PopCap explains why Peggle Mobile will be a 'deeply satisfying experience'

PopCap's Pachinko-meets-Breakout game Peggle is probably the most extravagant of all the casual PC titles: frankly the bigger the screen you play on, the better it is. So the news it's making its way onto mobile - indeed is out any day now - piqued our interest. Of course, the size of the screen isn't the only issue (as demonstrated by the excellent iPod version), but dealing with 217 versions of Java, a multitude of controls and a small screen? That's should be a real challenge for PopCap's notoriously quality-obsessed game makers.

So we caught up with Viktorya Hollings, PopCap's senior director of mobile games, to find out how the Peggle Mobile development process had gone.

Viktorya Hollings: PopCap spends a lot of time working on new platform builds of games to ensure a deeply satisfying player experience. That, and the fact that Peggle converts amazingly well to portable devices - as evidenced by its success on iPod - gives Peggle a headstart. Also, since the original Peggle PC game really only uses left and right aiming, this simple control scheme is perfect for mobile phones.

But the three biggest challenges we had to face were: squeezing each of the 55 levels into the game; recreating the peg layouts; and making sure the movement of the ball was accurate and smooth. The physics of the ball, in particular, also took some time to get just right. We worked directly with the original developers to ensure it was faithful to the PC version.

This was extremely important as much of the fun in Peggle comes from watching the ball smoothly bounce around the screen, setting off special effects as it goes. A slow frame rate, stuttering screen updates or just plain weird ball behaviour would have damaged the whole experience.

What's exciting for PopCap is the idea that anyone can play Peggle anywhere, anytime and that's why our multiplatform ambition is important. It's about making the game as accessible as possible to potential players.

In terms of the technical aspects, it's never a case of simply porting a game for a new platform though. We work hard to ensure a particular game is as good as it can possibly be for any given platform. For Peggle Mobile, our artists and engineers did a fantastic job in bringing the great physics engine, smooth animations and great art to the phone so the experience is as exciting and satisfying as the PC experience. In fact, I think I may actually prefer the mobile game and find myself talking at my phone rather than into at times, willing the Peggle ball to hit that one last orange peg!

PopCap starts with the PC/Mac games, so when porting to the iPhone we can leverage the higher resolution art for the bigger iPhone screen. Our creative guys also have tons of ideas on how to really take advantage of the iPhone capabilities such as touchscreen, accelerometer, connectedness etc to adapt the game to best use the device.

At this point, we're concentrating on our PC being the lead platform for development of future games but we are starting to explore new game modes and other creative things that would be exclusive to mobile.

Thanks to Viktorya for her time.