Wizard's Pen
Thankfully not a euphemism.
SEATTLE, Washington – September 25, 2008 — PopCap Games, the leading developer and publisher of casual games, today announced that its PopCap® Chicago Studio has launched Wizard’s Pen™, an all-new “hidden object/puzzle” game for the PC. Wizard’s Pen is a unique departure from traditional hidden object (aka “seek and solve” or “seek and find”) games, challenging players to identify an object through fragments or “layers” of a picture that are revealed in various ways using a magic pen – in effect, unveiling hidden items rather than spotting them in existing scenes. Wizard’s Pen carries a retail price of US$19.99, and a free trial of the PC game is available now for download at www.spintop-games.com. The game will also be available on other leading game portals, including PopCap.com, RealArcade.com, MSN Games and Yahoo! Games, and will be available worldwide in eight languages, later this month.
“We’re big fans of the hidden object category of casual games, and wanted to see if we could innovate on the traditional mechanic by giving the player total control over the ‘reveal’ of each object,” explained Mike Boeh, lead designer of Wizard’s Pen and general manager of the PopCap Chicago Studio. “So Wizard’s Pen features classic hidden object scenes along with hundreds of individual objects that must be identified while slowly being exposed click-by-click. ‘Seeing the invisible’ is the ultimate goal.”
In Wizard’s Pen, you play the apprentice to a crafty conjurer who has mysteriously vanished and your only hope for finding him is through his trusty workbook. But all the pages are blank, and you must use the wizard’s magical pen to uncover their hidden images piece by piece as you try to guess what’s in each picture. There are over 400 pages of secret items to discover, along with 16 missing object mini-challenges, seven unlockable mini-games, magic potions to augment your powers of perception, and the wizard’s secret sketchbooks to unlock!
Key features of Wizard’s Pen include:
• Over 400 items to reveal and guess
• “Missing Object” pen-powered puzzles in 16 mini challenges
• 7 Unlockable mini-games like “Mosaic” to test your skills
• 10 Magic Potions with various perception-pumping powers
• Unlockable Secret Sketchbooks for even more wizardly fun
• Lushly rendered scenes of strategic sorcery-solving throughout
• Mystical music and auguring audio effects
About PopCap
PopCap Games ( www.popcap.com) is the leading multi-platform provider of “casual games” — fun, easy-to-learn, captivating computer games that appeal to everyone from age 6 to 106. Based in Seattle, Washington, PopCap was founded in 2000 and has a worldwide staff of over 200 people in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Vancouver, B.C., Dublin, Ireland and Shanghai. Its games have been downloaded more than 1 billion times by consumers worldwide, and its flagship title, Bejeweled®, has sold more than 25 million units across all platforms. Constantly acclaimed by consumers and critics, PopCap’s games are played on the Web, desktop computers, myriad mobile devices (cell phones, smartphones, PDAs, Pocket PCs, iPod, iPhone and more), popular game consoles (such as Xbox), and in-flight entertainment systems. PopCap is the only casual games developer with leading market share across all major sales channels, including Web portals, retail stores, consoles, mobile phones and MP3 players.
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PR Contacts:
North America:
Garth Chouteau
garth@popcap.com
415-602-8147
International:
Cathy Orr
corr@popcap.com
+ 353 1 646 8107