Purble Place

Overview

Purble Place is a mini-game puzzle collection developed by Oberon Games and released by Microsoft for the PC in 2006, included in all Windows Vista and Windows 7 installations.

One of the six built-in games included with all versions of the Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems (the other games being revamped versions of FreeCell, Hearts, Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Spider Solitaire), Purble Place includes three puzzle games with a cartoonish theme (starring odd creatures named Purbles), intended as an edutainment tool for learning colors, shapes, and pattern recognition.

• Comfy Cakes - Players must use a conveyor belt and numerous buttons in a correct sequence to construct cakes. Each cake has multiple specifications, including shape, frosting, and decorations, and players must fulfill a quota, without having three incorrect cakes, to win. Harder difficulties increase the complexity of this process, including multiple layers and additional decorations, while optionally having multiple cakes on a single conveyor (restricting how much the player can move the conveyor).

• Purble Pairs - An adaptation of the card game Concentration, players are given a grid of face-down cards and must clear the board by attempting to match them. The cards are flipped face-up two at a time and they are either discarded if they match or flipped back if they don't match. Some cards have special effects, such as shuffling the board or finding matches automatically. The goal is to clear the board. Harder difficulties increase the size of the grid (from 5x5 to 8x8), add additional images to match, and add an optional game timer.

• Purble Shop - Based on the logic game Mastermind, players are given a Purble with no facial features and must deduce which color combination of facial features they like best in a limited number of guesses. Harder difficulties add additional facial features and colors while changing how vague the guesses are (from stating outright what is right/wrong with them to just stating how many correct and partially-correct facial features are there).

It also supports the Windows Media Center service for use with TVs. Like other pack-in games that are kept when upgrading the Windows operating system, the base installation of Purble Place is removed completely once an April 2018 update of Windows 10 is applied.