I’ve had my eyes on Puzzle Strike for some time now, but apparently I don’t have enough friends to play the physical version so I’ve had to wait for a digital version. Well, my wishes have come true since next week Puzzle Strike will hit iOS, and it looks like it’s going to be a fun single-player and multi-player affair (although the UI looks a bit too busy). If you haven’t played the game before, Puzzle Strike is a deckbuilding puzzle game played among Fantasy Strike characters and is inspired by puzzle games such as Puzzle Fighter. The game has a high level of interactivity – unlike games like Dominion – and, therefore, you’ll need to adapt your strategies depending on your opponent. You can either focus on economy, offense, or even build an intricate engine in your attempt to knock the other player out.

According to the developers, Puzzle Strike is designed to hold up to thousands of games at the expert level, so they fully embrace the philosophy of even-playfield competition where fairness is the basic promise of competitive games. The game will offer cross-platform play with players from the Steam version, there will be leaderboards, replays, a new Puzzle Challenge mode to help you improve, and more.

The game will contain all 48 Puzzle chips from both Puzzle Strike Third Edition and Puzzle Strike: Shadows as well as the promo chips, Combinatories, Dashing Strike, and Custom Combo. And many will be happy to know that the game also offers offline AI matches. The game comes out at some point next week, and the initial $3.99 purchase will give you four characters with the rest available as IAP.