Purble Place

Purble Place
Developer: Oberon Games Publisher: Microsoft Platform: Windows Released internationally: January 30, 2007 This game has debugging material.

Purble Place is one of the new games (or, rather, a collection of games) included with Windows Vista and 7. The collection is intended for very young children and it shows.

One might note that, once the difficulty is set for a game, it cannot be legitimately changed.

To do: See if more of the options work in the Vista version. This was tested with the Windows 7 version.

Debug Menus

As with most other games shipped with Vista and 7, it has an internal g_debugEnabled variable. However, the debug menus aren't seen until entering one of the mini-games.

Purble Shop

The only part of the menu that appears to work is "Toggle Curtain", allowing the player to see behind the curtain. The rest appear to have been for the figure the player has to guess for, but they don't appear to be functional. The options consist of trying to pick the graphics currently available.

Comfy Cakes

The only option that appears to work is "Win Game", which does indeed let the player win. "Reload Variables" doesn't appear to do anything on the surface, while "Time Attack Mode" might be a scrapped game mode.

Purble Pairs

This menu is comparatively intact, with 60% of the options working. The options included in this menu are:

• Sneak Peak - Lets the player look at all the tiles, but only if none of them have been flipped.
• Force Win - As you'd expect, the player automatically wins the game.
• Mixer - The tiles are moved all across the playfield.
• Force Lose - Doesn't work; it's possible the player might have lost the game at some point.
• Time - Doesn't work, but probably showed how much time the player took to solve the puzzle.

XInput Support

An interesting feature that isn't documented anywhere (Help Menu-wise) is XInput (gamepad) support – if the game detects an Xbox 360 controller plugged into a USB port, the P1 corner on the controller will light up, signifying the controller can be used. Possibly undocumented because Microsoft thought people were too used to the traditional controls, and little kids wouldn't be using a controller. It's a neat little feature, nonetheless.

Controls

Button	Effect
Left analog stick/D-pad/Shoulder Buttons/Triggers	Moves the cursor. Oddly, they can also be used to navigate the menu bar.
B/Back	Varies.
A/X	Selects whatever the cursor is on.
Y/Start	Opens the Game Menu.