pictureka

Today, Pogo is having a sale on their Pogo Originals downloadable games for $9.95, instead of the usual $19.95. This includes Pogo To Go games and also the Pogo downloadable games that have badges and ranks too: Word Whomp Underground, Way To Go! Bowling, PICTUREKA! MUSEUM MAYHEM, Diner Dash® Family Style™, OPERATION MANIA, Word Riot™ Deluxe, Tri-Peaks 2 Quest for the Ruby Ring, The Poppit! Show, Lottso! Deluxe, and Mahjong Garden Deluxe.

Also, if solitaire is your thing, check out the POGO™ Pack, which includes Tri-Peaks 2 & Great Escapes Solitaire both for $9.95.

If you’ve tried Pictureka and are ready to buy it, you can save 40% by using the coupon code “thanks2008″ at checkout. This code works for all downloadable games at Pogo and brings the price from $19.99 to $11.97.

Also, if you’re looking for some new scenery on your computer’s desktop, check out these cute Pictureka wallpapers available for download.

Updated 11/27/08: This coupon is no longer valid for Pictureka, but still applies to other downloadable games.

Forget whatever the marketing pages told you, Pictureka was released this morning (approximately three days early). You can download it now and play it while it’s in sneak peek mode!

Good news — we’ve got a release date for Pictureka Museum Mayhem! According to this Pictureka marketing page, the game will be released in approximately six and a half days (at the time of this post). So, look for it on November 24!

In the meantime, you can visit that page daily through November 23 for 2,000 free tokens each day. (There’s a similar promotion for the UK site, but unfortunately you can only get tokens from one, not both sites.)

Here are some screenshots of Pictureka Museum Mayhem to whet your appetite and (maybe) tide you over until the game is released:

We’re back! On the very first day of our vacation, our darling Badge Fairy Lura came down with an awful sore throat and fever that’s making her cranky and sleepy and generally difficult. Please bear with us as she convalesces.

In other news, while we were gone:

Casual President resigns, EA cuts their Casual Division
President of the EA Casual Division Kathy Vrabeck resigned and shortly thereafter EA announced a reorganization that basically merges the Casual division with the Sims division, as well as merges in their Hasbro partnership. The most interesting thing (for us) about this is that EA is seemingly saying that “casual gamers” don’t exist, that the term “casual gamer” in fact applies to a much more diverse set of gamers, hardcore and non-hardcore alike.

New mini items in the Mini Mall
Pogo has given us another great release of mini items in the Mini Mall, including exotic pets (isn’t that peacock gorgeous?) and Yahtzee items. In addition to some other Autumnal items, there are a few new pieces of clothing to keep your Mini warm as the weather begins to turn to downright chilly in most of the nation.

Pictureka can be added to favorites
You can add Pictureka to your favorites, but you can’t yet download and/or play it. You know where to look for the latest news, of course…right here at BadgeHungry. We wouldn’t keep any secrets from you.

We only posted US answers
You’d think the world was coming to a nuclear end with the amount of email we received about the answers we had (or hadn’t) pre-posted for Trivial Pursuit Daily 20. For the three days we were gone, we got the US answers in advance, but not the UK answers. We decided to post the US answers and list that the UK answers would be posted soon — better half than none at all, right? Well, we received so much email protesting the missing answers we probably can’t respond to all of you, but the UK answers have been back-posted now. You may now remove your foil-lined helmets and come out from your bomb shelters — everything is right with the world (except maybe Badge Fairy’s darned sore throat)!

Dream Vacation Sweepstakes
Play Monopoly from November 7-13 for a chance to win some great prizes. One winner will win the “Dream Vacation”, consisting of two $500 Hyatt gift cards and one $1500 American Airlines Gift Card. Three winners will receive $300 and the Monopoly Here & Now board game. Each time you load the game you’ll be entered to win, so get playing (or, um, loading).

Pogo Bowl is now Turkey Bowl!
Every year, Pogo replaces the pins in Pogo Bowl with gobbling turkeys. It’s quite a sight to see, so go check it out!

We know from various press releases and internet sales sites that Pictureka Museum Mayhem is scheduled to be released on November 19th (which means a Pogo release of November 18th and a day for chaos to ensue and be resolved). In the meantime, here’s a page from Pogo to tide you over; it announces Pictureka is coming soon and shows us some more details.

If you’re like us and just can’t wait to play Pictureka, here’s a sneak peek at the How to Play for the game. In addition, Hasbro has had a demo of the game on their web site for a while; it will give you a rough idea of how the game will be played.

Of course, Pogo’s version is going to far surpass this one with its badges, ranks, team play, and super-cool mini items!

We keep an eye on all things Pogo-related here at BadgeHungry and of note today is a press release about Electronic Arts’ new studio in Austin, Texas. Pogo Austin will join EA’s Bioware team and create the Hasbro titles, the first of which will be Pictureka! Museum Mayhem.

The game will be released for download from Pogo in November and will cost $19.99. In addition, the press release text indicates that it may be a time management game (”the frantic director”), but we’re hoping it will (also?) have game play reminiscent of a hidden object game.

The first title to be released from Pogo Austin is PICTUREKA! MUSEUM MAYHEM. This quirky seek and find game is based on the Hasbro game PICTUREKA! which debuted in 2007 and launched globally in 2008. In the digital version, a player becomes the new curator for a museum and investigates some odd things that are afoot. Someone has been breaking in and re-arranging the exhibits. The frantic director needs the player to restore items to their proper location and catch the person responsible. The game is set to launch online in November at Pogo.com for $19.95 (US) and £11.95 (UK); it will be available at retail in early winter.

The full press release is available here.