The Charge

In case you wanted yet another gem-breaking puzzle game.

The Case

Puzzle Chronicles is an RPG/puzzle hybrid game that combines some light skill progression and even lighter character customization with fairly engaging gem-breaking puzzle gameplay.

Players begin by creating a character, naming him or her and jumping into a boilerplate fantasy world that is seemingly built around the concept of finding randomly strewn-about artifacts and keys to open up new stages that contain even more randomly strewn-about artifacts and keys.

In short, it’s like any role-playing game! (RIMSHOT) Actually, there’s not much of a story going here, just your standard-issue Save the Kingdom scenario. It won’t win any writing awards, but the narrative is suitable enough to tie the puzzling and item-hunting together.

Not that the storyline is the big selling point for Puzzle Chronicles, of course. Nope, this is more about the Puzzle and less about the Chronicles and the good news is that the focal gameplay component is worthwhile enough to keep the game afloat. In the interest of full disclosure I’ll say that I’m not a big puzzle guy, having played my fill of Meteos on the DS and that goofy Mortal Kombat puzzler from Armageddon way back when. Noob that I am, I still found Puzzle Chronicles mechanics amusing.

Like most puzzle games, it’s all about strategically stacking jewels and clearing them out. There are basic colored jewels, detonator jewels, and special “attack” jewels, which, when broken, push the game board divider closer to the opponent, giving him less space to work with. Each enoucnter has your character on one side and the bad guy on the other. First one to run out of space and get stacked up, loses. Presuming you come out the victor, that means gold and XP, which you can use to advance stats and purchase special abilities that can be used in game (e.g., modifiers on the jewels).

The puzzle department is certainly crowded on XBLA/PSN/PSP/DS and hard core players may find themselves swamped as it is with the offerings, but I enjoyed Puzzle Chronicles. It has a nice feel, attractive graphics, a deep puzzle mechanic and enough stats to keep players juking.
The Verdict

Not Guilty