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JollyPop’s BoOMle Puzzler Shows Promise

A new iPhone developer JollyPop has publicly posted a preview for their upcoming puzzle game called BoOMle. JollyPop was formed only two months ago and is working on offering “the fun of oldskool and experimental games, well designed and fully polished for your maximum pleasure from gaming."

A video preview of their first title, BoOMle, shows they are really taking advantage of the iPhone as a gaming platform. The gamplay is described:

It’s a bit like Bejeweled or Diamond Twister, in that you line up matching colors, but instead of moving gems horizontally or vertically one square at a time, you draw the matches with your finger to remove them from the playfield. Various powerups help you along. Throw in a similar feature in Aurora Feint’s where when you tilt the screen, the critters move in that direction, adding an extra element of strategy to the mix. 

While match-the-color puzzlers are commonplace amongst mobile games, what struck us about this title is the degree to which it jumps beyond the normal boundaries of what’s a typical puzzler. The use of Open GL allows for fully scalable graphics and special attention appears to have been placed on iPhone-specific features. The game appears to use the iPhone’s accelerometer as well as full advantage of the touch-screen as well.

Now, of course, the quality of a game is more than the sum of its parts, but we are certainly looking forward to games like this which are designed specifically with the iPhone in mind. BoOMle is due for release in late summer 2008.

Additional features as described by the developer:

  • Game is writen in OpenGL – 3D space allows you intuitive zooming with only one touch.
  • We developed special animating engine which allows us animate everything. The level in preview is runing up to 500 animations every frame.
  • Every boomle interact with yours touches.
  • Game has build in physical engine – that allows us better response and interaction with real world.
  • Several game enviroments with special bonuses which will influence gameplay
  • We expect 4 gameplay modes and up to 100 original puzzles + infinite or random levels
  • Online scoring, original soundtrack
  • We want to distribute the game with 7+ language translations