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Pengapop Has Some Promise, But Lacks Social Elements
August 5th, 2008
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a flash puzzle game where you launch colored balls at other colored balls to clear the colored balls and win. Pengapop by Blackdot is such a (woefully) unoriginal game.
The twist this time is that you’re a penguin leading a sweet-toothed penguin army who must clear these balls in order to obtain various sweets to feed your troops. In practical terms, this means that the object of the game is not to get the most combos or clear all the balls, but rather to hit all of the bonus icons you see floating around. Combine this change with the addition of a timer and you’ve got a different type of strategy game. Barely.
I do have to applaud Blockdot for creating a puzzle flash game that is actually challenging and has a lot of levels. You can even unlock multiple penguin launchers for a different experience as well. By downloading Power Player Trix, you can also get access to 200 levels and multiplayer options.
The learning curve is pretty forgiving but some levels are much more challenging than others. If you’re into this type of game, it’s on par with some of the higher-end ones you’ll find on Facebook. The Achilles’ heal for all of Blockdot’s games are the social elements…they suck. You must navigate away from Facebook in order to post your score, there’s no chat feature, once in game you can only invite friends through email, etc. etc. Oh, and depending on your computer, you might be waiting a while to load the game.
Once Blockdot gets hip to how to better promote its games, the developer will be firing on all engines and can hopefully churn out some really exciting apps.
Gameplay: 7
Development: 4
Originality: 2
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August 5th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Thanks for the write up. While Pengapop is new to Facebook, it was created several years ago and is actually one of the original games of this style.
You also mention the name of the company that created the game as Blackdot. It is actually Blockdot. (You did get the URL right!)
We are aware that some of these games lack the social hooks. We are about to launch some new games that will be deeply integrated. So hold on for some really exciting apps, because they are on the way.
August 6th, 2008 at 7:39 am
This is typically the type of “one-trick flash game” you already described. I was able to get 200 000 pts by only shooting without stopping and thinking about the colors. And as you said, no way to post your score unless you fo subscribe yourself elsewhere. This is not a social game. It’s a mini web game type that exists since a while.