I'm working on Pop Pies 2. Pop Pies is my most successful game far as ad-revenue goes. I'll also admit that it's not my best game. Myself, I much prefer Meltdown, although both games do have that visceral id-gratifying "blow up lotsa stuff in one shot if you set up everything just right" bit.

One thing I'd always planned for Pop Pies 2 was levels that got more difficult, ala Meltdown. Although I'm starting to think that that's getting away from my old "quick to play" mantra that I'd kept up from the beginning of this little puzzle game experiment. Meltdown does have multiple levels, but you can play through a single level in 1-2 minutes, so even if you make it through five or eight levels, it's still pretty quick. Pop Pies has only one level, but it takes a longer and more thoughtful setup if you wanna get the big 'splosions.

My initial plan was to have three growing meters at the bottom of the screen that measured pies 'sploded, columns cleared, and gifts cleared (see Poppit for this). If you got above a certain threshold on each, you'd move to the next level and the thresholds would get a bit higher, thus making the next level more difficult to clear. But now I think I'm just overthinking things. I should just make the game one level like original Pop Pies but make the level much more interesting with little bonuses and suchlike popping up everywhere.

Because, this is my hypothesis, most people who play Pop Pies don't do it for the score. While it is gratifying to break 10,000 points, Pop Pies is more about the visceral thrill of filling the screen with a big explosion. And if ad-revenue is any indication, people don't seem to mind pressing the "play again" button or the reload-button in their browser.

So now I'm leaning strongly against "Pop Pies With Levels" and more towards "Pop Pies With One Much Cooler Level".

Thoughts?