As stated before, there was one game that Vella knew Clash of Heroes would be compared to: Puzzle Quest, the game that pioneered the concept of a puzzle/strategy/RPG hybrid. But instead of being daunted by the prospect of competing with a game like Puzzle Quest, the team at Capy took it as a challenge, not only to create a game that was just as good, but to do something different with the budding genre.

"We knew that we were going to get compared to Puzzle Quest, so we knew right from the very beginning that the game had to be substantially and visibly and in every way possible different than Puzzle Quest," explained Vella. "We also did everything we could to make sure that it had to hit that quality bar that Puzzle Quest hit as well. We wanted to make a game that came out of the same quality level or higher because we didn't want to be just another could-have-been or should-have-been. The other thing that I think that we focused pretty heavily on is that we wanted to make sure that the battle system was more strategic than puzzle-oriented."

Clash of Heroes was also a milestone of sorts for the studio, marking Capy's first ever retail release. Unsurprisingly, this was a big deal for Vella and the rest of the studio, who had previously only released downloadable and cell phone games.

"I think it's almost made a little more special since it's for a Nintendo handheld," Vella said of the experience. "We are a studio that got together out of nothing but the desire to make cool video games, which means that we didn't make money for the longest period of time...But putting out a DS game that comes in a box and has a manual that is printed and have it be a game that we actually think is awesome is pretty much the best thing ever."

"We partied pretty hard," he added.

And as busy as 2009 was for the studio, it looks like 2010 will be even busier.

Heartbeat on the Wii

"We've got a smaller WiiWare game called Heartbeat that hasn't necessarily had the wraps taken off of it yet," he told us. "But that's not too far away. It is a very musical-focused game. And we're also working with local Toronto pixel genius Superbrothers and local Toronto music genius Jim Guthrie on an iPhone game called Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery EP. And that's our kind of return to the iPhone. We haven't been there since we put out Critter Crunch a while back. It's a very different game, quite unlike anything that exists on iPhone. Then we've got another project that we're working on like crazy that has yet to be announced but my guess is you'll hear about it sometime in the next couple of months. And we're really, really excited about that as well. We're kind of crazy busy. The first half of 2010 will see three new Capy games."

We can't wait.

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