Earlier this month, RPS turned 15 years old, so it only seemed right that this month's Time Capsule entry should be the year of our birth: 2007. Looking back, it was a good year for PC gaming, with the release of Valve's Orange Box alone giving us three new stone-cold classics to enjoy. But what other games from the year of our Horace deserve to be preserved and saved above everything else? Find out which games made the cut below.
]]>Combine the peg-pinging action of Peggle with the roguelikelike dungeon crawling of Slay The Spire and you get Peglin, a delightful game which launched into early access on Monday. Off your cute wee peglin goes on an adventure, battling baddies and claiming treasures, but damage is dealt by pling-plonging orbs down Peggle/pachinko boards and you have a bag of different orbs instead of cards. I like it, and it has a demo you can try for yourself.
]]>Roundguard isn't shy about its Peggle influences. And why should it? With no sign of another PopCap Games peg-pusher anytime soon, there's a pachinko-shaped hole waiting to be filled. For Roundguard developers Wonderbelly Games, that means reimagining Peggle's laser-focused arcade high-score chase as a roguelite dungeon-crawler.
All that's missing is a little Ode To Joy.
]]>PopCap's peg-pinging puzzler Peggle, a most joyous game, is free for keepsies right now on Origin. Yes, it has been free many times before. Yes, it does requires EA's own store client. But if you'd scoff at more people getting to enjoy the joys of Peggle, buddy, you don't deserve Peggle.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Sponk. Spoink spoink spink sponk sponik. Brrrlalalalaallling! Have you played Peggle?
]]>Do we really like any of this stuff? We are doing it all ironically, yeah? I mean, guns and shooting and murder and spaceships and walking and wacky physics and animals and Simulators, it's all a bit much, isn't it? I'm only doing this because it's rubbish, yeah?
Perhaps we should think about the affected 'irony' that curtain-twitchers insist ruins modern culture, but we can be certain we're not lost as long as we have Peggle. PopCap's game has a unicorn and rainbows and a choir and it is lovely and wonderful and brilliant, Alka-Seltzer for irony--ping ping fever and you're back experiencing joy. If you don't already own it, it's briefly free on Origin.
]]>This week's Humble Weekly sale is a PopCap bundle, but with an added twist: EA are giving 100% of their cut to charity. Two charities, in fact, between which you can choose your split: the V Foundation for Cancer Research, and The Melanoma Research Alliance which specifically fights skin cancer.
Pay more than $1 and you'll get a copy of Peggle (download size: one Peggle), zen-like match three puzzler Bejeweled 3, word puzzler Bookworm Deluxe, and two other games. Pay more than $6 and you'll also get Plants vs. Zombies, Zuma's Revenge and Peggle Nights. You'll even get Origin and Steam keys for each one.
Maybe this is Kindness Week and we only just realised?
]]>Today is International Stop Hating Things Day. Do you hate things? Do you burn to say how awful you think they are on the internet? For one day only, stop it. Stop hating things! You'll feel better. And I'll even give you a reward for it - a free copy of Peggle Deluxe. No, you're not allowed to hate it. That would contravene the rules of International Stop Hating Things Day.
]]>From a job advert posted on Gamasutra, it is revealed that PopCap are working on "a stylistic reboot of our Peggle franchise". Which is a way of saying: NEW PEGGLE! Which pretty much confirms that rumour from last month, after naughty Adam Orth tweeted about needing a new art director for a Peggle project, before promptly deleting it and probably having his knees spanked.
]]>Bloodhound-nosed Lewie P gets in touch to say he had a bit of an interesting encounter with a PopCap fellow, via the medium of Twitter. One that rather strongly suggested that the company might be gearing up for Peggle 2. Lead designer at PopCap, Adam Orth, sent out a tweet asking for an Art Director "for the Peggle franchise". Lewie retweeted this, and then said on his own account, "Imagine Peggle 2". To which Orth replied, "I am." Which he has since deleted. Rather tellingly. However, Lewie had already retweeted it. So yes, an awful lot of he said/she said. Except without the shes. We're going to contact PopCap to see if we can get an answer out of them. But in the meantime, let's all just assume it's true so hard that it has to happen.
]]>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.
]]>Oh, Peggle. I remember when you were just an innocent wee lad, our precious little boy, wouldn't say boo to a goose. Now you're out there in the big wide world, rubbing shoulders with the elite with nary a backwards glance. Just don't forget that you're still, you're still Peggle from the block.
Yes, we've had Official Orange Box Peggle, Disappointingly Similar Sequel Peggle and Played Within World of Warcraft Peggle. Now we get, simply, World of Warcraft Peggle - 10 free, standalone bonus Peggle levels.
]]>One massively compulsive game playable within another massively compulsive game? Why, that's like mixing Pringles with heroin. Yes, an official (from Popcap's end, at least) Peggle plugin has been released for World of Warcraft. Which is a) terrifying b) exciting and c) supports the viewpoint that MMOs are not merely a genre anymore - they're a platform all of their own these days.
]]>While we're all deep in the "Man, remember that 2008!" demi-ironic naval-gazing, let's take it further. Remember 2007? Ah, those were amazing days. Remember Peggle Extreme, the Orange-Box-included bonus mini-Peggle game? That headcrab on the unicorns head was funny and similar and... oh, no, can't stretch this out. Peggle Extreme is now free to anyone with a Steam account. If you haven't played it yet for some reason, get it from here.
]]>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.
]]>Quick survey: has anyone heard of a game called Peggle?
]]>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 Carolina 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.
]]>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.
