Last week, I posted my review of Puzzle Strike: Bag of Chips from Sirlin Games and promised to follow up with a special announcement about the future of the game. Well, today is the day, so it's time to lift the curtain on the upcoming Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack.
The only major complaint I was able to levy against Puzzle Strike was that the ten characters which players can choose from were significantly unbalanced. Thankfully, this issue is addressed completely in the upgrade pack.
The most notable changes were to the characters Val and Lum Lum, although almost every character had their power adjusted. Val's Chromatic Orb chip is toned down to revoke her status as a one-sided powerhouse, while Lum Lum's new abilities finally allow him to be the gambling panda he was supposed to be.
Also worth mentioning here is that only 21 of the 30 character chips have actually been changed in order to balance the game. Rather than cut corners though, Sirlin Games will be including a fresh set of all 30 chips in the upgrade pack. The added bonus here is that now players can have mirror matches where one character faces off against a slightly modified version of itself, another aspect of this game that invokes its video game fighter roots.
The focus of the Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack is to make the game tournament-ready, so several extra components are packed in along with the re-balanced characters. These include 3 new puzzle chips (5 copies of each), 4 playmats, and 4 screens used to hide your hand of chips from other players.
The new Puzzle Strike player's mat
In the coming weeks, designer David Sirlin will be running a series of posts on his blog about this pack, with previews on all of the new components included; we've shown just a small sample here. This pack has already been sent off to the manufacturer, so it should be ready for store shelves within the next few months. Again, Sirlin's blog will also have the first opportunity for gamers wishing to pre-order, so keep an eye on Sirlin.net.
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