Remember Puzzle Quest? Just about everybody loved Puzzle Quest, and the team behind the match-3 game that made match-3 games interesting again is back with a sort of spiritual successor to their puzzle/RPG hybrid: Gems of War.

Gems of War has a lot in common with Infinite Interactive’s earlier game. You get to match colored runes to activate spells and skills, you can match skulls to damage your enemies, and there’s decidedly some leveling-up going on behind closed doors (note: the doors aren’t closed – they’re actually wide open). However, things have been streamlined a bit as well.

Regrettably there’s no crafting in Gems of War, but you’ll be able to fight other players in asynchronous battles and can even join a guild with other players. Emphasis has also been placed on your characters this time around, with you being able to create a party using your chosen hero, a weapon, and three other characters to assist you in combat. Different characters (of which there are over 100 planned) require different runes to activate their abilities, and they can be leveled-up using materials taken from selling off the useless ones.

Another nice feature is that both iOS and Android users will be able to play with (or against) each other, and can even access their account across multiple platforms.

Gems of War will be hitting the App Store for free sometime before the holiday season.

A big announcement kicking off the day today, as Firemint announced that they have acquired fellow Aussie developer Infinite Interactive. The agreement means that Firemint will now be the exclusive publisher of all Infinite Interactive games, which means they’ll need more kangaroo pouches in which to stuff all the money they’re about to make.

“I’m incredibly pleased to welcome Steve (Fawkner, founder of Infinite Interactive) and his team to Firemint,” said Firemint founder Rob Murray. “Steve is an outstanding game designer and our two studios evolved very similar philosophies of developing addictive, fun and polished original games. By bringing our studios’ talents together, we will be able to create even more awesome games – and more of them.”

Fawkner added, “Firemint has had huge success designing, developing and publishing great original games. By joining forces, we now have a way to further develop some of the exciting new concepts we’ve been working on. This new position really frees me up to focus on game design and I can’t wait to get stuck into it!”

Infinite Interactive is the studio behind the extremely popular Puzzle Quest franchise, while Firemint is best known for games like Flight Control and Real Racing 2. With the two studios set to work together it likely means that none of us will ever get anything done ever again, so we may as well just all quit our jobs now and wait for the companies’ first joint-venture game. Will their combined power be enough to knock the traditional powerhouses from their perch atop the App Store? It’s impossible to know right now but we wouldn’t be surprised if whatever they come up with makes some major waves in the realm of iOS and beyond. This is truly a powerhouse pairing, and one with a whole lot of promise.