I was wondering if the successful 'Puzzle Quest' model could be applied to an RTS type game. For those who don't know, Puzzle Quest is a popular, multi-platform game based on (I think) Bejeweled. By finding series of 3, 4, or 5 'orbs' of the same color, you get 'mana' for using abilities against your opponent. In an RTS, you'd move from the Puzzle Quest turn-based system to real-time. The four colors would act as resources for building units. The purple 'experience' stars would act as research points that would allow you to buy new buildings/units to take into battle (research is spent on the world map, not during battle). The 'gold coins' would act to charge a special commander ability you could select. Abilities, as they are in Puzzle Quest, would become buildings and units. When a unit or building is built, it is added to a separate section of the playfield. For instance, consider the following 'abilities': Barracks (4 Red, 2 Yellow): Allows production of knights Knight (1 red, 1 yellow, barracks) Paladin (2 green, 2 blue, barracks, church) Units are smart enough to move on their own when produced and march across towards the enemy. The objective is to destroy the enemy headquarters. At a high level, there is a metagame that focuses on taking over territories like in Risk. Different territories have different effects on the gameplay, so there is some strategy in choosing an attack route. In addition, users can customize their army by choosing which buildings and units they want to include. For instance, if there are 20 units total and you can keep 8, part of the strategy is choosing which units you want to take with you. Any thoughts on the viability of this idea? A few questions come to mind: - Would make Puzzle Quest real-time instead of turn-based be too difficult, from the player's perspective? - Does the RTS model described above make sense as described? - And generally, does the game as described sound 'fun'?

This sounds like it could be fun. My thoughts on moving Bejeweled to real-time would be these:

- Don't make the players have to wait for each other. This could lead to a player intentionally not taking his turn when the battle map is in his favor. This is probably what you mean by saying the game will be real-time.
- Maybe you could add a turn timer that would determine how often the player could take a turn. This timer could be increased by enemy attacks and decreased by spending your equivalent of the gold coins. Maybe having a special "captain" unit on the battlefield could reduce the timer.

Also, you forgot to mention the skulls! In Puzzle Quest, as other readers may not be aware, forming a sequence of skulls was the primary way to cause damage to your opponent. In an RTS, your equivalent of skulls could do something similar, like a powerful attack against the enemy army, or a large boost to the stats of your own army.

- Mike

Wow, I'm working on a concept that is very similar. Perhaps we should share notes or combine efforts in some way. Mine is less RTS, although I considered going that route, and more Tower Defense. PM me if you want to discuss more.

doctorixstring: Some great ideas. A few comments:

- Yes, by real-time I meant the players would be able to go as fast as they want without waiting for the other player. My fear though is that this might be too chaotic. In Puzzle Quest, the computer goes so fast some time that it's hard to tell what's going on. Imagine if you were trying to do create matches on the same board. One possibility is that the players would play on separate boards like in 'battle Tetris' type games. Another is your 'gold coin' idea which I really like.

- And I did forget about skulls :) I think skulls would be appropriate for the 'ability charging' idea I mentioned earlier, instead of coins. My thinking on this is something like Advance Wars. Your commander would have certain abilities (units move faster, hit harder, etc... ) that could be activated when a meter was full. I think it'd be cool to use skulls for this.

Tromack:
I'll PM you as well.

Thanks for the feedback!