If you enjoy puzzle games, then there’s a very good chance you’ve played Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords on one of the many systems on which it appeared. And if you’ve played the game, then you’ve no doubt come away from more than one match utterly convinced that the AI is cheating and making it impossible for you to win. It always seems like this, especially when you’re battling the bosses or the tougher standard monsters that they can always find that one move that causes a cascade of matches, doing major damage to your character and refilling all their mana reserves. This is usually also the point where you hurl your controller across the room in frustration and vow never to play the game again, until you boot it back up in 10 minutes.

So what about Galactrix, the first sequel to the Puzzle Quest franchise, will it also be accused of cheating? Well inevitably yes, but game producer Marcus Savino wants you to know that there is no shady business going on here.

“What I can say about the AI more than anything else is that, for sure, it doesn’t cheat — guaranteed...One of the cool things about the way this game works is it there is a sort of randomness. The way the puzzles pieces come on the board at the beginning of the battle is random — it’s like a roulette wheel or something like that. The logic of how the pieces come together doesn’t always favor the enemy or the player; sometimes it favors you and sometimes it favors the AI.”

He went on to explain why he believes players accuse the game of cheating, which ultimately comes down to selective memory:

“I think that the problem is that people don’t always remember when they get something good, which I’m guilty of myself!” Savino said, laughing. “Some people think that anything that’s random is actually rigged, but the computer player is just trying to make the best match possible. It’s exactly the same break you have. Sometimes the computer makes good matches and sometimes the computer makes matches that you wouldn’t have made.”

So even though it’s no comfort for when you’re getting pounded by a "lucky" foe, just remember - the AI can’t see beyond the confines of the playing space either, and whatever gems happen to drop, the poor computer has nothing to do with it. Still, feel free to let the cheating accusations fly, so long as they make you feel better about losing. We all need something to blame instead of our clearly inferior skills.