven't felt like this about a puzzle game since Tetris Attack for the Super Nintendo.

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix will be out early next year for the PC, XBLA and Nintendo DS.