OSAlert doesn’t really do games all that often, but for some, we I make an exception. We’re a few days late, but last week PopCap Games, makers of Bejeweled, released its sequel to one of the craziest and most addictive games ever made: Peggle. The sequel is called Peggle Nights, and is basically more of the same. Peggle users around the world, rejoice! Another opportunity to become a Peggle Grand Master!
Peggle is a fairly simple game, with simple graphics and lots of of candy cane colours, unicorns, fire fighting dragons, talking flowers, and a whole lot of other things that make schoolgirls giddy. The objective is straightforward, but extremely addictive. The playing field is covered in pegs, and the goal is to destroy all orange pegs using a limited set of balls shooting from a cannon atop the playing field. The ball will bounce back and forth from peg to peg, until it drops off the playing field at the bottom of the screen. A bucket moves from left to right and back again across the bottom; if a ball drops in the bucket, it is reclaimed and added to the ball queue.
You play any of 10 (or in the case of Peggle Nights, 11) sunshine fluffy bunny green meadows characters, each with its special power up, such as a ball of fire that shoots through pegs instead of bouncing off them, or a ghost ball that comes back atop after falling off. When you’re done with adventure mode, you can play any of the challenges – and the challenges are the real deal of the game. Adventure mode is relatively easy, and is just a training mode for these challenges. The further you go, the more impossible they get.
Peggle is a game that vomits sunshine all over you, and the sound effects will haunt you in your sleep. The game is a total productivity killer, and should actually carry the ‘nsfw’ tag; the original Peggle had me stuck on a challenge once, and I didn’t leave my computer for basically two days until I finally managed to complete it – leading to an almost 2001-esque triumphant primal roar.
Both the original Peggle (PC, Mac, iPod, etc) as well Peggle Nights (PC only) are available from PopCap for only USD 19.95. Don’t buy this if your marriage is already under tension.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/7-Pegg…
.. a cognitively developmental game?
I prefer service-oriented, integration-leveraged, domain-neutral, value-added knowledge augmentation instrument.
Hmm… You must be talking about Extreme Tux Racer or Super Tux Kart, right?
They made the game ‘bejeweled’ which I have on my cell phone – I never bothered to buy it as it is super buggy, and doesn’t even match their documentation provided – for example, when a drop set comes in and makes another match it drops your time and gives you points, but ultimately kills you. If they can’t get a simple demo right, why should I bother buying the full thing? Or anything else they make?
There are two play modes in Bejeweled: Simple and Timed. It looks like you have been playing Timed mode where the time slowly runs out as you play. See if you can switch it to Simple mode.
http://www.popcap.com/faq/bejeweled/1033/pc/readme.html#I/GM
From the website:
However, that is exactly what is NOT happening – thus my original post. It doesn’t replenish the bar, it takes away from the bar; especially when the new blocks that are dropped in create a new combo. It’s not a matter of jumping to a new level; it just simply doesn’t do what the documentation says it is suppose to be doing.
Also, there is no ability to change modes in the demo version. From the phone’s “Help: Modes” section:
Normal mode is the only available mode. In play, it doesn’t seem to wind down time; but matches take away from the bar at the bottom – the more of them, the faster it goes away. I could also quote other parts of the documentation on the phone that completely contradict that behavior as being the way it is suppose to play.
I would probably have bought the game a long time ago if the game functioned right. But if they can’t seem to a demo version right, then how could they expect to get paid for someone to buy the non-demo?
At least IMHO, they shouldn’t.
This site has gone down the drain… Thom is a bad influence.
Peddling proprietary crap? haven’t you learnt anything yet?
Wow great, now you did it. I hadn’t heard of this game before and decided to give it a try – now I’m addicted. And I’m due to finish my thesis in three weeks, how am I going to do that now? Hope you’re happy!
BTW, works flawlessly under Linux with Wine.