Jigsaw Detective Case #43: The Irish Musician
March’s Jigsaw Detective case is out, it’s case number 43, the case of The Irish Musician. We’ve added it to BadgeHungry so you can track your progress. Enjoy!
Archive for February 2008
Mahjong Safari to replace Animal Ark
Betty alerted us to this bit of Mahjong Safari information, from today’s Pogo News:
In anticipation of the upcoming game Mahjong Safari, Pogo.com will be retiring Animal Ark Mahjong. Mahjong Safari is an exciting new twist on traditional Mahjong where players make matches, collect power ups, complete safaris, and give gifts to other players. Also, players can customize the tilesets that they use, and Club Pogo players can collect 50 additional tiles for their Mahjong sets. 130 different animals are featured in the game. Look for it soon!
Luckily for all of us, Mahjong Safari is nothing like Animal Ark Mahjong (good riddance)!
Pogo Addiction Solitaire mini items
We’ve seen some of a set of really wonderful mini backgrounds and mini goodies that are Pogo-themed. The backgrounds are scenes of Thousand Island Solitaire, Bingo Luau, Sweet Tooth 2, and Hangman Hijinks. There are also some coordinating mini items: a beach ball and baby in a crib that are stylized like Hangman Hijinks and a Tumble Bees honey pot. We’re guessing these will be awarded in Pogo Addiction Solitaire or will be on sale at the time of its release. We’ll fill you in when we see more of the set or when we find out how these can be acquired!
Mahjong Safari Rules
The How to Play help pages for Mahjong Safari have been written. It’s a version of Mahjong Connect (or Connect 2) that requires you to match tiles by connecting pieces with a line of two or fewer turns (bends).
The game will have 50 ranks, 5 in-game rank badges, and two secret badges (which aren’t much of a secret to those of us in the know). At each rank you’ll receive a rank tile displayed in your game window, and you’ll receive another tile to add to your collection. You’ll rank up not by winning a game, but by receiving jackpot spins at the end of your game — jackpot spins are awarded when you collect 10 mini-animals. On easy mode you receive 2 mini-animals per game, normal gives 3, and hard mode gives you 4 mini-animals per game; however there are more tiles on the board at higher difficulty modes.
This game will be available to Club Pogo members and non-Club members as well. It’ll be a nice addition to Pogo’s already-massive collection of Mahjong-style games.
Bingo Night (UK) February 28
Hey UK folk! Don’t forget that tonight is Bingo Night. Join in the social and earn 6,000 free tokens when you play Bingo Luau. Meet in either “Eyes Down (UK)” or “Legs Eleven (UK)” to socialize from 6 to 7 pm (although playing in any room at any time during the day will get you your tokens.)
Weekly Challenges (February 27-March 4)
Lottso! - Spare Change Badge
Activate the Charity Card 25 times this week!
This is a fairly straightforward challenge, but it could take some time to receive charity cards to activate. Instead of holding cards for the x2 or x3 bonus, you may want to clear cards quickly so that they may be replaced by a Charity card.
Turbo 21 - Pedal to the Metal Badge
Get 40 Jackpot Spins this week!
To get a jackpot spin in Turbo 21, you need to make thirteen 21’s in a game (or 10 while the “Easy Spin” power-up is active). If you’ve never played Turbo 21 before, you’ll want to stack cards in each lane so that the total value of the cards in one lane equals 21.
New Relax & Play Premium Badge Album
Today Pogo released the Relax & Play Premium Badge Album. It is $5.99 or 86 gems, and contains 10 stress-free challenges for Mahjong Garden, Poppit!, Jigsaw Detective, First Class Solitaire, Jungle Gin, Rainy Day Spider Solitaire, Dominoes, Word Search Daily, Sweet Tooth 2, and Thousand Island Solitaire.
Sudoku Puzzle Blast Released
This morning’s Pogo maintenance brings us the release of Sudoku Puzzle Blast — enjoy!
Here’s an initial game tip: the higher the difficulty level you choose, the more pieces you’ll have to place per game and can achieve ranks faster, since the ranks are based upon how many puzzle pieces you place.
Ali Baba Slots almost done
The Ali Baba Slots makeover is almost done — the artwork for the game has been created and the artwork for the badges is all set. The badges will be awarded at ranks 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. There may also be a special in-game award badge, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet. Considering the game is based on the same “engine” as Spooky Slots (so it won’t need much beta testing — if any) and that the artwork and how to play appear to be done, this game may be out faster than anyone expected!
Lack of Valentine’s Mini Items and Outages Covered on Pogo UK
In this week’s Letters to the Editor on the Pogo UK site, the Editor responded to a few burning topics that are lighting up the Pogo community world-wide.
Everyone was disappointed with the distinct lack of hearts and shmoopie-type Valentine’s mini items. We know that the “bling” was created last October and was waiting in the wings for an appropriate release date, however none of us really feel that Valentine’s Day was remotely appropriate. Well, the UK Editor actually apologized and admitted that they “somewhat overlooked” the mini mall amidst other Valentine’s Day celebrations on the site (the greeting card creator, the homepage adornments, the wallpapers, and more).
With respect to the two outages we all experienced last week, the UK Editor apologized twice for the outages, once to a writer who was just wondering what happened to the games and the other to a writer who felt it was unfair that the outages happened during a time when most US and Canadian players were asleep. Of course, outages are totally unplanned; it’s the maintenance that happens at scheduled times.
Perhaps being apologetic to your (cough, paying) customers is more acceptable in the UK than it is in the US? (The US Letters to the Editor this week didn’t mention this, nor the outages.)
