Marvel Puzzle Quest

Players assemble a team of three Marvel characters, controlling the team against a team of up to three other superheroes or supervillains in match-three, turn-based battles. Each color-coded match does damage to the player's opponent, while creating action points which can obtain special skills. Gems disappear and are replenished from above as they are matched. When they are matched, the six colors of gems on the board grant energy that can be used to execute special moves.

Players trade hits back and forth until one of them is downed. When all enemies are downed the fight is over revealing a reward for the winner: one of the in-game currencies, special boosts or a new character. This character can be added to the player's roster. If it is a duplicate, it becomes a level-up cover.

The story involves a powerful new substance called Iso-8 and Norman Osborn's attempts to supplant S.H.I.E.L.D. There are five missions to stop Osborn on his worldwide terror spree. The original story is based on the "Dark Reign" storyline and was written by Frank Tieri and Alex Irvine. Irvine also wrote other player versus environment events of the game, such as “Webbed Wonder,” where Spider-Man teams up with Howard the Duck to find out Aunt May's whereabouts.

The first Puzzle Quest game, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, was conceived and designed by Australian game designer Steve Fawkner, the original designer of the Warlords computer game series, which he created in 1989. In creating Puzzle Quest, Fawkner was inspired by his love of the tile-matching puzzle video game Bejeweled. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords was picked up by D3 Publisher and released on March 20, 2007, for the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. It was an instant success, winning a 2008 Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences award for Downloadable Game of the Year.

It was also nominated for Handheld Game of the Year. Versions for Xbox Live Arcade, Wii, Windows, PlayStation 2 and mobile followed later that year. It was released for PlayStation 3 and iOS in late 2008.

IGN rated the game a 9.1 out of 10, writing, "Marvel Puzzle Quest has taken the idea of a puzzle game with a strategic/role-playing element overlay, and turned it into an intricately crafted, remarkably deep experience". IGN added that the game is "compelling at each level" with "constant challenges and goals to work toward". Touch Arcade awarded it four out of five stars, calling it "compulsively, sickeningly playable" and writing that, in comparison to other Puzzle Quest games, Marvel Puzzle Quest is more calculated and strategic, with a focus on team fighting rather than individual combat. The game has received a rating of 74 on Metacritic. MacLife said it "does a good job of spicing up the match-three genre for comic fans".

Marvel Puzzle Quest is a 2014 Tabby Award Best Android Apps and Games winner in the Game: Puzzle, Cards & Family category.