World Exclusive: Quarrel - Hands On

Dundee based developers Denki have been making games for years. Odds are you have played one of their titles. Odds are, you didn’t know it.

After making some critically acclaimed waves back in 2000 with their first title (the aptly named Denki Blocks), the developers proceeded to slip under the radar.

Denki got themselves into the world of digital TV game design, making a veritable crapload (the vast majority) of titles for Sky’s tellyboxes, as well as similar services across the world.

With resident gaming guru Gary Penn heading up design at the studio (he also worked on some small titles… like GTA and Crackdown), and their unique outlook on ‘digital toys’, Denki have set out to make quite a different game.

The outlook these guys use is so important and pervasive in their planning that they will not work on a title unless they feel it is ‘Denki’ enough. As such, the management set up their internal Dragons Denki [arf] scheme. This lets anyone in the company suggest a game, and if it gets through a BBC inspired business show stylee thrashing, then they get to work on it.

So, after years of honing their art of simple yet fun games, Denki are stepping back in to the more ‘usual’ world of consumer games design. And so they gave Square-Go first hands on their first original game in over seven years, coming out of the Den - an Xbox Live Arcade title, by the name of Quarrel.

Scrabble x Risk x Countdown = Quarrel

As obtuse as this might be, Quarrel is exactly that, an amalgamation of boardgames. Having found out just how popular a well crafted word game can be (Word Crunch has been a best seller since it first appeared), Denki have taken this idea, melded it with some oldskool games and created something which is surprisingly fun and addictive, which anyone can easily get to grips with.

Essentially it’s a game of territory control (that’s the Risk(y) business), and battles are fought via a round of Countdown, with the letters having Scrabble like scores, and so whoever makes the highest scoring word – wins! Simple. Throw in some tactics - the number of letters you can use depends on how many ‘child soldiers’ (or Quarrellers, as is the official line) you have at your disposal. Which in turn actually makes for a compelling game – who wouldn’t want to best an opponent with superior locution and tact. But what’s great is that Quarrel is simple enough for anyone, of any age, to get to grips with.

The fact that the game will be a multiplayer affair is the real point of intrigue here. As Quarrel is probably most similar to the boardgames it is inspired by, but works in a way that they could not, or – it avoids a slew of hissy-fits that would come if it were tried in the traditional format.

While the gameplay is interesting, and really quite different to anything else on Live! right now,  there were a couple of issues. Aside from being handed a sorely bruised side for the play through, the dictionary used was not amazing (although, to be fair the game is a year away, so this will likely be fixed by release) and the letter values seemed odd (certainly not the official Scrabble set, at the very least).

Visually Quarrel is somewhat childish right now, but also with some charm – the game has a definite Peanuts style to it, with the characters cackling away when they win or lose, and while the game could and should appeal to a mature audience, this could be somewhat off putting for them as it stands.

However it evolves, visually or mechanically, Quarrel is an interesting title – far removed from everything else on Live! there is a real need for something like this; something that appeals to the wider audience and can easily be played by a whole family.

Quarrel is arguably the next stage of boardgame evolution. Rather than a direct port of a traditional game to a virtual medium (like Monopoly games on a computer – where the maniacal fun of hoarding money is lost), it blends games and works things in a way only available to videogames. And as such, it shows a lot of promise.

Most of all, what is intriguing here is that this is only the first title to be announced from their freewheeling Dragon Denki scenario. If things keep coming out, quite as ‘Denki’ who knows what they will come up with next…?