Killer Feature
66 / wfmag.ccPeggleA simple placeholder becomes an ode to joy
(also, it literally is Ode To Joy)hat’s the moment it changes for everyone.
PopCap’s casual mix of luck, dexterity, and
puzzles might have offered some vague
amusement the first time you played it, but
it’s not until the end of a level that it hits you.
In Peggle, you have to fire a ball and hit all of the pegs in a
level – and that’s about it. It’s simple, straightforward, and fun.
You fire the last ball, the camera zooms in, and the action slows
as it approaches the final peg, a drumroll, it hits... and suddenly
Beethoven’s Ode to Joy blares out as the
celebratory pyrotechnics unleash.
It’s in this moment that Peggle moves
from being just another puzzle game
you’ll put a bit of time into before
forgetting it into the territory of true
greats. It knows damn well that you
want to be rewarded for your achievements, even if said
achievements do read ‘completing the first three levels’.
So the game makes a fanfare of it, and really makes you feel
like you’ve accomplished a lot more than just plomping a
ball at some targets in a vague mix of pinball and pachinko.
It makes every end-of-level occasion special. And to think, the
only reason Ode to Joy was in the game in the first place was
because its designers needed a placeholder to tide them over
before choosing the ‘real’ congratulatory track to go in there.
How different the world might have been.
Things progress in the game, of course, and elements are
introduced to show that under its simplistic surface, Peggle
is a game of real depth and considerate design. It’s one of
those rare games that manages to balance its reliance on luck
and skill near-perfectly, no doubt one of the main reasons
the game still holds up so well to this day. Side note: go play
Peggle, thank us later.
But you’d think after hundreds of levels
played and twelve years (crikey, time
creeps up on you) the whole shtick would
wear thin. Nope. If anything, the more
you play Peggle, the more you crave the
recognition PopCap (and Ludwig) throws
your way. Those of a more cynical mind
might actually accuse PopCap of employing a certain ‘first
one’s free’ method in how it doles out that congratulatory
symphony – they come by so easily in the early stages, to the
point where you think this is the way it’s going to be forever.
But soon enough the difficulty ramps up, the failures mount,
and you’re genuinely craving to be put out of your misery by
a hearing-impaired pianist who died almost 200 years ago.
Ah, video games – is there anything they can’t do?T
“The more you play Peggle,
the more you crave the
recognition PopCap (and
Ludwig) throws your way”POPCAP / 2007 / PC, MAC, MULTIPeggle