- The charismatic Gamezebo has posted a piece on the making of PopCap's pachinko-like PC casual game Peggle, explaining how the rather addictive title was originally designed, in a 'Behind The Scenes' piece.

Something I appreciate is that PopCap does seem to be moving on from what I'd describe as the 'suspect concept-borrowing' of its early rise to power. They're thinking about how to make innovative casual games - most recently the entertaining Bookworm Adventures and Peggle itself - and are definitely assuming the mantle of one of the thought leaders in casual games.

This piece is also notable for a super-lengthy, perceptive comment from co-designer Brian Rothstein on his view of Peggle's design: "There were basically only two versions of the game. The first version was the one where you would aim and fire multiple balls at once and try to get the balls into holes worth various amounts of points... I proposed making some of the pegs orange instead of blue and then making the goal of the level to clear all of the orange pegs [using just one ball at a time]... This new level was very fun and replayable and I turned to Sukhbir and said tentatively, "What if this were the game?""