Ah Steve Fawkner. You sexy man, you. Even his mother thinks him and his games are a bit of alright. Scratch that, she bloody loves them, according to a podcast over at PALGN:

She's like the most hardcore Puzzle Quest player you've ever meet. She's finished it six times now, [been through] the expansion pack twice with four different characters - one of them she completely maxed out to level 50 and unlocked everything in the game.

When your mum gives you a pat on the shoulder and says "that's nice dear" she's being polite. But this? Yeah Steve, your mum is addicted.

The PALGN Podcast, Episode 42 [PALGN]

Gamasutra has uploaded an informative post-mortem for Infinite Interactive's Puzzle Quest. CEO and designer Steve Fawkner is basically a master at mixing casual and hardcore gameplay, so if you're keen to learn a few of the ingredients of his magic recipe, this is a good place to start.

The article also has some great insights into the minds of casual gamers. Take this, uh, gem, from the end of the piece:

* Some of the standard RPG conventions were absolutely mystifying to casual gamers, such as matching purple gems to level up.

I know I don't blink an eyelid at terms like "level up", "skill points" or "man girdle", so it's hard to imagine how a casual gamer would feel faced with such esoteric concepts.

There's loads more on how Infinite pitched the game and the challenges it faced with different platforms, as well as the steps the developer took with the original prototyping.

Postmortem: How Puzzle Quest Saved Infinite Interactive [Gamasutra, via Sumea]

At Game Connect in November last year, Infinite Interactive CEO and Puzzle Quest designer Steve Fawkner mentioned that the developer was working on a free, web-based game.

We recently caught up Steve and asked if he could provide us with an update on how the game was going:

In this game, codenamed Warlords-Online for the moment, you create a Warlord character and play puzzles to gain gold. You then use that gold to help your character conquer the World of Etheria. All this takes place in an internet environment where other Warlords are trying to help their chosen races conquer the world too.

Fawkner says it's a present to everyone who's supported Puzzle Quest and the Warlords series of games over the years. I have to say - it's a tasty sounding gift.

We also asked him a bunch of questions regarding Puzzle Quest, the Australian games development scene and balancing hardcore and casual gameplay.

Hit the jump to read the interview!

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Infinite Interactive plans to launch an online web-based game as a companion to its popular Puzzle Quest title, CEO and lead designer Steve Fawkner revealed today.

During his talk "Widening your Audience: Casual Games, Hardcore Appeal" at Melbourne's Game Connect event, Fawkner let slip that the developer was working on a new project. But it wasn't Galactrix as I had first guessed.

Launching in around a month's time, the game will function in a similar way to that of Neopets. Although Fawkner was light on the details, he did mention that players will be able to buy armies and conquer a "world map" using gold pieces, gained by submitting your scores from - I'm guessing - Puzzle Quest.

Fawkner also mentioned that the game would be free of change, would link in with Infinite's future releases and will be for the PC version of Puzzle Quest, at least for the time being.