Pengupop vs. Snood
Snood has been a longtime favourite here at thriftmac headquarters, going back to at least the mid-‘90s. So you can imagine that we have never considered the thriftmac collection to be complete without a freeware equivalent of this game.
It has always seemed to us that it should be fairly easy to create a Snood-like clone. You have a little shooter at the bottom that places various shapes inside a grid above. Get three or more of the same touching each other, and they fall down. Clear them all off before they advance to the bottom and you win.
So we got a little bit excited when we stumbled across a game called Pengupop. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for our high hopes to be turned into disappointment.
The first thing I noticed was that the download size, at 4.5 MB, was more than twice as big as those for the Windows and Linux versions. I not sure why, but this always makes me suspicious about the coding bloat used to create a Mac version of what was likely originally a Windows game. But what the hey — in these days of broadband connections, it’s not that big a deal.
So I get the game on the desktop and guess what? It’s a generic icon! I took this to be a bad omen. How much effort did they put into the Mac version anyway?
Fortunately, the actual game graphics, while not as sharp as you might like, are for the most part pretty good. The penguin mascot is cute, and the shooter and the orbs have a fair bit of polish to them. And — just like with Snood — you clear the orbs by grouping three or more.
But then come the nagging shortcomings. The field of play isn’t as wide as the one in Snood, so there is less challenge to clearing it. You have to use the arrow keys (rather than the mouse) to aim the shooter, which wouldn’t be so bad except that the shooter isn’t exactly a precision instrument. It seems impossible to get those orbs just where you want them.
In the end, it looks like our search for the Holy Grail of a free version of Snood will have to continue. We can’t really recommend Pengupop as a Snood alternative, although it might be fun for the kids to play with.
If you’re still thinking you might like to try Pengupop, get it here. If you don’t mind shelling out $20, get the venerable Snood over here. They’ve actually got version 4 in beta.
Posted Saturday, February 16, 2008 in Reviews
Comments are open
Previous: BirthdayBook 5.0
Next: A freeware wiki
