Chuzzle Unofficially Hits iPhone and Touch

by Eric March on March 5, 2008 at 9:59 am

Fuzzy Chuzzles… No, your eyes do not deceive you — not entirely, anyway. The popular flash-based Popcap game Chuzzle has been ported to Palm, Symbian and Windows Mobile handhelds by Astraware in the past, but being that the SDK is still a day away and we still don’t even know if they will be on-board, it should probably come as a surprise to see one of their games appear on Apple’s latest darlings — in native form, no less, and not simply as an iZoo theme. In fact, this version was coded by WeiPhone member Hemmy, so it is a completely unofficial and unauthorized conversion — though you would have a hard time telling the difference. Hemmy’s version of Chuzzle is just incredibly detailed, from the graphics to the animations to the sound effects. The only things missing are the Popcap and Astraware logos and it you’d almost never be able to tell them apart. There are a few elements missing (no giant Chuzzles, for example) and the graphics have adapted for the smaller screen, but it’s hard to find fault in this. There are also still a few items left on his to-do list, however, listed here in full (translated from Chinese via Google Translate and my poor attempt at re-conjugation):

Chuzzle (Maomao games) V.1.3 updated version! (Better Chuzzle animation!)
We try to give advice ah ~ ~ ~ ~

Todo:
1: Complete elimination of all Chuzzles (completed!)
2: Locking (has been completed!) (Every level, all locks eliminate the bomb reservations)
3: Add the bomb (completed!) (every time five or more of the same Chuzzles are eliminated)
4: Levels (Completed!)
5: At the start of the game, the calculation should not be more than three or four connected. (Completed!)
6: Add profile.
7: Add points (completed!)
8: Complete the trophy room.
9: Add Chuzzle animation. (Half-completed!)
10: Add sound. (Completed!) (More special sounds to be added)
11: Add high score list.
12: Add sercet mode.

For those unfamiliar, Chuzzle is a variation of the Bejeweled style of gameplay where you must match three or more of the same items in order to eliminate them from the screen. Chuzzle changes the formula here though by allowing you to slide entire columns and rows one or more spaces at a time, and furthermore by allowing matches to occur in any configuration so long as three or more Chuzzles are touching in an adjacent space. Locked Chuzzles will pop up from time to time. These furry demons lock down the column and row that they intersect, preventing you from moving them. These can be eliminated in the usual way, you just have to move the matching Chuzzles to the lock rather than vice-versa. Finally, Chuzzle bombs appear whenever 5 or more Chuzzles of the same colour are eliminated simultaneously. When matched with like-coloured Chuzzles, they will explode, taking out a 3×3 area around them. The original also features giant 2×2, 3×3 and 4×4 Chuzzles, but these do not appear to be present here, and Hemmy doesn’t mention it in his to-do list.

In its current form, the game plays amazingly well, with fast, smooth animation and exceptional graphics. The touch controls are right up this game’s alley, though sometimes it can be difficult for the game to determine whether you’re sliding a row or a column; a very slight desensitization in the touch-and-drag detection routine might help here. This is a minor detail though; overall, this is a highly polished conversion of an extremely addictive casual game and comes highly recommended. An older version is available through the iPhone Cake repository (http://iphonecake.com/src/all/), but the latest version 1.3 is available from its originating Chinese-language thread on the WeiPhone forums. (3.7MB RAR archive in 7 parts) When installing, whether through the iPhone Cake repo or manually by downloading from the linked thread, you must SSH into your device and change the permissions to 755.

Screenshots (click to enlarge)