When I switched to Linux, Peggle was one of the first games that I wanted to test. PopCap Games used to be my favourite video game developer, and I'm excited to start playing through their games again. When I was a kid, all of PopCap's games got me through some tough times. They're simple, had free versions, and the deluxe editions were perfect gifts for my hard-to-buy-for status that my family had labelled me with. I never played Peggle until EA re-released the game on iOS, but it was a welcome addition to my love of PopCap, even after EA ruined the company.

I'm not coming into this game blind, but I am playing it in a more controlled setting, rather than on my phone from time to time. It has that classic PopCap feel that all of their games have. They did such a great job at reusing assets between all their games. Typically, people look down on things like that, but when you're a small studio doing your best, you try your hardest. I feel they had a great compromise here.

Starting with the adventure mode, you're dropped right into the game. It's a very simple concept, and they make learning the nuances of the game fun. As you go through, you meet all the unique characters, their backstory, and what their special talent is. Each character has their own power-up, and the levels are themed around their specific power-up. Adventure mode ended up being a pretty short experience, but short & sweet would be a perfect way to describe it. You play through ten stages, with five levels in each stage. The design of the levels is quite nice, and gets progressively harder as you go through them. The entire game has a very nice vibe to it; a wholesome little experience.

After completing the adventure mode, that opens up the main challenge and completionist portion of the game, aptly named: "Challenge Mode". In this mode, you'll have to complete tasks, such as: getting a certain score on a level, to hitting all the pegs, to beating a certain number of levels with only a certain number of balls. I found they mostly boiled down to RNG. There is some skill involved in Peggle, but most of the game is going to come down to you getting lucky. Almost all the challenges felt this way to me.

It's a fun way to kill some time if you have nothing else, or you're between large games. There isn't going to be much to digest here, so it can be a good pallet clenser. There is a large amount of RNG, and little strategy online as to how to get better, so I recommend following your gut instinct.

Absolutely add this to your completionist backlog. Peggle is an incredibly fun experience, even if you decide to beat the game instead of completing it. The challenges in this game make the completionist goal worth it, even if they don't give you anything for doing so. It's a very wholesome, yet challenging experience. The original PC version was much better than the mobile game, which has since been removed from the app store anyway.

Completed!