new

Today bring a few new items to the mini mall, including pants (yay pants!) for our minis. There are also some older spring and summery items that have been re-released. Check ‘em out.

In addition, earlier this week the Mini Mall was (slightly) updated with a few new graphics and new navigation. These new graphics match the new look that is planned in an upcoming Club Pogo homepage redesign. This sets the mall up for the new pet store section. It’ll be a while before this feature is out, but in the meantime check out this header graphic that they’ve created for it:

Click for slightly-larger version of this banner.

This morning, you may have noticed the addition of Poker Pop to your Card & Board games list on Pogo.

Clicking on the link displays a blank page and as the small snapshot above shows, there are no players in the game. For those of you who thought Pogo had sneaked a new game by us: you’re unfortunately wrong. It’s not even a deluxe game, so no minis or badges.

Pogo Pop is one of those downloadable games that has been ported to Pogo to play in your browser (like Dream Day Wedding, Bejeweled 2, Zuma, et cetera). If you need to know what it’s all about, you can download a free trial of Poker Pop at Big Fish Games. At first glance, it appears to be a cross between poker and mahjong. (Two great tastes that taste great together? Perhaps!)

Ali Baba Slots is now updated with new graphics, sound, ranks, badges and storyline. (You will recognize the jackpot spin noise from Spooky Slots though, which had us cackling and wishing it were October again.) Unfortunately the ‘nudge’ feature that was originally written into the “How to Play” didn’t make it into the final release, and unlike Spooky Slots, you cannot press the B key to spin. However, like the first release of Spooky Slots, the ranks are hard to come by and the jackpot spins — while equally as tedious to receive — pay out well.

The pay table is a little hard to see at higher resolutions, so here are some screenshots of what you’ll need (the good stuff shows up only on the third spinner):

To progress in rank, get the genie on the line of the spinner.

For a jackpot spin, get the Pogo logo on the line of the spinner.

For those of you who have been waiting for Pogo’s latest time management game, Crazy Cakes has been released.

Finally, Word Riot Deluxe is available for download!

As you’re learning to play, take note of any special hints or tips you come up with and submit them to us via email — we’ll be putting together our usual hints and tips post in about a week.

In addition to the April Mix-n-Match challenges, Golf Solitaire was released today. The pages for Word Riot Deluxe are up and in place, but the game file isn’t there yet — when it shows up, it will be on this page. We’ll update this post when the file arrives and you can play Word Riot Deluxe later today.

Update: the file still isn’t there, but we know WRD was at some point supposed to be out today; there’s a sweepstakes listed on the page that states “from April 22…”

Update 2: You are going to have to wait until next Tuesday. Sigh.

For those of you looking for “No Pile” Canasta games, you can now easily set up one via the options screen and you can now easily find one via an ice cube graphic in the table selection area.

For those of you who don’t want “No Pile” games, they should now be considerably easier to avoid.

Here is Pogo’s News Release on the “Frozen Pile” option.

We don’t have an in-house Canasta expert, so if you have any experiences with this new option, good or bad, drop us a line and let us know how it’s worked out so far.

Lots of new mini items were released this morning! The relaxation mini items from Dr. Kathleen Hall are free, too. The Pogo-related mini items are costumes of your favorite Pogo characters (Toothy, Boogie, Lady Doodle, and Piggie) with coordinating mini goodie items and backgrounds.

Be aware, the Calming Candles are already listed as “Sold Out”. This is probably a mistake; expect it to be fixed by Pogo soon.

UPDATE: During the 4/7 Amazing Minis Social, the judge said the Calming Candles would be coming back during the next scheduled maintenance release (which should be 4/8).

If you didn’t pick up your lampshade hat a while ago when it was originally released, head to the Mini Mall and grab one for your mini now. It’s only 1,200 tokens and looks like this: