By John Walker on April 6th, 2011.
As of yesterday, PopCap are now the proud owners of an experimental game label, called 4th & Battery. Named after the intersection on which their Washington HQ can be found, it’s a place where they plan to put their more raw ideas. Which strikes me as a potentially splendid thing.
By John Walker on December 10th, 2010.
I would like to see the genre renamed please. “Match-3-or-more”. Matching just 3 is for loser wimps. I’m all about matching 5. The great-granddaddy of this ill-named puzzle favourite is Bejeweled, and PopCap have just released its third (well, nine hundred and seventeenth) incarnation, simply called Bejeweled 3. So has dragging gems into same-coloured lines changed dramatically enough to warrant yet another game? Here’s Wot I Think.
By Quintin Smith on December 8th, 2010.
Bejeweled 3 is out, and if you like putting gems in a line then you can play it on your computer. It’s quite good! Look, here Bejeweled 3 is on Steam, here it is on Direct2Drive, and if you head down to the official PopCap page then you can get yourself a free 60 minute trial. If you missed John’s rundown of the new features, that’s worth a look too. He is acerbic yet uplifting, like an Alka-Seltzer.
A video of Bejeweled 3′s new Zen mode follows, with its customisable mantras, ambient sounds, breath modulation and binaural beats. I am not joking. Take a look at this.
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By John Walker on November 1st, 2010.
I’ve just done some made up maths, and by my calculations every single human being on Earth has bought Bejeweled at least twice, even though Zoo Keeper is way better. It’s by far the most widely known match-3 game, and has made PopCap richer than God. Then came the rather improved Bejeweled 2. And next the wildly missing the point Bejewled Twist. Today they’ve announced Bejeweled 3, which they describe as “the first true sequel to [the] beloved flagship franchise in more than six years.” But what are those three matching gems up to now? And might they have made the improvement that could make me take it more seriously?
By Kieron Gillen on July 29th, 2010.
That was quick. Following on from yesterday’s news that the Dancing Zombie is being removed from Plants Vs Zombies due to the legal wroth of the Jackson family, the muddy-funsters at PC Gamer reveal the new dancing zombie, which basically looks like I did when I had hair and went to the perpetually-70s-stuck nightclubs in Stafford. And let’s celebrate this momentous event with an entirely gratuitous linking to Zombina & The Skeletones…
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By Alec Meer on July 16th, 2010.
More fruits from the fulsome Develop 2010 tree now, this time based on the talk by Popcap’s Dave Bishop. He basically turned up and proudly thumped the company chest (albeit in a likeably unassuming way), but based on some of this stuff he’s entirely justified in doing so…
By Kieron Gillen on July 12th, 2010.
Just catching up with the Internet chitter-chatter suggests that a couple of announcements may be incoming. Perhaps most predictably is that following Popcap sending a Save The Date August 2nd 2010 with a zombie hand attached people are speculating that Plants Versus Zombies 2 is going to be announced. More unusual is the news that leaked out in advance of next week’s San Diego Comic Con is that the EA’s panel will feature “a brand new, Sci-Fi Action-RPG based on the DNA of Spore.” VG247 speculate this could be “Darkspore”, which EA trademarked earlier in the year. This will have to go some to actually impress people, but you can see the logic in doing an action-RPG based on some of the still-brilliant character-creation technology. I’m at San Diego, so will try and bring you an update straight from the con floor, unless I’m lying, passed out on the con-floor. Which is far from unprecedented.
By Alec Meer on February 21st, 2010.
Via an act of minor skullduggery, Popcap’s Peggle (PEGGLE!) sequel may be had for nil-dollars. All you need to do is pop over to their site and sign up for their new Popcap Passport service (expect newsletters, inevitably), and then you can gift Peggle Nights to a friend – or to an alternative email address of your own. Cheeky! Oh, and there’s a collection of bonus levels to be had for similar costlessness here. The Passport sign-up email takes a little while to arrive by the way, so don’t freak out and write an all-caps letter to your MP if it doesn’t reach your inbox immediately. In other Popcap news, Plants vs Zombies is now on iPhone. Apparently a couple of people own those.
By Kieron Gillen on September 23rd, 2009.
Except not as sexy as that sounds. There’s a webgame version of Plants Versus Zombies available. It features three game modes – 14 levels of Adventure, Endless Survival and Vasebreaker – with 12 plans and 6 zombie types. And a new zombie type. Crikey. The biggest problem for me it actually shares with the new game. I lost my save, so would have to play through all the tediously easy early adventure levels to get to the actually interesting challenge modes. But for newcomers to the game, it’s a fine place to newly come.
By Jim Rossignol on September 16th, 2009.
Zuma’s Revenge, the sequel to PopCap’s original ball-blasting puzzle game, has now been released for $20. You can judge whether it’s worth such an outlay of cash by playing the 100mb demo, which can be found over at the official site. The new game features new modes, power-ups and such, but it’s very much in line with the original, and perhaps not the finest hour for our favourite puzzle gaming company.
By John Walker on August 18th, 2009.
PopCap have just released the chains holding us back from letting you know they’ve a new game on the way. A follow up to Zuma, called Zuma’s Revenge, it’s a reinvention of the frog-spitting ball-matching puzzler that PopCap say has lots of new bits and bobs in fancy new graphics. New modes, new mechanics and new power-ups. Possibly new contention from Puzzloop fans. The original sold an incredible 17 million, which by our calculations means everyone at PopCap is carried to work on golden thrones, where they spend their days playing real-life games of Bejeweled with real-life jewels, which they then stuff down their pants while laughing. Video and full press release for the new game below.
