Do you think you
might ever release a Bejeweled Twist
hardcore version that had the extra bits back in it, and rotations in both
directions?
JK: Oddly, both those things are within the realm of
possibility. There's some stuff I'm probably not at liberty to even discuss
yet, some possible partnerships with people to do some strange variants of Twist.
Like licensed
versions, perhaps?
JK: Collaborations, yeah. Some of those could be in the
realm of possibility... strange hybrids, like a Puzzle Quest kind of thing, where there might be some more complex
or RPG-based elements attached on to aspects of it.
That'd be nice.
JK: I kind of like some of that stuff. It's one of those
things where you have to draw a line at some point and aim more at the casual
audience, and so we did restrict some of those things.
I think it'd be good
if you made one of those. Most people aren't aware that games like that have
been made since 1994 -- Puzzle Quest-type
games. There's a Puyo Puyo dungeon
game, where you walk around on a world map and then you have random battles
like in a traditional RPG, but you play Puyo
Puyo.
JK: Well actually, I was aware Puyo Puyo had a lot of variants. I don't think I've played that
one.
It never got released
in the US.
JK: There have been a few weird variants -- there were
occasional ones, Puzzle Quest was
certainly the most high-profile one.
It hit at the right
time.
JK: Yeah, I think there will be more. We had Bookworm Adventures a year or so before Puzzle Quest, which was not quite the
same thing, but it was like the RPG-meets-word game hybrid. The same genre, not
quite the same deal. I've seen a couple of Puzzle
Quest rip-offs; they haven't been very good.
The new Puzzle Quest
is supposed to come out pretty soon.
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is actually using the hex grid.
JK: That's what I saw -- and you know, for a hardcore crowd,
that might be okay, because they might not mind that. They're definitely not
going for a casual audience, that's for sure.
No, they're not. And the
game also has a space theme, as well.
JK: That sounds so hardcore.
I wonder how audiences who loved Puzzle Quest are going
to feel about Galactrix.
JK: In our experience, it depends on what it is. I haven't
seen the whole thing. Twist has a
very vaguely spacey theme, but you wouldn't call it science fiction.
No, it's more like a Spore-style spacey than it is Battlestar
Galactica spacey.
JK: And certainly we've seen that the more hardcore, crunchy
sci-fi settings can turn off the casual crowd.
And the female crowd.
JK: So them trying to do that, they may not care. I do know
those guys a little bit -- they're pretty hardcore gamers.
They made those Warlords games forever.
JK: It's interesting. They may have started as a "Let's
just do whatever we can to make some money [game]". Obviously I think
their sensibilities were such that they ended up making something kind of
unusual.
Many people talk about Bejeweled
clones -- that's a game that obviously had some inspiration from Bejeweled, but certainly is not something
that I would have done. And certainly, it's something really cool that I'm glad
someone else did. So it's cool to see a game that we did that can inspire
someone else to do something really cool.