‘Marvel Puzzle Quest’ Turns 5

“Marvel Puzzle Quest” turns five this week, no small feat, and we talked to some of the talented people behind the game’s continued success. D3 Go! Producer and Senior Producers Joe Fletcher and Josh Austin, and Marvel Games’ Director of Game Production Tim Hernandez and Assistant Producer Michael Francisco think back on some of the big moments, give us some fun data points, and look into “MPQ’s” future.

Celebrate our 5 years with in-game Anniversary events from October 4 – October 21! Battle with your favorite Super Heroes in Marvel Puzzle Quest on the App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, and Steam. Download Marvel Puzzle Quest for FREE here.  

And if you’re heading to New York Comic Con, head over to Booth #445 to demo the game, partake in the photo booth, snag free gifts or special promotions, and more!

Marvel.com: “MPQ” players have been making matches for 5 years now. That's pretty dang incredible! Has the team broken out the champagne yet?

Josh Austin: Definitely! We started celebrating a few weeks ago when we were working out the designs for the 5th anniversary. We design things months in advance but it really doesn’t start sinking in until the month or two before the content is due to go live, but we couldn’t help but get a little excited knowing this special milestone was around the corner.

Joe Fletcher: Seeing the design for Taskmaster really sunk it in for me. He’s by far the most complex character we’ve ever introduced and seeing him come across the wire and what he could do really made it hit home how much the game has grown from launch.

Marvel.com: Thinking back, what are some MPQ milestone moments worth celebrating?

Joe Fletcher: Seems small, but it’s been years since we started making Story and Versus events separated by time shards, letting players choose what times they want to start and stop events. This made a huge difference in playability for a large part of the player base. Introduction of the first 5-star characters is another big one. It started quite a bit of a change to the metagame and how players interacted across rarity tiers. Boss battles are another. Being able to team up with your Alliances to take down big foes instead of pushing individually is something our players love doing and it changes up the gameplay feel whenever they happen.

Marvel.com: And personally, what are a few things you're most proud of when it comes to the game?

Tim Hernandez: Peggy Carter Cap stands out for me personally. Just to be a small part of the game during that character’s creation for Captain America’s 75th (all kudos of course to Paige Pettoruto, Jae Tsai, Amanda Clarke and the rest of the team at Demiurge), and to see how much she’s been embraced by fans, cosplayed, and to see her live on in comics and beyond is really one of the proudest moments. Among the incredible qualities the character symbolizes, she also represents how “MPQ” and the team really embraces the creativity and originality that we strive for in all our games. In case you couldn’t tell, I love her!

Josh Austin: Tim stole mine! Being a part of bringing Peggy Carter as a bad ass version of Captain America in “MPQ” is definitely something I will never forget. Her powers and the art used to bring her to life are the best of the best in “Marvel Puzzle Quest” to me.

Joe Fletcher: I love being able to put our own spin on our little corner of the Marvel universe. Like Josh and Tim said, Peggy Carter is a big one, but even smaller things like our own take on Dark Reign or the Enemy of the State arc are a lot of fun.

Marvel.com: Got any juicy data points to share with us? Total number of matches made, powers used, or maybe the most popular characters/teams?

Josh Austin: As of today, I have 89,526,866,694,281 damage done by players in the last 5 years within “Marvel Puzzle Quest”! Now that a whole lot of damage dished out! Another one, of the non 1-star characters, Dr. Strange (Stephen Strange) is responsible for a large amount of that damage, having done over 150 million damage with his abilities alone. Master of the Infinity Gauntlet Thanos (Modern), by comparison has only Courted Death for a “paltry” 50 million.

Joe Fletcher: Wait…wait, I got some more! Poor Spider-Man (Bag-Man) is the least Championed character in the game, with only 3662 copies of him out in the wild. Won’t someone think of the Bag-Men! And the most Championed characters are Thor (Marvel NOW!), Wolverine (Astonishing X-Men), and Storm (Classic) with a bit over 120,000 of each of them having been created.

Marvel.com: Can we expect an in-game celebration for the game's big birthday?

Josh Austin: We have a new PVE Alliance raid event titled Place of Power, and something we know the fans will be excited for! The idea behind it is there are 6 mystical places of power on Earth, and the player will be going to each of them to fight various enemies. Defeating pins in the map allow the Alliance to raise the score to get more rewards. Another major celebration for not only the anniversary but for the game, is we are finally releasing one of our most requested characters - Cable.

Michael Francisco: One of my personal favorite Marvel characters, Taskmaster, will be joining MPQ in honor of the anniversary! Since he can copy the moves of other characters, players can customize his abilities based on the “MPQ” cast of the last 5 years. The team really outdid themselves with Taskmaster; not only does he provide a neat retrospective of MPQ’s gigantic 170 character roster, but they’ve made it so no two Taskmasters will play the same.

Joe Fletcher: That’s on top of all the “normal” stuff we do to celebrate the Anniversary: special tokens, re-releases of limited characters, extra Iso-8 for events, a special Anniversary Versus seasons and much more!

Marvel.com: And lastly, 5 years is awesome, but I have no doubt you're planning even more awesome stuff for the next 5. Any hints at what's to come?

Josh Austin: Yes, the first 5 years was awesome! We have such a great community of Puzzle Questers that has helped build a fantastic game. In the future, we have some classic characters coming that we are super excited about and as usual, we can’t wait to talk about!  Outside of this, players may have started to see some of the Red Iso-8 increases we have recently introduced in the game and we are working very hard behind the scenes to make Supports even more awesome. And of course, we have a few other ideas being passed around to make another great 5 years!

Michael Francisco: Taskmaster, along with Supports introduced earlier this year, really embody the “MPQ” spirit of building your own Super Hero Dream Team! The teams at D3 Go! and Demiurge Studios are always cooking up new ways to allow players to customize and express themselves, so keep an eye out for more to come!

Joe Fletcher: Ahh, man. There are two characters we have planned that I am waiting to drop. They’re going to be GREAT!

Want in on the “MPQ” fifth anniversary shenanigans? Pick up the up the game here, and stay tuned to Marvel.com for more “Marvel Puzzle Quest” news and interviews!