They've got a couple of people over there who've got all three trophies. Sidhu: "It's actually funny - I have a friend that works over at Valve, and he said that they actually delayed the shipping of The Orange Box by a whole week because of Peggle. Even then, though, pinball was a little too skill-based in some ways, and doesn't lend itself to compulsive PC play." Addiction And Excuses Still, we wanted something that had elements of pachinko, or even pinball. Sidhu: "We originally had the idea that we wanted to make a pachinko game, but as pachinko is purely luck-based, it doesn't make for a good game unless you have the gambling element to make it interesting. We talked to Eric Tams, Peggle's senior engineer, and Sukhbir Sidhu, studio VP of PopCap, about the little game that briefly paralysed an industry. Just original enough to make it stand out from the crowd, and so finely tuned as to demand a begrudging nod of respect from even non-casual gamers, Peggle Deluxe has kept us late after work, and even put back the development of The Orange Box, perhaps to include the last-minute Half-Life-themed extension, Peggle Extreme.
Despite their popularity and strong sales, we never really took PopCap games too seriously - that is, until Peggle. Their PC offerings are slick, intuitive, generally not very original, but queerly compelling.
#PLAY PEGGLE NIGHTS FREE ONLINE FOR FREE#
Their flagship game, Bejeweled, has been bought by over five million people, and played for free online by untold millions more, making it more popular than life itself (or at least, about as popular as Half-Life 2).