Yet another game out there about pirates and looting, though this game in particular could lose the pirate theme and still be a fun game to play. I didn’t find the pirate thing to be really an integral part of the gameplay, except maybe for embellishment.
While I loved playing Pirate Poppers itself, as I love playing these types of games in general, I felt like it was just a re-hashing of yet another Zuma/Luxor/Name-Your-Clone-Here arcade game. Actually, the game is more similar to Luxor than Zuma. I’d almost say it’s rather exactly like Luxor in game mechanics, but instead of Egyptians, you have pirates. I was somewhat amused at the little pirate themes and some of the sounds, plus the music could get pretty dramatic at times, such as when you’re on the verge of losing.
So if you aren’t familiar with the aforementioned clones, the basic premise is this: a group of colored balls rolls out of a starting point. You aim to shoot colored balls out of your cannon thingy in order to form at least three balls in a row to remove them from the board. In the Adventure Mode, as the line of balls quickly advances towards the ending point, marked by a skull and crossbones to indicate your imminent demise should you let these balls move that far. Sometimes when you create these combos, special coins fall towards your cannon, which give you bonus abilities. About half of the time these coins have the skull and crossbones, which are actually a good thing in this case – collect thirty of them and a bunch of balls on the board will turn into loot that fall down towards your cannon, which not only give you points, but also help clear the board.
Speaking of loots, when you finish clearing a line of balls, some shiny object seems to fall from it, giving you points. After which another line of balls will appear for you to clear, until you get a certain amount of points (indicated by the cannon-like gauge at the top of the screen). All these loots are counted up and kept in your “Treasure Cove,” and every few levels or so you’ll see a graphic appear representing your spoils from that level. Now to be honest I don’t think this really does anything for the game, except give you some sense of accomplishment I guess.
The point of Adventure Mode is to clear each level on the map until you get some pieces of some treasure map, which of course put together will indicate your goal. The goal is actually to finish the game, but if you want to think like a pirate, I guess your goal would be to grab the ultimate treasure. Either way, the goal is to win!
In Puzzle Mode, instead of the line of balls moving, they are standing still for you. However, you only have a limited number of balls for your cannon in order to clear the board. Some of these balls look like rainbow swirlies, which basically can connect different colored groups of balls together.
Arcade mode seems to be pretty much the same as Adventure Mode, except there doesn’t seem to be a storyline behind it, plus no pieces of treasure map to find along the way. Bummer.
Overall, it’s a pretty fun game to pass the time, though I was able to complete the Adventure Mode in only a few nights. Zuma players will find that it’s not quite as challenging as Zuma can be, but it does have its moments. However, I definitely wish that we don’t keep having clones of clones of clones of the same games, it gets a bit tiring, no matter what wrapper you put on them!
Special thanks to Kirem Weers, Sora Bai and PlayFirst for providing the full version of this game.
