Papa Pear Saga offers the fun of Peggle, with a unique twist

Earlier this month, King.com became King, and along with that renaming came the launch of two different Facebook games in the company's "Saga" franchise. The first, Farm Heroes Saga, is arguably the cutest match-three game we've ever seen, while the second, Papa Pear Saga, is equally fun, but for different reasons.

Papa Pear Saga will instantly look familiar to fans of PopCap's Peggle, but the game isn't a complete clone. In each of the game's dozens of levels, you'll need to launch balls (called "Papa") towards acorns that are scattered around the screen (normally in a fun pattern), earning points for each one Papa touches, and even more points for landing in one of the black and white bins at the bottom of the screen.

You're given a limited number of "Papas" to toss towards the bottom of the screen, with the ultimate goal of many stages being to light up all of the bins at the bottom my throwing a Papa into it. If you fail to light up one of the bins, you'll fail the stage and will lose one of your recharging lives. On other levels, you may be asked to remove the platforms that rest below fruits and vegetables, clearing a way for them to reach the bottom of the stage as well.

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Given the random nature of bouncing projectiles, it's really easy to accidentally send a Papa into the wrong bucket, wasting one of your limited throws. Thankfully, the game's first few stages are more than forgiving, allowing you to get a real hang of aiming, and a feel for how the Papas behave while bouncing, before moving onto the harder stages.

The more points you earn in a stage, the more stars you'll earn, and you can compare your scores against those of your friends on each level's individual leaderboard. You'll unlock power-ups along the way that will help you out-perform your friends, like point multipliers and "Papa Grande" items that will allow your Papa to grow in size, therefore bouncing off of more items at once and earning you more points in the process. These bring in the expected monetization feature to the game, as you'll need to spend real money to continue using said power-ups.

Even though Papa Pear Saga does offer some real differences when compared to Peggle, the games still feel incredibly similar at the core. This is fine, though, as Peggle is a fantastic game, and Papa Pear Saga is therefore highly entertaining as a result. Each Papa you throw is full of life and a personality (they dance after completing a stage), and the acorns and other food items you bounce Papa off of are also given life via faces and sound effects.

Ultimately, it's easiest to sum up Papa Pear Saga with the following: If you love Peggle (or games like it), you'll love Papa Pear Saga, so King has succeeded in stealing away all of our free time once again.

Play Papa Pear Saga on Facebook >

What do you think of Papa Pear Saga, or games in that similar "Peggle" genre? Let us know in the comments!