Giveaway of the Day - Circus Pomché

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Installation:

The game downloads to a 107 MB zip file that unpacks to a read me with the terms and conditions plus a dual activation and setup module (the orange icon with the key symbol) Click on the module to install and register the game. to those new to the game giveaway project, basically this means that once the game has installed the game is activated.

The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed during the installation wizard. The C drive may be different depending upon if you have more than one hard drive installed and whether your OS is installed to the C drive or a different one like mine (which is the F drive):

C:\Games\Circus Pomche

There is no shortcut installed to either the desktop or the start menu/programs list. Also there’s no uninstaller. There is no significant registry files installed so to uninstall the game all you need to do is delete the games installed folder. You can create your own shortcut by following the path detailed above and opening the games folder then right clicking on the executable and select the option from the drop down menu that sends a shortcut to the desktop. you can also create one for the start menu programs list if you wish. to do this you need to find the start menu folder that’s located for Vista and Win 7 within your profiles folder in the AppData folder (which is a hidden folder), or in XP in the Documents and Settings folder . To find it in Win 7 or vista is a little more complex than it used to be, but it’s useful to know if you like to rearrange your programs list, especially if it’s become very large. you can find it via the following path. Because it’s located within a hidden folder you will need to go to the Control Panel and find folder options, then change folders to not hidden:

Start Menu > Profile Name > AppData > Roaming > Microsoft > Windows > Start Menu > Programs

Introduction:

The developers of Circus Pompché call this an out of the box puzzle game. That will keep you glued to the screen. as you tumble your way through loads of hearty levels. Enjoy the unique experience as you follow the protagonist Mr Pomché on his quest to save the life of a helpless soul. It’s all about skill, wisdom and a whole lot of fun. And it doesn’t stop there; challenge your friends and family to see who can ‘Beat the Best’.

During this quest he encounters thirty levels of puzzles in a tropical African setting. The game was released by Bash Games out of South Africa for Windows.

Reference accessed HERE January 20th 2012

The Game:

There is no options so you can’t change the game to a windowed mode. To turn off the music you have to toggle all sounds off via the button to the top right of the main menu. There are five different regions to explore. In the first region there are 15 levels to explore. I’ve not had time to get to the end of the first stage yet so can’t confirm that each stage has 15 levels, but assuming they do there will be 75 levels in total.
On each level you get a bunch of blocks which you have to manoeuvre in such a way, as to construct a target shape. The target shape is shown as you play the level. The blocks have restrictions as to how and where they can move this will be indicated by a no entry sign, which determines the difficulty of the levels, along with other elements which can hinder or assist you on your journey through the story of Pomché.

Video’s of Gameplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU74YehThFg

Conclusion:

This is a nice little puzzle game vaguely on the lines of Last Conundrum of Da Vinci Deluxe (which is available for free from AllGamesHome and MyPlayCity), or Bloxorz which you can play or download for free (five different versions) HERE for free though Circus Pompché is a more three dimensional puzzle that relies on position more. The concept is similar though.

This will keep those brain cells working.

Overall I’m really pleased with this game. Thank you to the developer Bash Games and the game giveaway team for bringing us some new games. This weekend I look forwards to more new games next week

Scoring

Graphics … 7

Sound … 7.5

Game play … 7.5

Re-playability … 7

Total … 29 out of 40 that’s a score of approx 7.25 out of 10 which equates to worth downloading game.

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Problems installing, activating and running today’s game:

If you have difficulty downloading or activating the game you can try again later or do one of the following – for example once downloaded when you click on the dual activation and set up file you may get the message “Failed to connect. Please try again later” Check to see if your internet explorer isn’t offline (thanks to MrSnoozles/Mike and GMMan for that fix). If the previous suggestion doesn’t work go check out previous comments from the last several weeks and look for comments from GMMan and Mike. They have also posted their possible fixes for this problem.

Mike suggests that you check to see if Internet Explorer is offline (even if you use firefox). If it is make sure that it’s online thn try again. I’ve always tried re-booting my modem and/or router with some success, though Mike has said that doing that does nothing. Still, it’s worth a try if all else fails.

