Chuzzle Review

Well here I am about to break from the norm for my reviews and dip into the relaxing waters of the world of casual gaming. Now casual games have been around in some form, albeit flash based web games to occupy the workforce while they pretend to be working on their spreadsheets, to the mundane Solitaire that's bundled with Windows.

Now I'm presented with Chuzzle from PopCap Games, a company who has pretty much risen to become the leading developer and publisher of casual games, whose flagship title Bejeweled has sold more than 10 million units across several platforms including PC and Xbox 360.

Now Chuzzles are akin to those little rubber Koosh balls that we all had as a child back in the late 80's to early 90's, and appear in a 6x6 grid, the goal is to move the Chuzzles in this grid so that you may arrange a chain of 3 or more Chuzzles to score points and fill up the Chuzzle bottle on the left hand side of the screen, once this bottle has been filled then you may progress to the next level.

The Chuzzles themselves are moved by dragging rows and columns as the line of Chuzzles is able to wrap around as you drag your line off the grid, in your attempts to chain your Chuzzles, once you have a chain complete the Chuzzles explode with the remaining Chuzzles falling via the grace of gravity with new Chuzzles appearing from above to keep your grid topped up.

The game itself is presented well as everything is brightly coloured with cheerful, yet slightly annoying, music and everything is easy to navigate so that players of all ages should be able to pick up the game quite quickly. The Chuzzles themselves are in a variety of colours and it is these colours which you have to chain up to score points, though the thoughtful chaps at PopCap Games have also added an option for those who are colour blind so not only are the Chuzzles colourful but will also appear with a symbol on them too making this game accessible to nearly everyone.

Along with your bog standard colourful Chuzzles you are also presented with some special friends too, the fat Chuzzle is one that occupies the space of four normal Chuzzles and will move 2 rows or columns whilst being dragged. Then we have the super Chuzzle, this fellow appears after you have formed a group of five or more Chuzzles to be exploded at once, this new Chuzzle will appear on the grid with a flashing ring, once you have chained this fellow, all adjacent Chuzzles will explode along with the super Chuzzle. Finally we have the rainbow Chuzzle, this fellow does not have any super abilities or take up extra space, they are merely there to offer bonus points if you manage to chain these Chuzzles together.

Throughout the game you will probably unlock various trophies such as "Speed Master" for clearing two levels within the Speed Chuzzle mode without getting a lock, a lock being 1 Chuzzle locked into place therefore that row or column is unable to be dragged, to a "Chuzzbomber" for exploding 1,000 super Chuzzles throughout your play time.

The game contains four game modes to occupy your time. Classic mode is your basic game where the difficulty and frequency of locks increases over time. Speed mode is a race against the clock, you have a bar at the bottom of your grid, as this fills up you are penalised with a lock, chaining your Chuzzles clears the bar from the time that has already been accumulated, so the quicker you are able to chain, the less likely you are to receive a lock. Zen mode is the basic game but without any restrictions or penalties, it is purely you and the Chuzzles, so you may take as much time as possible to rack up a high score.

Finally Mind Bender mode, this deviates from the main game and offers you the same 6x6 grid but with only 2 different coloured Chuzzles, the aim here is to replicate the picture that is on the left hand side of the screen, similar style of play to those sliding jigsaw puzzles, so that you can progress to the next puzzle and onto harder difficulties.

Now I'm not one for casual games really, but their purpose has provided millions of players' hours of joy through their simplistic, yet addictive, design and presentation, while through my time playing the game for this review I can safely say that I have been entertained by the wonderful world of the Chuzzle.