Review: Spring Up Harmony (Xbox Live Indie)
If you’re a fan of Peggle, you’ll love Spring Up Harmony. It takes the same formula (shoot balls at other balls) but adds some twists and challenges to it that makes it, in my mind, a bit more fun. Instead of trying to clear out certain colored pegs, your goal is to clear out the sparkling Harmony blocks. However, the blocks come in four different colors and can only be knocked down by balls of the same color. So if the Harmony block you need is red, you’ll have to use a red ball to knock it down.
There are thirty stages in total and they get more difficult as you progress through the game. What makes it harder is that you’ve only got a certain amount of time to complete each stage. If you manage to catch the blocks in the reward bucket, you’ll not only earn more points, but precious seconds to continue the stage. Once you’ve knocked down each of the seven Harmony blocks (one for each letter in the word Harmony), the stage ends and you can go onto the next.
Power-ups/downs sometimes reveal themselves after you knock down blocks, each lasting for 20 seconds. The power-ups are green and the power-downs are red. These can range from expanding (or shrinking) the size of the bucket to creating a barrier so you can catch all the blocks to reversing the controls of the bucket and the cannon.
Another great aspect of this game is that it does include a local multiplayer mode. Instead of knocking down Harmony blocks, you and your opponent have to knock down all the blocks of a certain color before your opponent does. The stages are the same as the ones in single player, but it’s fun to be able to include a friend in with it.
You really can’t go wrong with Spring Up Harmony. It’s a good value for a fun game.
