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A new update to the pop-pop progress logs has been posted this morning by developer Andrew Campbell, giving a rundown on how this Ambrosia Software title is progressing. While the game has been in development for a number of years, the list of major fixes and things to-do is decreasing rapidly. Campbell expects beta 10 to be the last until they move on to the Final Candidate stage.

The gameplay for pop-pop's received polishing in this last update, with Campbell focusing efforts on both bettering the game's AI as well as adding levels for the multiplayer 'puzzle' mode. Here's a clip from the log:

The big news for b10 is a simple but very important tweak to gameplay. I changed one little rule one little bit and a fun game became very much more fun. You'll never know how improved the game is because you never had to suffer through magnet hell - but when you do play you'll hit the ball a little harder and feel just that much better for it.

I also directed some energy towards two parts of the game that often get overlooked because net play is so fun. Part One is the versus combat ai. Until this release it was rather pathetic and it didnt really know the rules. Now it provides a challenge for even the best testers (though they certainly wouldnt admit that).

Part Two is puzzle mode. You can play pop as a head to head battle game where you clear the bricks from your own board and stuff them down your opponents throat as fast as you can - or you can play puzzle mode, which requires great finesse and deftness of touch. Puzzle mode is simple and fun but it has suffered from having too few levels to play. This release I added 150 new levels and implemented a system so that I could release more puzzle packs in the future. Much better.

IMG Preview of pop-pop

pop-pop Progress Logs

Pop-Pop

Ambrosia Software

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