Today United Developers subsidiary MacPlay announced that the first games in its new Value Series are finished and have been released to manufacturing. MacPlay announced the new low-price series last month, and plans to release 12 games initially as part of the new collection, with new games arriving each quarter.
The first in MacPlay’s series of under-US$20 games is a collaboration with PopCap Games — a pair of fast-paced puzzlers called Bejeweled and Alchemy. The Mac conversion of the games is done — they’ve gone gold master — and the games will soon be on store shelves.
In Bejeweled, players must match gems vertically or horizontally at least three in a row. Doing so enables you to collect points and cause the gems to vanish, making more fall into place. Alchemy is a tricky puzzle game in which you must transmute worthless metals to gold by match runic symbols or their colors together. Make a horizontal or vertical line, and complete the transmutation.
PopCap Games has versions of these titles available for online play through Java-enables Web browsers, but MacPlay noted that the Mac versions sport new features, new sound effects and music, new game modes and high-resolution graphics.
MacPlay director of sales and marketing Henry Price said that even if you’ve played these games before on another platform, you’ll still want to own them on your Mac. “The games are so addictive you will want a copy for every machine you own,” said Price.
System requirements call for a G3/233MHz or faster, 64MB RAM (128MB for OS X), Mac OS 8.6 or higher, or Mac OS X 10.1 or later.
Look for Bejeweled and Alchemy to hit store shelves soon as a bundle priced at US$19.99. You can also buy the bundle at MacPlay’s online store.