a pogo.com fansite and blog
From the category archives:
In addition to the seven backgrounds we told you about earlier, Pogo has crafted up new animated backgrounds (one is especially cute: a field of sunflowers with smileys as their centers), two goodies (falling smileys and dancing smileys), and five (very strange) animal faces for your minis — a dog, a pig, a cow, a goat, and a monkey. We haven’t been able to put together a theme for these items other than “smileys”, but we thought you’d want to know they’re on their way soon.
The game rules are fairly simple but this game is not the easiest to win. Power-ups and the reshuffling feature are valuable items. If you do not use either of these to win the game you will be rewarded with extra tokens.
“Arrange the cards from left to right, 2 to King, in each suit. Move cards into unoccupied spaces by placing the next highest card in suit and sequence to the right of any card. If you run out of moves, reshuffle the deck or use a power-up to continue playing.”
You don’t rank up by winning the game, you rank up by finding Pogo Buddies through normal gameplay. For every 10 Pogo Buddies (bobble-head collectibles) you receive you will get to play the bonus game. The bonus game is played a lot like the bonus game in Vaults of Atlantis where you uncover squares (in this case, Pogo Buddies) until you receive a “stopper” (in this case, a fire icon). The bonus game is played for tokens (and rumor has it that it’s got a great payout too) and the possibility of winning one of the five mini items available in this game.
“You’ve unlocked the Tiki Bros. Bonus game. There are 9 (moneybag) icons and 1 (fire) icon in the game. Click on the Pogo Buddies to reveal the icons but stay away from the (fire) or the bonus game ends. Reveal all (moneybag) icons for a chance to win a mini item.”
Yep, it was a boo-boo. Check it out:
Before… it’s Quest:
And after…it’s Blast!
Voila! Further proof that Pogo webmasters are only human, too!
From the Community Center today comes an official mention of Sudoku Puzzle Quest. (What happened to “Blast”? Did someone make a boo-boo?) This news comes along with some screenshots. (Hey they’re mice after all!) Oddly enough, today’s post does not mention a “coming soon”, just that it’s a new twist on the classic Sudoku and it’ll be easy enough for anyone to learn.
While incomplete, we have a rough draft of the How to Play and Rules for Sudoku Puzzle Blast. These rules are lengthier than usual, and that’s probably due to the fact that Sudoku in general is daunting to the average “casual gamer”, but also that Pogo’s twist on this game is so very unique (dare we say it’s like pseudoku?). In addition, this “How to Play” seems to have been written in a lighthearted, more playful and conversational style than the other rulesets. With all of that said, it’s still missing screenshots and will probably go through a round of edits before the final version.
According to a press release today, Hasbro and Electronic Arts Casual Gaming have teamed up to provide a bunch of games for EA’s Pogo.com collection. Yahtzee for online play is scheduled to be released in Summer of this year, and Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit are scheduled for Fall. There’s no word yet whether or not these will be available to everyone or just Club Pogo members.
Yahtzee will offer two ways to play: team/collaborative and competitive. The rooms will allow up to 20 people per room.
Monopoly will be the Here and Now: World Edition. You’ll be able to play alone or play against up to three other players online. The Here and Now edition of Monopoly is a modern makeover of the classic Monopoly board game where you can buy and sell destinations from around the world as you play to win it all.
Not much information is included about the version of Trivial Pursuit for Pogo, but we found this sentence interesting: “Answer the trivia questions correctly and earn points towards your wedges in pursuit of completing your pie collection by the end of the week.” This could be a daily quickie like Word Search Daily, perhaps?
Also mentioned in the press release are Operation and Pictureka, which are described in such a way that we believe they will be Deluxe-style games.
According to the Pogo UK Community Centre, the Hearts Limited Edition Badge (the one we told you about earlier will be released tomorrow. (We’re assuming that’ll be the case for us in the US as well.)
“Look out for the special Valentine’s Limited Edition badge for Hearts, which will be released on Tuesday 12th February. It’ll be available for one week only, so make sure you get yours before February 19th! Our apologies to anyone who saw the badge advertised in the Club Pogo UK Insider newsletter, which incorrectly stated that the Hearts badge was out now.”
If you were worried that Mahjong Safari was going to be just another mahjong game, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear that Pogo is changing things up a little. Mahjong Safari so far seems to be a version of mahjong similar to Connect 2 (also known as Mahjong Connect), a deceptively simple mahjong game where you match tiles by creating a path between them. Harder versions of this game impose a rule that the connecting path can only have a certain number of turns (or bends).
Pogo’s Mahjong Safari will allow up to two turns per connecting pathway. There’s also a shuffle button that you can use to mix up the tiles if you get stuck and an “infinity” turns button that will allow you to make more than two turns in a pathway to also help you get out of a sticky situation. The shuffle and turns buttons will probably act like a powerup, where they can only be used once per game. There will also be difficulty levels, probably based upon how many turns the pathway can have.
Well, it was no surprise that Mahjong Safari was safari-themed, but it’s a little surprise to us that it’s in beta testing already. (That makes three games that have been tested so far in the latest round of Beta testing: Sudoku Puzzle Blast, Golf Solitaire, and Mahjong Safari. Those lucky testers!)
So far all we have received is the badge information:
10th Rank Badge - Mahjong Safari
Earn X rank points to achieve 10th rank badge (rank 10) and earn this badge.20th Rank Badge - Mahjong Safari
Earn X rank points to achieve 20th rank badge (rank 20) and earn this badge.30th Rank Badge - Mahjong Safari
Earn X rank points to achieve 30th rank badge (rank 30) and earn this badge.40th Rank Badge - Mahjong Safari
Earn X rank points to achieve 40th rank badge (rank 40) and earn this badge.50th Rank Badge - Mahjong Safari
Earn X rank points to achieve 10th rank badge (rank 50) and earn this badge.
So we know the game will have 50 ranks and 5 badges, with badges at ranks 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. Other than that, we’ll have to wait for the more unscrupulous beta testers to leak information!
If you are a fan of card games or if your Pogo addiction requires you purchase every last Mix-n-Match badge before it expires, you might want to hold off on buying any Mix-n-Match badges for card games. Within the next month, several Mix-n-Match badges for select card games will go on sale for 10 gems instead of 16.
This news, along with the Editor’s comment this week about the Card Masters premium album, is another piece of information we’ve received that makes us think that Pogo might be putting on a sale for card-game lovers soon.
