Puzzle Quest Postmortem: Required Reading

Puzzle Quest developer, Infinite Interactive, posted a postmortem for their surprise hit in the September issue of Game Developer magazine. Of all the postmortems that I have read in this magazine, I was most impressed, and inspired, with the philosophy and wisdom the developers shared in the article. While many postmortems seem to spout the same "what went wrong" and "what went right" issues while creating a game, Infinite Interactive touched on many things that I have seen, and have been bothered by, during my short time in the industry. I have yet to play the game, but now that it is out on Xbox Live Arcade, that will be remedied soon.

This is the first postmortem that I can remember that stated that taking their time to finish the game was one of the things that went right. The game may have only been released on the DS and PSP, but polish is what seems to separate the quality titles of the current generation from those that are hoping to make a quick buck. I know that most publishers have quarterly goals to meet and that developers are usually working on tight deadlines and even tighter budgets. The problem is that it shows in the number of quality titles that are released throughout the year. Infinite Interactive spent nearly two and a half years making the game the best it could possibly be. They were rewarded by not being able to keep the game stocked on shelves.

Of the things that went wrong, "underestimation" is something that is not exclusive to Infinite. Every new developer we work with, and even ones that we've worked with a lot, seem to make the same mistakes. Something that I have suggested and pushed at work is echoed in the sentiment of Puzzle Quest's lead designer, Steve Fawkner.

My advice to any teams just getting into Xbox Live Arcade development is to read the TCRs over and over until you have them committed to memory. You may even want to run your design documents (especially the UI designs) past an Xbox Live Arcade Q/A team before implementing anything.

He talks about Live Arcade but I think that would be useful for anyone developing on the DS all the way up to PS3. It never fails that a game will come into test with only about two months till submission, but every Guideline fails. It then becomes a test of wills on whether or not to fix the issues or wait to see if they're found in submission. I can only imagine the time that would be saved if games were built around the guidelines for a particular system as opposed to throwing it together on one system and then attempting to shoehorn it onto another.

Lastly, he gives props to his "two excellent test teams." Being the lowest rung on the pole is not easy. At the best of times we can feel under appreciated and at the worst, seemingly blamed for everything. There is no glory to be had in Q/A and even the best teams are fallible as Fawkner points out that a heinous, if not serious, bug made it into the release version. It makes me happy to see developers chalk it up to an enormously complex game and not lazy testing.

Developers like Infinite Interactive seem to be few and far between. They have tremendous passion and the will to succeed, and it shows in their success.