Indiana Moans

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...

It's not another Peggle. I didn't actually expect it to be, but the shameless Indiana Jones font-stealing of the logo had me expecting at least a few giggles. Turns out it's just a collection of irksome find the object, spot the difference and jigsaw puzzles, with a loose Egyptian theme. Boring. It's a bit weird, as you'd expect from anything Popcap-branded- not many games ask me to click on a ghostly silhouette of a high-heeled shoe superimposed on Tutankhamun's face, after all. Weird isn't enough. I want more of the manic, slightly twisted humour and joyous sense of reward of Peggle. Come on, it's Christmas. WHERE IS CHRISTMAS PEGGLE?

It's easy to forget that 'casual gaming' was never meant to mean the slightly edgy reductionism we tend to associate it with these days, post-Peggle, post-Guitar Hero - it was a genre made mostly for guys who just like clicking on colours and doing jigsaws. So most of the time, it really isn't anything more than that. So yeah, don't bother with this one. Frankly, I'm pretty annoyed it's got 'adventure' in its title, what with it having no adventuring in it whatsoever. Grrr.