Tag Archive

Bejeweled Bedemoed Band Beleased

Written by John Walker on October 29, 2008.

Popcap’s latest, Bejeweled Twist, has now launched. And there’s a demo version too. It was, according to the game’s press release, unleashed on an unsuspecting world. World? Is that true?

Read the rest of this entry »

Steamy Peggle Nights (For Half The Price)

Written by Alec Meer on October 15, 2008.

The sequel (of sorts) to our favourite ball-based game of last year has been around for a few weeks now, but grumpy, sensible types - myself included - had refused to buy it direct from Popcap, preferring to wait until it showed up in Steam for that vital install-anywhere thingy, and the hope of a lower price. And now it has, which is good news for Peggle fans, but bad news for me as I’m supposed to be working this evening, but instead I’m playing bloody Peggle.
Read the rest of this entry »

Peggle Nights!

Written by John Walker on September 17, 2008.

Quick survey: has anyone heard of a game called Peggle?

Peggle Nights is out! Woo!

Nothing much more needs to be said. It’s £15 from Popcap, and there’s a demo on the site. New Peggle! (Clearly it’s not more Bookworm Adventures, but there’s still cause for celebration).

We’ll be playing the full version and will discuss it in childishly excited tones soon enough. Big thanks to Chris for pointing this out.

Mystery P.I: The Acceptable Face Of The Pixel Hunt

Written by John Walker on June 9, 2008.

Bearing in mind I make a career out of slating crappy adventure games forcing you to hunt for one sodding pixel in the middle of a busy screen before you can advance to the next tedious conversation and discover you were supposed to click the clipboard on the fridge before the Captain would give you the next assignment, or whatever backwoods misery it may be, it makes little sense that I enjoy Mystery P.I..

PopCap’s, er, “versions” of the Mystery Case Files-inspired casual genre are especially well put together, and yet remain nothing more than giving you a list of objects to find in a cluttered screen. It’s the sort of activity that would more normally go ignored in a bumper book of puzzles, perhaps glanced at once all the mazes were complete and fishies reunited with clumsy, tangled fishermen. And yet… cannot… resist. Which is to say, last month PopCap released a sequel to Mystery P.I., The Vegas Heist, and I just noticed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Peggle Is Good For You

Written by Alec Meer on April 28, 2008.

The real purpose of press releases is to issue outrageous statements to as many journalists as possible in the hope they’ll namecheck you when they inevitably repeat it. And hey, it works. Popcap send me a release saying stuff like “Bejeweled 2 and Peggle were shown to reduce anger by 65% and 63% respectively” - of course I’m going to post that.

It’s all part of a study (involving 132 subjects) by East California University as to the positive effects of playing casual games. Test subjects were given a raft of Popcap games to play, so, quite understandably, Popcap is now giving props to itself.

This is, however, actualish science, not spurious “our tealady only smiles when playing Chuzzle” stuff.
Read the rest of this entry »

Popcap the Question

Written by Alec Meer on April 16, 2008.

I can’t decide whether this is cute, or trite, or so cute it becomes trite then back to cute then back to trite, and so on until I’m sobbing and screaming at the same time.

What it certainly is is smarter than anything I’d ever think of. A canny fella has managed to hack Popcap’s Bejeweled to propose to his casual game-lovin’ girlfriend. Thanks to a month of New Jersey software engineer Bernie Peng’s code-tinkering, the match-3 game would display a ring and message when Tammy Li hit a certain score. Given today’s litigious climes, it’s the kind of tale I almost expect to end with Bejewelled’s publisher suing Bernie for cracking their game, but in this case Popcap are picking up the bill for the Pengs’ honeymoon and sending over a sackload of copies of Bejeweled to hand out at the wedding. “Most video game companies would frown on people manipulating their games,” said Popcap’s Garth Chouteau, but it won him a woman. As a bunch of geeks, we have to say, ‘Bernie, hats off to you.’”

They also have to say “wheeee! Money!”, as I can only imagine they’re profiting healthily from thousands of people hearing about this story on mainstream news, duly cooing ‘awwww’, then googling for Bejeweled. What? Yeah, I’m a hopeless cynic. C’mon, I can’t post a sweet story about love’n’stuff without saying at least something venomous.

Edit- turns out the story’s from back in January, but the Popcap involvement is new. Also seems Bernie didn’t hack the game, but actually coded an entire new version of it for Nintendo DS. “Third party profits from Bejeweled clone” - now that’s a rather more familiar tale, eh?

RPS Interview: PopCap on Casual, Peggle & Valve

Written by Alec Meer on January 30, 2008.

I don’t need to do the maths to know that the game that’s been mentioned more times than any other on Rock, Paper, Shotgun is Peggle. While the gleeful pachinko riff might be our obsession, for casual gaming luminaries PopCap, it’s just one more horse [unicorn, surely - Ungulate Ed] in an already unbelievably successful stable. Riding a wave of cult credibility in the wake of Peggle’s strong association with The Orange Box, clearly this developer/publisher was someone we should chat to.

Below, PopCap co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Jason Kapalka offers a few insights into this quiet gaming giant - including their relationship with Valve Software, their approach to humour, the future of casual gaming, what to expect from upcoming sequel Peggle Nights and how they’re not, in fact, slathering, extreme-right warmongers.
Read the rest of this entry »

Indiana Moans

Written by Alec Meer on December 21, 2007.

I always get a bit confused about Popcap. They’re a publisher, and they’re a developer. But not all the games that bear their name were developed by them. So I don’t actually know quite who’s ultimately responsible for Peggle, for instance.

This also means I get unnaturally excited when I see a new Popcap game has landed on Steam, such as the recentish Amazing Adventures: The Lost Tomb. This, surely, will be the perfect Friday afternoon squander. Perhaps this one will be of Peggle calibre? Ooh, play, play, play…
Read the rest of this entry »

PopCap And Portal, Sitting In A Tree

Written by John Walker on October 28, 2007.

We received an excellent email from PopCap employee Anthony Coleman, showing us his Halloween costume.

Which really is rather extraordinary.

He explains,

“I made this over the past few nights out of ~85 square feet of ½ inch thick foam board. It is split horizontally into an upper and lower section. I had to do this so I could get it out of my house and fit it into the car. When complete it is a 30”x30”x30” cube that I can tuck myself completely inside of (that’s why I have the heart circle hat).”

The man’s a genius.

Peggle: Let The Dissenters Unite!

Written by John Walker on September 27, 2007.

Oh, praise the Lord of Gaming - someone, finally, agrees with me about Peggle.

Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, developer of the wonderful Trilby adventure games, and now Mr Famous for his ludicrously good Zero Punctuation Flash reviews on The Escapist, entirely concurs with me that a) Peggle is fun and distracting, but not incredible, and b) Bookworm Adventures is better! Mr Yahtzee - marry me. Here it is:

This is made all the more vindicating having just got back from a Peggle-obsessed Valve, where the game is still the number two played Steam game on the in-house Steam Community. I tried to promote Bookworm as best I could, but… well, wait for the interviews.

(I should add, I’m not affiliating myself with Yahtzee’s comments on PopCap, as I’ve not given the subject enough thought.)

Next Page »