PopCap Games, makers of Bejeweled and Alchemy, have announced a partnership with Mac OS X software developers The Omni Group to produce new Mac OS X-native versions of their games.
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The Omni Group may be best known to Mac users for their efforts with Mac OS X native software like OmniWeb, but the company is also an accomplished Mac game conversion studio with a number of MacPlay-published titles under its belt like Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix.
PopCap Games is a popular developer of online casual games — mainly arcade-style puzzle titles. The company has previously collaborated with MacPlay to produce a Mac-compatible version of Bejeweled and Alchemy that can be played offline; the games were Carbonized, combined earlier this year and sold as the first title in MacPlay’s budget-priced Value Series line.
The new arrangement between PopCap Games and The Omni Group has already yielded Cocoa conversions of PopCap’s Bejeweled Deluxe and Alchemy Deluxe. In fact, Alchemy Deluxe is available as a free download for fully registered members of Apple’s .Mac service — a US$5 discount is also available to them for Bejeweled Deluxe. These versions are apparently a bit different than the Carbonized versions of Bejeweled and Alchemy available as part of MacPlay’s Value Series collection, published earlier this year.
In Bejeweled Deluxe, players swap gems on a board to align at least three of them in a horizontal or vertical row, collecting points and making the collection vanish as other gems fill the gap. Alchemy Deluxe turns the old concept of transmuting lead into gold into a tricky puzzle game — players put magical runes of different shapes and colors on a grid-like playing field to attain the conversion. Once the field has been changed into gold you proceed to the next level.
If you’re not a .Mac user, you can purchase and download the games for $19.95 each from PopCap’s Web site. Trial versions are available for free play from PopCap’s Web site. Both games require a G3/400 or better running Mac OS X 10.1 or later.