Friday, March 23, 2007

The Puzzle Quest Craze

Here's an e-mail I received from DQ reader David Foster:
I no longer have a DS and it is all your fault!

I read your write-up about the Puzzle Quest Demo and downloaded the demo. Now I've been looking for a good game that I can play in short sets and thought this might fill the bill.

Big mistake. Really, big mistake.

Now don't get me wrong: the game is a lot of fun and I enjoy it very much. So while I was playing the demo, my wife sits down next me and asks: "What are you playing?"

"Puzzle quest," I mumble, while trying to kill that #$% bat for the 10th time.

"Is this like Bejeweled?"

"Yes, it is."

My wife tried it for a little while after I finished and should have seen the writing on the wall then. My wife isn't a computer person. When she sees me playing games she calls me her 12 year old. But she is a puzzle person. In fact she's the puzzlesaurus of puzzle people.

So I came home yesterday with Puzzle Quest, set it down on the kitchen table, and went to take the dogs for a quick run before I took my wife out to dinner. I came back and my wife was playing PQ.

She didn't even know how to use a DS.

I tried to distract her with food, she wasn't hungry.
I tried offering to watch one of those terrible shows that let you watch someone trying to sell their house with her, not interested.
I sent her pride and joy, Petey the wonder poodle, over to her. She handed him back to me.

Finally, I said "I'm not going to get my DS back am I?"

"Maybe after the baby is born," she said.

The baby is due in July.

Curse you sir! You owe me a DS!

Well, it's officially a craze. This game has some serious buzz at this point, and it's well-deserved. I played last night until I couldn't keep my eyes open, which was about 1:30 a.m.

Last night I saw down on the couch with my DS. And headphones. Eli 5.7 and Gloria were watching a Curious George episode. "Ah, a little time as a family," I said, as I put my headphones on.

"Oh, right," Gloria said, laughing.

By the way, my good friend Glen Haag sent me a link to an interview over at Games Are Fun with the game's producer, Andy Pan. You can read it here.

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