Nothing in life is easy, especially when it comes to learning a musical instrument. In place of weekly lessons in the home of your neighborhood piano teacher, Easy Piano on the Nintendo DS teaches you the basics of sight-reading music and comes bundled with a few games to keep your attention. Your chances of becoming a virtuoso after completing the game’s 10 lessons are slim, but repetition and the desire to expand to a full-sized keyboard after you’re through with Easy Piano could lead to a longer-lasting musical career.

Learn how to read music, one clef at a time.

Easy Piano comes with a small keyboard attachment that plugs into the Game Boy Advance slot on the DS. Even though you have only one octave to work with in the base clef or treble clef, you can still play tunes like “Happy Birthday” and “The Star-Spangled Banner”–as well as Canada’s national anthem. You can use the touch screen as well, but because the screen can’t detect more than one input, it’ll be easier to use the attachment. The lessons are broken up into segments that go over things like notes, timing, rests, and other basics so that you can learn to read music. Once you’re done, there are 15 activities, or minigames, that reinforce what you’ve just learned.

Activities range from simple games like filling in the gap on the clef so that the sliding notes don’t fall off, to clapping or blowing into the microphone to the beat. The more interactive games have you moving the right notes into a corresponding basket or pressing the right key on the keyboard to zap the notes as they fly across the upper screen. When you’re through with all of that, you can play any of the game’s 40 pieces, from Madonna’s “Material Girl” to Pachelbel’s “Canon,” to show off your skills. There’s a female avatar onscreen that you can dress up and put on a virtual stage as you tickle the plastic keys. Two difficulty settings, beginner and virtuoso, are available, and the game plays like every other rhythm game, where it’s about timing and how long you hold the key.

To make musical masterpieces on your own, the game comes with a composition mode that lets you drag and drop notes onto the staff or add notes by using the virtual keyboard. It will play back what you’ve created, and you can switch instruments as well to change up the tune. You can save up to three compositions that are 36 bars in length. The layout isn’t always intuitive, because there’s a lot to fit on such a small screen, but tutorials are available for every aspect of the game, so you can always review them if need be. It doesn’t look like Easy Piano will replace traditional music and theory lessons, but it sure beats long practice sessions at the piano.

Easy Piano is available only on the Nintendo DS and DS Lite and is set to be released on March 30 for $39.99.

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If Puzzle Quest: Galactrix’s sci-fi trappings and hexagonal battle board left you feeling cold, then perhaps a straight shot of retro Puzzle Quest will bring you back into full-on PQ addiction. That’s the bet that developer Infinite Interactive is making with the upcoming Puzzle Quest 2, a sequel to the original swords-and-sorcery puzzle adventure game Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords from 2007. The game is due for release this summer on Xbox Live and the Nintendo DS. And, as we found out during some hands-on time earlier today, Infinite Interactive has tweaked the formula of the original game without upsetting the apple cart completely.

Though technically a sequel, PQ2’s storyline and characters have nothing in common with the original game. This time around, you play as a lone adventurer who discovers Verloren; an unhappy city that has a connection to a mysterious nearby castle. Your goal is to uncover that connection–to do so, much hacking and slashing must occur. Put more accurately, much gem matching must occur, which will then allow you to hack and slash the various enemies you’ll encounter in the game’s single-player adventure.

Matching gems of the same color in three-, four-, and five-count rows is still at the heart of PQ2’s gameplay, but unlike Galactrix, PQ2 is still played in a rectangular grid with gems dropping down from the top. However, the changes that have been implemented are subtle at first, and they have some significant impact on gameplay. For instance, experience points and gold have been removed from the grid–you now earn money and experience after a battle is finished. In its place, purple mana has been added (along with associated spells that use purple mana). There are also gauntlets strewn throughout, and matching them will earn you action points that will let you attack with any of your equipped weapons.

A focus on weapons and items over the spells that were such a huge part of the original Puzzle Quest is another difference. Though spells play a big role in combat (especially if you’re playing as the sorcerer class), attacking with weapons can be just as effective, as we found out when playing with a barbarian-class character. This class can dual-wield weapons and use two-handed weapons (such as the bastard sword). A single swipe of our character’s axe did a hefty 10 points of damage to an opponent. A character’s defensive rating can affect the amount of damage he or she (or it) takes, and you can cast spells, as well as wear armor, that will increase your armor rating.

Your character has a number of slots for items that you collect during your adventures; two slots for weapons, shields, or potions you can wield in battle and four slots for armor (head, body, legs). After battles, you’ll also pick up elemental items you can use later in the game to improve your weapons and armor.

In true Puzzle Quest fashion, you’ll be matching gems on the play grid even when you aren’t immersed in combat. There are occasional challenges you’ll run into as you go; early in the game’s tutorial, you’ll need to fight a raging fire by battling it on the grid. Of course, the fire can’t fight back, but if you unwittingly match red gems, the fire will gain strength. Another challenge required us to bash down a castle door; in gameplay terms, we had to cause a set amount of damage to the door in a certain number of turns in order to succeed. There’s also a treasure-hunting minigame that you’ll occasionally find after beating a monster where you can earn cash by matching gold, silver, or bronze coins or special items like potions by matching keys on the playing grid.

