“Astro Pop Deluxe” is another edition of the Astro Pop series. Is another puzzle game but with a little twist. The basic idea is to create matches of colored bricks on a board, but instead of doing that by swapping the bricks – like in regulars puzzle games - this game has a little twist: you have to drop a brick you choose and when you have it on your hands you have to throw it up again, of course in the correct place to create a match.
The basic layout of the game is a manned space ship – you’ll be the pilot - standing at the base of the screen, and an arrangement of bricks of different colors, coming down from above. With your mouse you can move sideways, and a beam of light indicates which brick you’re going to pick up if you click your mouse button. Once you have the brick with you, again you can move to the correct spot and throw it up by clicking again. If you create a match, all the bricks involved will be collected and measured on the brick-o-meter. When the bricks of the match disappear from the arrangement, the bricks around them rearrange. If a new match occurs, a chain reaction is triggered.
When you have collected enough bricks, according to the brick-o-meter, you’ll be passing the level.
When you first enter the game, you’ll be asked for a player name and see the welcome screen with the following options:
- Change Player: after you create one or more players, they’ll be saved. When you enter into this submenu, you’ll be asked for a name as a new player. It’s possible to have a list of different players and record their performance. This way, you can play home tournaments with family and friends.
- Classic Game: it leads you to a submenu in which you can choose the pilot you want to be, among the options available. Then, you’ll be seeing the instructions, and finally you start playing.
- Survival Game: this is another mode to play. Here, you don’t pass levels. Instead, you have to stay alive as much as you can, preventing the bricks to fall down on you.
- Options: this is the menu from which you can get some help and set some game options, like sound volume, music volume, full color, and full screen.
- Help: to see the instructions and rules to play the game.
- Hall of Fame: to see the highest records achieved by the players.
- Quit game: no further explanation required.
When you’re playing the game, you can always click on the Menu button to access to a pop-up menu with all the options on the “Options” menu commented before, plus the following:
- Resume game: to finish the current game.
- Options: to set the options commented before.
- Help: to see help information.
- Main Menu: to abandon the game and go back to the main menu.
You can try this game for 60 minutes before you buy the licensed version. If you like it, you can buy this game for only 19.95 dollars, right from the Oberon Media Game Center, on the Web.
About the system requirements, is not that big computer that you need to run this game. Take a look to the list:
• Windows 2000,Windows 98,Windows ME,Windows XP
• Processor: P-350
• Memory: 128 MB RAM
• DirectX: 7.0
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