Peggle Nights
A true gem in a sea of casual game rehashes.
The casual games market is swamped by "hidden object" and "match three" games so it’s a refreshing change when something like Peggle Nights from PopCap Games comes along. Peggle Nights is a sequel to the incredibly popular Peggle which MSNBC hailed as "one of the top 5 most addictive games of all time". After my experiences with the game I can tell you the part about it being addictive is no exaggeration.
The concept of the game is relatively simple. Each level is presented as a screen of colored pegs arranged in various patterns. At the top of the screen is your "launcher" and at the bottom of the screen is a "bucket" which moves horizontally back and forth. Most of the pegs are blue but the ten orange pegs are the ones you want to pay attention to. There’s also a purple peg that changes location for each turn and two green pegs per level but I’ll explain those later. The idea is to shoot metal balls from the launcher and try to clear the orange pegs before your allotment of balls for that level runs out. You get 10 balls per level. Once you shoot a ball from the launcher gravity pulls it towards the bottom but you want to try to hit as many of the orange pegs as possible on the way down. If you manage to hit the moving bucket on the bottom of the screen you get the ball back. If you don’t you lose that ball and go on to the next one. Before you exhaust all ten of your balls you need to clear all the orange pegs. If you don’t you lose that level and have to go back to the beginning of the level to try again.
Hitting the lone purple peg gives you a big points bonus. Hitting one of the green pegs activates a "Peggle magic power" either immediately or on the next shot. There’s a whole assortment of really cool Peggle magic powers such as one that electrifies your ball and another that creates a duplicate of your ball giving you two balls simultaneously. There is another that even creates pinball-like flippers at the bottom corners of the screen that might help you keep your ball in play a little longer. You also earn bonus points for successfully completing various "style shots" such as knocking off orange pegs using a bank shot off the wall or hitting two orange pegs consecutively that are halfway across the screen from each other. Between all the different styles shots and Peggle magic powers there’s lots of variety here.
When you hit the last orange peg to complete a level "extreme fever" is activated. This multiplies the point values of all the remaining pegs that the last ball may hit during its journey down to the bottom. Then at the bottom of the screen five bonus buckets appear with point bonuses ranging from 10,000-100,000 points. So whatever bucket your ball falls into you get those points in bonus. Extreme fever mode occurs in slow-motion. All of this frantic action is accompanied by fantastic sound and great graphics. Each level has its own unique background and arrangement of pegs. Some levels even contain moving pegs!
There’s four game modes in all and a trophy case of unlock-able trophies to further lengthen your enjoyment of the game. I stuck with standard "Adventure Mode" but the other gameplay modes become available as you progress. A nice addition is the ability to save replays of your best games and share them with your Peggle Nights-playing friends for bragging rights!
The controls in Peggle Nights are primarily mouse movements (for aiming the launcher) and left-clicks (for shooting the ball from the launcher). When you create a profile at the start of the game you will have to type your name in but that’s the only time you’ll need to use a keyboard unless you have a one-button mouse. Right-clicking will speed up the movement of the moving bucket at the bottom of the screen but it’s not necessary. But if you feel the need to do so, and use a one-button mouse, Peggle Nights does have a windowed mode that KeyStrokes works with which would then give you access to right-clicks and whatever else you’d need to do with a keyboard (which really isn’t anything with this game). Dwell-clicking also works great with this game. What’s really cool is this game has a built-in "colorblind mode". This mode helps colorblind players distinguish the different colored pegs. You don’t often see developers take this kind of thing into account so that’s a really nice touch on their part.
So if your looking for something different in casual games then Peggle Nights might be right up your alley. It’s definitely one of those games where you’ll be saying "just one more turn" or "just five more minutes", which is always the mark of any great, addictive game. Give the free Mac or Windows demo a try and see for yourself!
Peggle Nights is available for both Windows and Macintosh.
System Requirements:
Macintosh
- Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later
- 512 MB RAM
- Intel Core Duo 1.66 GHz
Windows
- Windows XP/Vista
- 800 Mhz
- 256 MB RAM
- DirectX: 8.0
Paul Natsch
RSS 2.0