If you are getting the black screen problem right click on the games executable and select properties then click on the compatibility mode and select the disable visual themes. This should fix the problem, if not try disabling the display scaling on higher dpi settings and disabling the desktop composition.

Other fixes include changing your screen resolution, installing the latest direct X (remember that XP uses DX 9 or earlier only, Vista uses DX 10 or before and Win 7 DX11 or before). Also try updating your graphics drivers. The main two chip manufacturers are NVIDIA and ATI both of which offer driver downloads for free. Just go to the respective manufactures home page and you’ll find a link to the driver download page. To find out which graphic card or graphics chip your computer uses type in Dxdiag in the search field (Vista or Win 7) or the run command (XP); this opens up the DirectX diagnostics panel. click on the display tab and look to the left panel. You should easily see what graphics card or chip you are using. (This is required information when selecting the correct download from the developers site).

If you are asked to turn off your Data Execution Prevention for this game to run. You can create an exception so that the game will run without having to turn DEP off. Please bear in mind it’s rare that anyone even mentioned getting a DEP warning. If you are not sure how to create an exception read THIS article, which tells you how to do it.

If you are having problems unzipping the game giveaways zip file, for example getting a message saying the file is invalid try using a different file archiver such as 7-Zip, J-Zip, CAM UnZip, Hamster Free Zip Archiver, GZip, B Zip2, peazip, ZipUnzip, FreeRAR Extract Frog, RAR File Open Knife, ALZip, The Extractor, RarZilla Free Unrar

Okay, that should be enough. there are actually many more free versions available. also there are other commercial titles such as the well-known WinRAR, Stuffit, WinAce, NXPowerlite and Corel Winzip Pro, but IMO 7-Zip is probably one of the better freebies. I did purchase a copy of Stuffit when it was on sale a few years ago, but didn’t like the interface for some reason, so hardly ever use it.

If you are posting requests for help late in the day I would suggest posting in the main giveaway forums in the game Game Discussion . If you’ve installed the game but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so someone may be able to help at another time. Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it then once the giveaway period is over there’s nothing that can be done until the game is given away again (though that isn’t guaranteed. It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them as well.

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If you are looking for something else other than a puzzle game check out the game discussion forums and the free games synopsis. We’ve posted a couple of thousand free games over the last three years, some of which are fantastic. All of the major game distributors such as Steam, Direct 2 Drive (soon to combine with another site), Impulse and GOG all have some sales with savings as good as 75% in some cases. For example this weekend you can get between 50% – 75% off the Sonic the hedgehog series and that includes all of the old games as well. There’s also the 24 hr deal which at the moment is Demolition Inc for 50% off (only £3.99 or $4.99, there’s several nice games over at GOG such as Empire Earth 3 and the brilliant ArmA Gold for 50% off (ArmA Gold is ArmA plus its expansion Queens Gambit) a brilliant true military sim – though not as good as it’s successor ArmA II), over at Gamersgate there are too many games to mention wih deals up to 755 off and Impulse sales include Batman Arkham city and Ship simulator for 50% off as well as loads more. You can check out all of the main distributors deals via the Didematic Site

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Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with search engines like Google. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of potential cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away more decent games to draw more users to their site. There are a lot of game sites and they all want your buisness. I really do think if we can improve on the quality and numbers of users leaving suitable feedback more developers will join the project. It’s a great environment to recruit beta testers as well; giving the community the oppertunity to try out games that aren’t on general release yet.

Again PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE leave some suitable feedback once you’ve played the game for an hour or so. It can be positive or negative, but please explain your reasons for the feedback you post. It doesn’t need to be a dissertation, just a paragraph or two explaining what you think could improve the game and maybe what you didn’t like about the game with suggestions to replace the negative area’s. Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment. It will be very much appreciated by the developer, the giveaway team and me. Thank you.

CRC ERROR, file is bunk not good!

…………………..Moderator comment…………………

Works fine for me. Try redownloading the file. It could have become corrupted during download.