I shall dream of colored gems once again.

Pop Cap is fiendishly genius when it comes to stealing another developers game concept, polishing it up, and making it way more addictive. So I'm terrified to hear that they are ripping off one of my favorite puzzle games, Puzzle Quest, and working with Square Enix to make the game way sexier and way more Pop Cappy. More like Pop Crack amirite?

From the videos I have watched, Gyromancer seems to be amazingly similar to Puzzle Quest, all the way down to the map navigation and enemy movement. If you have never played Puzzle Quest, it is an RPG with a story, characters, levels, spells, equipment, job classes, quests, bosses, and other standard RPG fare, but with the unique twist of using versus "Bejeweled" for combat. In these battles, matching colored blocks allots the player mana of different color types which power your spells to damage your enemy or create effects that help control the battle "field". It's an amazing game, and if you have never tried it, download the XBLA demo now.

The only real difference I've seen in Gyromancer is the way you move blocks in the puzzle part of the game. It appears to have more of a Hexic style of turning groups of blocks instead of swapping single blocks. This adds challenge to the puzzle game itself, but honestly, I don't see this as a good thing. The reason I never played much Galactrix (the spiritual sequel to Puzzle Quest), was because the puzzle game itself got too complicated and headache inducing. The strategy and challenge of these games should come from the RPG elements (using the right spells at the right time) and not the puzzle interaction.

Either way, if this game turns out as well as I expect (exactly like Puzzle Quest), then I fear for the live feed. Hopefully it will be more entertaining to watch than hours of Lumines.

Brad