Why Peggle Works (A Short Game Analysis)
Hello guys,
As a student at DigiPen, we write analysis reports on several games that include how they work and why they work. We decided to post them here. If you like it, we will post more. Thanks!
Peggle is a game for PC, Mobile, and Xbox 360. The objective of the game is to hit all the red pegs on the screen with a limited number of balls. The visual aesthetics of the game is designed to be friendly to a wide range of people with the innocent looking animals and calm orchestral soundtrack. But when you get into the game and understand the mechanics and the power-ups, the experience becomes similar to the thrill of gambling. Peggle starts with a very subtle music and friendly graphics like a unicorn to greet you. Once you skip over the paragraphs of text, you are brought into a room full of pegs and told to take out all the red ones. The music begins to play and calms the player down to enjoy the game with zen like appeal. There is quite a lot of things going on the screen and can be confusing at first, but the user interface of the actual game is quite simple. This is most likely due to the developer realizing part of what makes this game addicting is the simplistic nature of it.
There is a unicorn on the top of the screen with a ball cannon indicating that it is used to shoot the balls at pegs. When you hover your mouse over the game, there is a signifier arrow pointing towards the mouse, affording for you to click the mouse and launch a ball in that direction. The ball will fire the direction the mouse was clicked and bounce off the pegs until it reaches the bottom of the screen. Every time the ball hits a peg, there is feedback that plays a sound and prints a number indicating how many points you are earning. There is a hole on the bottom of the screen that moves left to right and if the ball falls in the hole, you get a free ball. When that moment happens, you get this excited feeling and when you are running low on balls, this feeling is even more engaging. Due to the digital and simplistic nature of the game, it does not afford much other to click and shoot the balls at the begs, and the menu button affords clicking if the player wishes to go to the menu.
The long term heuristics of the player is to try and eliminate all the red pegs using the least amount of balls as possible and get as many points as possible. The short term heuristics, however, may be for the player to collect the power-ups and the score multipliers. These have their own set of feedback, which is usually a flare and a word or two explaining what the power-up does. This provides a reward for the player and gives them excitement. The heuristics seem to not change, but going back and forth between short term and long term appears to be common. The heuristic of either eliminate the red pegs with the least amount of balls or to score the most points seem to be directly opposed, being that scoring the most points most likely is achieved my using all the balls you can to knock out all the pegs you can, while still trying to hit all the red pegs. This heuristic is most likely not for beginners as they are new to the game, but could be the heuristic for someone who has experience and is trying to raise the difficulty and risk of taking out more pegs and not prioritizing the removal of red pegs.
Later in the game you are given power-ups that range from helpful to the worst idea for a power-up of all time. I got through three stages in my playthrough, so there was a power-up that gives you an indicator telling you where the ball will bounce after it ricochets off the first peg. The other one doubled the amount of balls spawned when the ball collides with that peg. The final one, that is extremely unhelpful, was the triangle power-up, which creates a slanted wall next to the hole on the bottom of the screen, which causes the ball to roll away from the hole when it collides with it, and it could be very frustrating to the player.
When you hit the final red peg, the speed is reduced, the camera zooms in, epic orchestral music plays, and excessive particle effects spawn as the ball hits that final peg and continues as it hits more pegs for extra points and finally falls to the ground, which offers bonus points based on where the ball lands. When this happens, the psychological feeling of accomplishment hits the player and is the reason why this game is so addicting. Humans like exciting music, shiny lights and particles, and the feeling of winning extra points and that feedback is what keeps players coming back and sometimes playing for hours at a time while wondering where the time has gone. Once the game got more difficult and you understand how the game is supposed to be played, the experience changes to intriguing to addicting. The sounds and the visuals of the game when you use that final ball to barely hit that peg and score the bonus 100,000 are extremely rewarding and push you to keep playing over and over to keep getting rewarded. Those moments when you score, and the music volume and intensity turns up, and particle systems and flashes go off as you see your ball bounce around and you hope that it bounces in the 100,000 score spot. Those moments of excitement bring the player back over and over and creates an addicting experience and is probably why it is so successful.