Suttree.com: Casual Games, Social Software by Duncan Gough

In an interview published over on Gamasutra, Director of Business Development at PopCap James Gwertzmam states that

"We’ll make half a dozen prototypes, and pick just one of those to be a hit casual game"

Which isn’t telling us anything new, but it is nice to read it again and use it to justify all those game prototypes that never made it. Game play, and the essence of fun, is pretty hard to nail. Rapid protyping is the best way to rattle through a number of game types until you find one that is fun. It’s like taking a sledgehammer to an eggshell but it does work. No doubt the process is made much easier thanks to the PopCap framework too - just work on the game rules, not the engine, the audio, the rendering. You can worry about that stuff once the game has proven to be fun to play.

Pop Pirates has no problems when it comes to fun. Part of the Protokid website, where there are plenty of solid games on offer.

Pop Pirates plays out like a Galaga clone. The theme makes it stand out from most other clone games as the plot has taken hold in a nice and simple way. In Pop Pirates, you’re a Protokid whose computer has been infected with a virus, stealing all of your music files. Getting them back is as simple as shooting up the bad guys. Which is where the cleverest twist in the game pops up. Throughout, the game art is top quality and the game files look suitably gamey and realistic at the same time, which is no mean feat. The music files, which add an element of coin-collection to the standard shmup fare, are released and float around with a timer attached to them, decreasing in value the longer you leave them uncollected.

It’s a simple trick but not what that I’ve seen used so intuitively before. It also goes a long way to solving the problem that Raiden X had, where the player becomes so powerful that nothing can kill him thanks to the vast array of special-effects heavy weapons. With the timer-based music files in Pop Pirates, the player is forced to dive around the screen to collect the items and increase their score.

On reflection, Pop Pirates is more of a blend of Sonic and Galaga than a straight clone and the game play is all the better for it. There are a few genres that work really well as online casual games and the two main ingredients of Sonic - coin collecting and speed, are ones that have not been used enough. The real strength of Pop Pirates is this clever turn on the idea of coin collection.