]]>"Write about Peggle Nights," the Mighty Sentient RPS Computer told me. "But there's no information about it whatsoever," I meekly protested. There was a brief whirring. "WRITE ABOUT IT OR I WILL RE-APPLY THE NODES."
Peggle Nights, eh? How exciting is that?! It's Peggle, but at night!
Oh please help.
All that's known is the name, thanks to a mention in the Christmas ish of PC Gamer US. Described as being... Hey, wait a second! I never noticed that insult from Kieron before. Man! Yeah well Kieron, you... you smell of wee wee. And your mum cuts your hair. YOUR PUBIC HAIR.
Simon GameSetWatch speculated that the name might infer a similarity to that greatest of television spin-offs, Baywatch Nights. But that's only one of many possibilities...
]]>The running joke was crawling towards the finishing line. It knew it could make it. Somehow, it had to make it. It inched up to the RPS-approved Fairtrade Advent Calendar, and tore open the door to reveal...
]]>I'm having a bit of a moment. Portable gaming has just been sorted, made a done deal. There is no need for anything else.
Peggle has been released for iPod. Peggle! PEGGLE!
]]>While Englishman in New York San Fran Simon had mentioned it online before us, we got a copy of the relevant bits of PC Gamer US for a looksie. And lo! Pop Cap are really calling Peggle's sequel Peggle Nights, PC Gamer US really did (righteously!) include it in their Top 8 games for 2008 and it really does offer us 65 new levels, a new character with power-up AND a game called Peggle Nights. Also, they're working on something else...
]]>[Reposting this now, as the game was knocked offline on the day I wrote about it due to excessive interest, but now it's back (thanks for the tip-off, Seniath). Do do do go looky if you missed it first time. And the Halo 3 reference was, I'm sure, devastating in its timeliness originally but now reads as odd and outdated. Sigh.]
Additional update - here's the blog of the chap behind Launchball, detailing some of the thinking and backstory behind this excellent game's creation.
Why yes, since you ask, I do own a copy of Halo 3. Except it's currently still in the shrink wrap as, frankly, I already had better things to be doing. And now, I've also got free thingy Launchball to eat up my time. Trust me, this one will make you feel a whole lot better about yourself than grenading another Grunt will.
Bungie's design ethos for Halo may be '30 seconds of fun' , but that 30 seconds is just shooting people, innit? Launchball, created by the Science Museum in London (which would make me feel a swell of patriotic pride if only the part of my brain that associates personal worth with the patch of land I happened to be born in functioned properly), is all about 30 seconds of ever-changing fun. Why? Clicky below to find out. Don't stop reading here because it looks like the post ends. It doesn't. That's just the internet playing tricks on you.
]]>Welcome back to Rock, Paper, Shotgun's exclusive interview with Team Fortress 2 developers, Robin Walker and Charlie Brown. (Here's Part One if you missed it.) This time we get down to the finer details of the classes on offer, and talk about their evolution, as well as discussing Valve's other great obsession, PopCap's Peggle. But first we talked about the remarkable part humour had to play in TF2's development.
RPS: I want to ask about the role of humour in the game. You watch the promo movies, and they’re really hilarious, but you think: how can those possibly carry over into a multiplayer game where there’s people playing everyone? And yet somehow it has.
Robin Walker: It actually came about the other way.
]]>Oh, praise the Lord of Gaming - someone, finally, agrees with me about Peggle.
]]>Gman loves Peggle.
]]>Valve have just announced that The Orange Box is available to pre-order on Steam. And there are a few good reasons to do so.
First of all, there's the rather big announcement that pre-ordering will secure you access to the Team Fortress 2 beta test, which (also just announced) opens on the 17th. A pretty huge incentive there, with this being the most exciting looking multiplayer in forever and ever. A chance to see those pretties a month early in enticing indeed.
For those a bit annoyed at having to buy Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 again when ordering the set, the pricing should quickly put that to rest. To get the whole box (HL2, Ep 1, Ep 2, TF2 and Portal - phew) will cost you a pre-order price of $45 (£22 (£25 with tax)). To buy the three new games individually will cost you $80 (£40). So, um, the whole lot then, maybe? Even better, Valve have said that those still miffed can "gift" their duplicates to friends. Which is nice.
But perhaps there is one more piece of news that will have people pre-ordering in their mad droves. Coming up on page two!
]]>This is so great it deserves its own post.
Click for bigness.
]]>So I was just telling a cynical chum to buy Peggle, or be damned, and he asked if viewing the ad-funded version browser version counted against his descent to hell. Of course, being the RPS daily dunce, I had no idea there was one, or that it was a free as (advert-ridden) sunshine. It isn't as good as the full retail version, by virtue of being trapped in a browser, but you can now get to Peggle without having to part with seven British pounds , or fifteen Yanqui dollars. See the "Also Available Online" bit at the bottom of that page for the link. You need to install a browser plugin, then all the Peggle is your oyster, or something.
]]>Lord, I loves me that Peggle. In fact, I love it even more than I did a couple of weeks ago when I scored it 9/10. I increasingly wish I'd given it 10, if only because our resident misery John Walker would have become so angry about it that we'd have had to kill him.
So, seeing a new game from Popcap, the casual games publisher/developer responsible for Peggle, crop up on Steam excited that growing part of me that's obsessed with brightly-coloured cartoon puzzle games that don't make pensioners cower in fear. Venice Deluxe is its name (if there's one thing to love about Popcap, it's that it suffixes its every game with Deluxe, just because it can), and shooting shapes is its game.
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