Purble Place

A Review of Purble Place

Did you know that a basic Windows PC comes pre-installed with a lot of different games you can play? Many PC users know all about games like solitaire, spades and checkers, but the games actually go far beyond those basic offerings. For Windows Vista, 7 and 8, you can also play a game on your PC called Purble Place, and it comes pre-installed on those operating systems. The game has gained so much popularity in recent years that it has become an independent download that millions of users have downloaded on different versions of operating systems.

It's hard to define Purble Place succinctly. Imagine a game like earlier versions of The Sims, yet really toned down to a much narrower focus, without the great graphics to keep you enthralled. However, what Purble Place lacks in graphics, it more than makes up for with fun activities. It has been described by many reviewers as a "busywork" game, meaning that it's something a lot of people play in order to just stave off boredom. Overall, the game is pretty highly rated, with an aggregate score of 4 out of 5, and it remains a popular PC offering even after all these years (2007, original release).

What Purble Place Is

Purble Place is a unique sort of Windows game that acts more or less like a collection of games in one program. It's a single-player game, so you cannot connect to the Internet and play with other Windows users like you can with PC spades and checkers. It was created by Oberon Games and has three games inside of it that are considered to be "casual" games. You can think of the gaming style more like a popular mobile game, such as Candy Crush or Angry Birds. The game is also targeted specifically to younger players, so it doesn't feature any sort of adult themes or scenarios.

The games themselves deal with three different skill-sets: Coordination, memory, and deductive skills. It's a game targeted to kids, but most of the Purble Place players are historically adults who enjoy these sorts of games. This is because the levels are set up to become a lot more challenging as they go by. So, by the time an adult has cleared the first few levels, the difficulty level of the games does increase significantly.

The game was initially released pre-installed on Windows Vista in 2007. However, Windows knew that other people might want to play it on older operating systems, and so a standalone download version of the game was created to work with Windows XP. After this point, the game was patched and updated many times in order to work with newer Windows operating systems.

Purble Place is absolutely free to download and play. Unlike so many current games on today's market, there isn't a special "game within the game" that requires you to purchase any additional items. So, it's not a "micro-transactions" game; you can play it for free on any Windows OS dating back to XP.

How Purble Place Works

One of the coolest things about Purble Place as a PC game is that there really isn't any learning curve whatsoever. Everything is self-explanatory, as it was made for school-aged kids to play. It's not even as difficult as classic PC kids' games like Oregon Trail. Upon opening up the game, you're going to see the main menu. This menu is very easy to read because it only has three options. These options are the games that it offers you. You will see a section to choose from featuring Purble Shop, Comfy Cakes, and Purble Pairs. Simply choose which game you'd like to play and get started.

The first game is Purble Pair. This is essentially the memory game of the trio, listed as a "Pattern recognition" game. Essentially, it's a slightly updated take on the classic "Match-two" games from the 1980s, where the goal is to match two cards from a field. What happens here is that you're going to see your screen covered with a grid of cards. All of these cards will be face-down, with identical backs facing you. This is self-explanatory for most people; you simply turn over cards, one at a time, attempting to remember each card's location. You keep going until you match every pair on the grid.

As you complete a game, you'll go from 5x5, to 6x6, and then finally to 8x8 grids of cards. One cool option you have in these games is the "Sneak Peak" feature, which you can use if you're really stuck on a match and need to clear a level.

Comfy Cakes is the second game on the list, and the most popular by far. This is a game that will really test your hand-eye coordination. Basically, you control a bakery in this game, and you have to assemble cakes to perfectly match orders you receive. At first, these are very simple orders, with only a couple of steps to complete. As time goes by, of course these orders increase in difficulty, and you're going to have to make more complex, multi-layered cakes without messing up. The goal here is to match the order exactly. This might sound easy, but it's actually quite challenging to keep the coordination necessary to match up to the orders perfectly.

Purble Shop, the last game offered in the trio, is a mathematics game. It's listed as a "code-breaker" game, but it's not as difficult as you might think, at least not for the first few levels. It's a bit complex to explain in text, but pretty easy when played in person. Basically, you will have five separate features to match: Eyes, two clothing items, a nose and a hat. The game doesn't display them to you, so you have to figure out what they are. You have to use math skills to figure out the correct color of these items from a range of colors presented. In other words, it's a math puzzle game, where you're going to have to match these colors using different possible moves. It's like a 3D version of Sudoku in many ways.

All of these games were initially designed for younger kids and teenagers, but they all also feature intermediate and advanced levels. That's what makes them so popular for adults to play. They can be really challenging games.

The Features of Purble Place

In terms of the different features of Purble Place, there isn't a whole lot to speak of apart from the three games offered. Therefore, you have to look inside the games themselves to discuss and understand the different features.

Overall, this game features decent graphics for the time period when it came out. It hasn't been updated much graphically since 2007, though the graphics hold up, mainly because there's nothing really complex about the game. It's all about colors and simple geometric designs, and so the graphics end up looking just fine. Add in the fact that you're not playing with actual characters, but instead images of cakes and cards, and you have a game that features decent graphics for what it is. Plus, you have to consider that this game isn't taxing to your graphics processing card in any way, and so it works very well if you have basic onboard graphics via the motherboard, and not a standalone GPU.

Another feature that's very decent for the type of game it is would be the difficulty levels that you can customize. This is a game that you can play with your kids. You can set their difficulty level on the lowest setting, while changing it to a higher setting when you want to play. This is a quick and easy feature that has a lot of utility.

Other than a very user-friendly control panel, there are no other features to speak about with Purble Place. It's set up as a very "bare bones" style of game that's all about completing different levels and achieving the best possible score.

Is Purble Place Worth It?

Aggregating the reviews to see what people think about the Purble Place game, it scores a solid 4 out of 5, which is higher than some huge releases that will cost you a lot of money to download. For Purble Place, you will not have to pay a single penny to enjoy this game. If you have Vista, 7 or 8, then you already have this game and just might not know it. If you have XP, 10 or 11, then you can download this game for free. It's very easy to install, and it opens smoothly and is ready to play. This is because the game is very lightweight and carries no real footprint at all. It's a game that can be played on everything from an old and slow laptop to a fast gaming desktop PC.

So, in that sense, it might be worth it to download, just so you'll always have it around if you're ever bored and want to kill some time playing a simple game. That's the thing about Purble Place: it really is a very simplistic game. For adults, it might not have much utility at all, unless you decide that you want to challenge your memory or test your math skills for something to do.

If you have children, however, then this is definitely a game you might want to try out. For starters, it's a very wholesome game and you will not have to worry about any sort of foul language or adult themes. In fact, this game doesn't even have a musical soundtrack, and there is no story. So there's nothing to worry about if your kids want to play this game. It also has some educational utilities. Your children can work on improving their memory skills, their math skills, and their hand-eye coordination. There aren't many free PC games that offer that for kids these days. That alone might be enough of a reason for you to download this game.

Pros and Cons of Purble Place

Pros of Purble Place

• A free game to download and play
• Entertaining for kids and adults alike
• A great game to help people improve key cognitive skills
• The puzzles can be very challenging, and they increase in difficulty
• Runs very well, even if your PC isn't that great

Cons of Purble Place

• No sort of music soundtrack with the game
• Only offers the same set of levels, over and over again
• The graphics aren't all that great for a PC game
• Only single-player mode available