I’ve been a Pogo.com user for quite a few years now. I don’t know how many hours I’ve invested playing Word Whomp, Tumble Bees, Tri-Peaks Solitaire, Sweet Tooth and a few other games. No, I’ve never won a prize there, and no, I really have no idea how many tokens I have earned or spent in all my time of playing.
Seeing Pogo Island come out for the DS really had me jumping for joy, and even more when I heard I was getting a copy to play!
Pogo Island is a mini-game collection that comes with two game modes, Quick Play and Island Adventure. Quick Play is just what it sounds like, you pick one of the mini-games to play and play it as many times as you want.
Island Adventure mode mainly plays like a board game, and there’s a little storyline behind it too. You play as the captain of a cruise ship that is shipwrecked on a deserted island. Your crew has gotten lost while searching the island for materials to repair the ship, and your goal is to reunite the crew members and get enough repair materials to leave Pogo Island.
To move around the island you use the spinner. Grab the pointer with the stylus and give it a twirl to see where you land and how many spaces you can move. The spinner changes as you progress in your quest, giving you better options, for example the Idol icon gives you a Jackpot spin and the little running man lets you pick in which direction to move next.
Landing on the Star icon means you have to play one of the micro-games. There are four original micro-games, all based on repairing the ship and gathering the crew.
Nuts and Bolts has you sorting the good nuts and bolts from the rusty ones and packing them into barrels. Hammer a Nail is like Whack-a-Mole, you have to hammer the nails that pop up from the floor boards. Sail Repair is a bit of a puzzle game where the parrot drops clothing items for you to sew on and repair the holes on the sail. All Aboard gives you three crates to pack in your cargo and shipmates, and a hammock to launch them onto the ship. I swear, I can’t complete this game. I never get anything into the far right crate…
Landing on random spots on the board lets you play a mini-game. The mini-games are just a few of Pogo.com’s little hits: Squelchies, Poppit, Phlinx, Tri-Peaks Solitaire and Word Whomp. For those who are not familiar with the games, I’ll explain.
Squelchies is a color-matching game where you pick up and drop the little colored fish (Squelchies) on the grid to create combos. The crab at the bottom shows how well you’re doing, and the more Squelchies you free, the more he walks to the right. If the crab gets to the treasure before the Squelchies get to the bottom of the ocean, you win.
Poppit is a Collapse type of game, where the goal is to pop groups of two or more balloons to clear the board as much as possible and release the presents.
Phlinx is a clone of Bust-a-Move. You shoot the colored stones up to create groups of three or more. Clear enough stones and the flag will rise up to the top, giving you another level to play where you must remove stones to release the idol trapped in the middle.
Tri-Peaks Solitaire is like Pyramid Solitaire, only with three pyramids. For those not aware of how the game works, you can only remove cards from the pyramid if a card is one lower or higher than the one in your hand. If none can be removed, you draw a card from the deck. The goal is to clear the three peaks. Sometimes you also get power-up cards that you can use in your next game.
Word Whomp is a spelling game a bit like Scrabble. You get six letters and must make as many words as possible with them. On the top screen you can see how many words you need to find to win the game, and how many letters in each word.
Every game requires you to either win it or play it a certain number of times to achieve a certain score in order to move on. Playing games awards you with a rank and tokens that you can transfer to your Pogo.com account. There are also several badges to earn from each game.
All the games are easily controlled with simple taps and drags of the stylus, though I have a hard time with the All Aboard aiming and launching. Maybe it’s just me though.
The only real issues I had with the games that had some impact on gameplay was with Squelchies and Phlinx, since there is like a blind spot on the game area in between the screens. And at random times, Tri-Peaks Solitaire would just lock while loading a new game.
Overall, Pogo Island is a great puzzle/mini-game fix to have handy. It’s user friendly, easy to pick up and play, and hard to let go. I only wish there were a few more games in there.
Special thanks to David Chandler and EA Canada for providing a copy of this title.