The popularity of poker on the rise with such events as the World Series of Poker, and along with it many versions of Texas Hold’em from all sorts of places. Poker Pop, on the other hand, uses the concepts of poker hands as part of the game, but the gameplay itself is entirely different. No bluffing skills necessary in this one-player strategy/action game!
There are three different game modes: Tour, Challenge, and Arcade. You will want to start with Tour mode, to gain familiarity with the game without added time pressure that you will get in Challenge mode. Your world tour starts off in Tokyo, Japan. And there’s a nice helpful screen that shows you how to play the game. Basically your board consists of a bunch of cards, 5 rows and six columns, with every other column staggered. Your objective is to form a poker hand with at least two cards, and up to five cards. The first poker hands you will try to form are a simple “pair” hand where two cards are the same. You can use as little as two and up to five cards to form a “pair.” On the right side of the screen you’ll see something that looks like a boarding ticket, and a number at the top of the ticket that represents how many “pair” hands you need to make to advance to the next city. As you make the hands, the number will move down, as well as reveal a cute postcard behind the boarding ticket. Also when you make hands, the cards shift down and new ones appear from the top to fill the board again. When you have completed the required number of hands, the postcard will be revealed as well as a paragraph with fun facts about the city.
As you go through cities, you’ll be required to complete different numbers of different types of poker hands. There are five different countries: Japan, France, Australia, Italy, and Fiji. The types of hands get more difficult as you progress, so eventually you will be expected to make 5 “royal flush” hands!
To complicate things, some cards have effects that will hinder you in making the hands you need. The game refers to these effects as “perils.” For example, one of the first perils you will see is that some of your cards look like they are smoking! When a “smoker card” reaches the bottom row, you have to restart the city. Also, cards that are actually on fire (“burner cards”) will spread to other cards and make them “smokers.” Another effect has a timer that when the countdown reaches 0, all cards around it “freeze” and are unusable for a certain period of time. The only way to get rid of these cards is to use them successfully in a hand. That means, the card itself must be part of the combination you are making, so it can’t just be idly thrown in as filler.
To help you along, some cards will have bonuses, which are things like neutralizing perils in a hand, or multiplying your point total for a hand. Also “power-ups” can do things like rearrange your cards in a certain order to help make creating combos easier. You can save up “power-ups” and click on them to use them whenever you want, and they are listed below your postcard/boarding ticket. Frankly points don’t seem to mean much except for getting an expert score in the level (which doesn’t seem to do anything special). To get these bonuses, you have to use the cards in the hand you make, and it doesn’t seem to matter if they are part of the combo or not.
Other bonuses to score extra points involve how you play the hand. You get a “bar bonus” when you create a hand using five cards that are in a straight line (horizontal or vertical), a “successive bonus” for making 4 or more valid hands in a row, and a “multiple ace bonus” for using more than one ace in your hand. Again, this just affects your point total, and only affects if you are going for the “expert” status in that city.
While knowledge of the standard poker hands is helpful, the game does assist you with plenty of help “bubbles.” It might be easier to play if you do know poker hands, especially when some of the game involves timing. But again, there’s plenty of help to guide you along. Pay attention to the popup texts that appear when mousing over cards with different effects, which remind you of their function. In fact, many things on the board can be moused over to help you figure out what they mean.
You’ll notice that in the main menu, you can see your “Travel Case.” These contain all the postcards you’ve obtained, as well as a bunch of “souvenirs.” You get these souvenirs as prizes for making the four top scoring hands in the game in a city: 4 of a kind, straight flush, royal flush, and 5 of a kind (4 of a kind plus a Joker card). So the idea is that you aren’t really constrained to making the hands that you’re required to make – you can make any valid hand to score extra points, and these top four hands to get souvenirs. Other than looking pretty in your travel case, they don’t do much. You can click back through the postcards and see all the factoids as many times as you wish!
Challenge mode is much like Tour mode, except that you are faced with a time limit to create your hands. The good news is that time goes back on the clock every time you make a hand. Another detriment is that you must use five cards to make your hand. And on top of that, if there’s more than one type of hand that you must make to finish the city, you can only make that hand the required number of times. So if you’re required to make 5 two-pair hands and you’ve made 5 already, you won’t be able to make any more two-pair hands during the level.
Arcade mode is an unlimited mode of play where you can start in any of the countries you’ve visited, and make whatever valid hands you want to make. What you’ll see is a tally on the right hand side with different icons representing different hands. Once you make a particular hand, you see some chips fall into that column. Once the chip level gets to the magic top line, you’ll get a random “power-up” to help you along.
I found that saving power-ups as much as possible, rather than using them right away, was the best way to play the game, especially in the more difficult levels when you really need them!
For those who love cards and strategy, and also a fun challenge using the knowledge of poker, this is a great game for you!