Beyond the subtleties of gameplay, Puzzle Quest 2 has an art style all its own–forgoing the manga influence of the first game for a more Western art style. In addition, the game’s interface has changed a bit–instead of moving around a character icon on a map of the world as in the original game, the camera is drawn down closer into the world. In the tutorial, for example, you’ll explore the city of Verloren and interact with individual townsfolk as you go.

Puzzle Quest 2 will feature four character classes: the offensively minded, magic-using sorcerer; the weapons-first barbarian; the defensively strong templar; and the stealthy assassin. All of these character classes will have strengths and weaknesses of their own. You’ll be able to pit those characters against the game’s single-player campaign or against other players via online multiplayer in the Xbox Live version of the game and via ad hoc wireless on the Nintendo DS. Our brief time with the game was just that…all too brief, and we look forward to sinking more time into the game in the near future.

There’s no firm release date for Puzzle Quest 2 yet, but publisher D3 is expecting the game to come out this summer.

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Who was there: Caleb Arseneaux, producer at Scribblenauts and Drawn to Life developer 5th Cell, appeared during the Game Developers Conference Mobile and Handheld Summit to give a presentation on his studio’s experiences going “From Mobile to Handhelds & Beyond.”

Max may not look like much here, but he’s representative of 5th Cell’s uncompromising vision.

What they talked about: Just prior to the kickoff of this year’s Game Developers Conference, 5th Cell announced its latest project, a DS sequel to last year’s hit Scribblenauts. While those enticed by a hinted switch to console development may have been disappointed by the news, there was hope for more details along those lines in Arseneaux’s presentation.

Unfortunately, that hope was fleeting. In a 15-minute presentation, Arseneaux didn’t talk about any of the company’s upcoming projects, let alone a debut on consoles. However, he did refer to 5th Cell as a developer of both handheld and console games. (The studio’s Drawn to Life franchise has appeared on the Wii, but it was developed by Planet Moon Studios.)

Arseneaux began his talk with a quick recap of the company’s history, starting as a mobile phone game developer in 2003. After a few original mobile titles, Arsenseux said the studio switched to working on licensed mobile games like Full Spectrum Warrior and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events in order to make ends meet. Before long, the company was financially reliant on making licensed titles, which stood in stark contrast to its mission statement. The developer’s last original mobile game was to be a massively multiplayer online game, but 5th Cell was unable to sell the project, which brought an end to its time as a mobile developer.

Reinventing itself as a handheld developer, 5th Cell created the original intellectual property Drawn to Life for the DS. The gamble paid off, Arseneaux said, with the franchise selling more than 3 million titles to date.

After the success of Drawn to Life, 5th Cell received plenty of offers to make games for children, but it wanted to show that it wasn’t just a kid game developer. The result was Lock’s Quest for the DS, a mix of tower-defense strategy and action game designed to appeal to core gamers. Having established the breadth of its capabilities, the developer turned to the project that would put it on the map, Scribblenauts.

Over the last seven years, the studio has learned a number of lessons, Arseneaux said, chief among them the importance of vision. He offered advice to developers in the audience, saying that when people in the industry line up to lecture about what can’t be done, “the most important thing is to have a vision, something you believe in.”

Arseneaux also urged developers not to be afraid of competing. When first-party DS titles dominated the sales charts, 5th Cell didn’t shy away from going headfirst into the market. Instead, Arseneaux said 5th Cell designed the game with “marketable innovations” in mind, such as the Scribblenauts mechanic that let players materialize any noun in the gameworld in order to solve puzzles, or Drawn to Life’s player-created character art.

Quote: “Once you have good people, you will have a great company.”–Arseneaux, on the importance of wise hiring.

Takeaway: One point Arseneaux returned to time and again in his presentation was that developers need to commit to their visions. For example, 5th Cell sacrificed its financially viable mobile development business when it became clear it would not allow the studio to create original games. It also stuck to its vision of handheld game development in the face of conventional wisdom that said original third-party intellectual property couldn’t compete on the DS.

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A critical darling ever since its 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo debut, 5TH Cell’s Scribblenauts for the DS has also proven to be a commercial success, having sold more than 1 million units since its December launch. With that kind of reception, it’s no wonder that Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has commissioned 5TH Cell for a follow-up. Today, WBIE announced that a new, as-yet-untitled Scribblenauts game will arrive for the DS this fall.

The original Scribblenauts taught us that a griffin and a guitar can pretty much take you everywhere.

Like the first installment, the next Scribblenauts game sees players solving puzzles by summoning thousands of different objects and creatures, all of which work more or less as they do in real life. The game again focuses on the pursuits of Maxwell as he attempts to acquire each level’s “starite.” According to the publisher, Scribblenauts’ follow-up will feature all-new puzzles as well as redesigned levels.

5TH Cell will be expanding its word summoning formula in the new game with the addition of an adjective system. With adjectives, players can modify the color, size, elements, and behaviors of the summoned objects. The publisher notes that changes made to creatures or objects are cumulative.

Beyond the Scribblenauts follow-up, 5TH Cell is actively engaged in working on a “pretty big” project for Xbox Live. The Bellevue, Washington-based development house had previously said that it intended to shift its development away from the DS and toward console development. Notably, 5TH Cell will be discussing just that topic on the first day of the 2010 Game Developers Conference tomorrow, and GameSpot will be on hand to cover it.

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