Second Installment of Casual Game of 2007 Winner Takes Players Inside the Dream Worlds of the Peggle Masters; New Peggle Master, Achievements and Challenges
Peggle Nights, the much-anticipated follow-up to the original Peggle game, which garnered more than a dozen media and industry accolades including “casual game of the year” following its introduction in early 2007. Peggle Nights sports 60 all-new Adventure Mode levels and 60 new Challenge Mode hurdles, along with a new “Peggle Master” power-up, new kinds of style shots, achievements, and other special bonuses. In addition, Peggle Nights takes players into the “dream worlds” of each of the eleven Peggle Masters, providing five beautifully rendered and themed levels for each character’s secret dreams and aspirations. Peggle Nights carries a retail price of US$19.95; a free trial of the deluxe version is available for download at www.popcap.com. Other leading game portals, including RealArcade, MSN Games, STEAM, Wild Games and Yahoo! Games, will begin offering the game next month.
“We at PopCap love the Peggle ‘master’ characters as much as anyone, so we decided to delve into their personalities a bit further and take a peek inside each one’s dream states,” explained Sukhbir Sidhu, studio director in charge of Peggle and Peggle Nights at PopCap. “We also took the opportunity to incorporate user feedback from the original game by adding more challenges and style shots and ultimately making the game even more achievement- and skill-oriented.”
The original Peggle was named to numerous “best of 2007” awards lists, including being named one of the “Top Ten Video Games of 2007” by PC Gamer magazine. Peggle has been downloaded from the web more than 20 million times since its introduction in February 2007, and has spawned dozens of Facebook groups and clubs and hundreds of YouTube videos.
In the game, players fire a metallic silver ball from the top of the screen, relying on gravity to propel the ball downwards while it ricochets off orange and blue “pegs”. The goal is to clear all the orange pegs from the screen before running out of balls. A moving “bucket” at the bottom of the screen offers free balls, while green power-up pegs give the player special abilities via the Peggle Masters who guide players through the game. These power-ups include explosive area-clearing blasts, lobster claws that serve as pinball-type flippers and “fireballs” that cut through all pegs in their path.
New features in Peggle Nights include:
• New Peggle Master/power-up: “Marina,” the electric squid, brings the number of Peggle Masters / power-ups to 11; her “Shockwave” effect arcs between the first peg hit and the bucket at the bottom, clearing all intervening pegs with a jolt of electricity
• New Trophy/Achievement: In addition to the original game’s “all clear” achievement, Peggle Nights sets an “ace” score for each level; “acing” each level earns a special trophy
• More Trophies: The new game offers four different trophies for the various achievements: completing Adventure Mode, completing Challenge Mode, clearing all levels of all pegs, and “acing” all levels. Oh, and a new trophy room to keep ’em in!
• 60 Newly Designed Levels: Each Peggle Master has five themed “dream state” levels in the game’s main Adventure mode, plus a final five Master levels in which the player chooses the Master/power-up
• 60 New Challenges: Five dozen new Challenge Mode levels, with many fiendishly tricky objectives for players to reach; new types of challenges include “low ball” challenges in which the player tries to get the lowest possible score, Style Shot based challenges and challenges involving specific or combined power-ups
• New Style Shots: More ways to score bonus points based on the player’s aim and timing acumen: “Off the Wall,” “Double Long Shot” and more
• All-New Soundtrack: Maintaining the cultured sensibilities of the original Peggle, the new game offers a mix of original tunes and well-known classical music – including a fully-orchestrated introduction by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra
• Admire Your Skillz: You can now drag and drop replays of your top shots into the open game window to view them
• Power-Up Improvements: Existing power-ups including Tula’s “flower power,” Kat Tut’s “pyramid” and Lord Cinderbottom’s “fireball” have been tweaked to optimize their effectiveness
• Level Packs (Coming Soon): Peggle Nights is designed to accept additional levels and PopCap plans to begin issuing custom-made, in some cases themed, Level Packs