Entries tagged with casual games - Channel 10

Peggle: From the makers of Bejeweled

Tina — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:13:00 GMT

Focus Multimedia and casual games pioneer, PopCap Games today announced a partnership that sees the long-awaited arrival of PopCap’s critically acclaimed masterpiece, Peggle, at retail.

From the makers of Bejeweled, Peggle combines elements of pinball, pachinko and pool to create a completely different kind of casual game. Players fire a silver ball from the top of the screen, relying on the laws of physics to propel the ball downwards while ricocheting off orange and blue ‘pegs’.

Using a mixture of luck and skill the goal is to clear all the orange pegs before running out of balls. A moving “bucket” at the bottom of the screen offers the chance of free balls, while green pegs give the player one of ten amazing power-ups to help them complete the level.

Since its web launch, Peggle has taken the industry by storm - and both casual and hardcore gamers by surprise. A feast of colour and fun - with rainbows and unicorns and an ‘Ode To Joy’ soundtrack - Peggle has proved an unlikely hardcore hero and is causing ‘Extreme Fever’ wherever - and whenever - it pops up.

Key features of Peggle include:
• Four different modes representing hundreds of levels:
1. Adventure Mode takes players through 55 unique hand-painted levels on a quest to become a Peggle Master
2. Duel Mode allows for head-to-head battles against friends or computer opponents
3. Challenge Mode features increasingly difficult goals across 75 levels
4. Quick Play mode lets players choose their favourite level and power-up combinations, or play a random set of levels and/or power-ups.
• Ten “Peggle Masters” – they teach you how to play but later serve as tricky opponents
• Stunning sound FX and themed music
• “Style Points” reward players for shots that display great skill or just incredible luck!

Peggle is available now for a suggested retail price of £9.99 including VAT, from all good retail outlets of PC software and direct from www.focusmm.co.uk.

Popfly Game Creator: Meet the Team, Make a Game

Larry — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:14:00 GMT

For more on Popfly Game Creator don't miss This Week on Channel 9. Jacqueline Russel, Lead Project Manager for Popfly, talks about Popfly Game Creator and Adam Nathan from the Popfly team goes over building a 2D side scroller.

I played around with it this morning and it's really simple - so if you're not a dev, don't worry about it - give it a try. There is a function to upload pictures to Popfly, but I was referencing photos I uploaded to Skydrive with no problem. Remember, if you use PNGs for your images you can have transparent backgrounds.

A Weewar Weekend

nhodge — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:55:00 GMT

Weewar.com owes me a weekend. Recently out of private beta, I am now totally enthralled in moving my board pieces in a somewhat strategic way to crush the opposition.

What is Weewar? It is a small-scale (hence the use of the cute Scottish word, wee) board game. Playing against other people, you move pieces to capture bases and make more soldiers, artillery and other means of war. There are a variety of pre-made maps; and each turn you get to move your pieces. Bases produce new pieces of various attack/defence stengths and movement distances.

Being turn based, you can leave a game alone whist in meetings and attending to other work related tasks. Weewar has a developer's kit, so there are a selection of plugins for Vista and Twitter to notify you as your turn is up.

The above image is the entire map of a game, including land, mountains, swamps and forests. This particular game has no access to the sea, which limits your strategic options but simplifies the game.

In the above screen capture, it is my opponent's round, and I can see live the movement of his pieces to attack my base.

The many hours of reading military histories has not armed me with sufficient knowledge to vanquish General Snoop. All my base belong to snoop, sadly.

If you are a fan of chess, or have a few minutes to entertain yourself each day: go and create a free weewar account and have some strategic fun.

More practice will make my weewar making perfect. Attack!