Triple Town is a new puzzler on Facebook that had its start on the Amazon Kindle last October, where it flourished in popularity. It was created by Spry Fox, a game studio founded by Daniel Cook, the co-creator of Realm of the Mad God, and David J. Edery, a former Worldwide Portfolio Manager for Xbox Live Arcade. After a spiffy makeover, Triple Town made its debut on Facebook and Google+ Games earlier this month, with plans to go mobile. According to AppData, it's now attracted 190,000 monthly players on Facebook.
Hailed by one reviewer as "the Civilization of match-three games," Triple Town is a unique title with familiar aesthetics. Spry Fox originally chose the Kindle as the game's platform, which was explained as "an interesting emerging opportunity" by Edery. But as the game grew popular, Spry Fox wanted to spread the love around. Citing a lack of Bejeweled Blitz-type games on Facebook, Spry Fox decided to push for Triple Town's launch on the social network, as well as make it available in both English and Spanish.
Triple Town merge objects
A basic principle to understanding how to play Triple Town is the following idea: "Grass turns into bushes, bushes into trees, trees into huts, and so on." When you start a round, you're presented with a grid in a woodland theme. There are no time limits and no energy limit. Though you do run out of moves eventually, the creator made sure that you get so many moves that any average player would be able to earn enough virtual currency to buy more moves through play alone.
Triple Crown Double Combos
Like most match-3 games--Bejeweled Blitz and Diamond Dash, for instance--you'll receive random pieces one at a time, but you get to control where they go on your grid. But unlike those traditional games, matching stuff doesn't make it disappear. Instead, matching stuff creates other stuff that's worth a lot more, thereby, netting you more points. The goal of the game is to get as high a score as possible by continuing to merge objects and not running out of space to put things.
Triple Town bears church
The game also throws in some monkey wrenches in the form of Bears and Ninja Bears to make things more challenging. These are pieces that will move around the grid even after you've put them down. Despite having evil, beady and glowing red eyes, the bears are pretty adorable. They'll totter about, roar, and make grumbly ursine noises as you play. On the flip side, other pieces will be there to help you, like the Blue Crystal and Imperial Bot.
Triple Town gameplay
You can see how all these elements can make the game simple, yet surprisingly complex. Every time you move objects on the grid and a match occurs, you've altered the playing field. I thought I'd jump in for a few minutes for one round, but the better of a player you are, the longer you can last, and this game can easily suck up an hour.
Triple Town is truly unlike any game I've ever seen before, for Facebook or otherwise. The closest comparison I can think of is Scott Brodie's Hero Generations, which also involves manipulating an evolving grid-based landscape with a fantasy setting. But Brodie's game is more like an old-fashioned, 8-bit role-playing adventure game. Triple Town also isn't a social game at all, since the only element is a weekly leaderboard, though Spry Fox has plans to expand the game in the future, hinting that it's only a small aspect of a larger Triple Town universe.
Showing posts with label social games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social games. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
LOLapps' Ravenwood Fair nears 11M monthly players, but how?
LOLapps is not afraid to display its methods of success. In fact, it flaunts them in adorable infographics involving flagship game, Ravenwood Fair. This time around, the company is done educating the masses and shows that since Jan. 2011, the forests of Ravenwood have exploded with over 10 million monthly players and over 1 million daily players. However, the LOLapps may have unintentionally revealed how it achieved this milestone.
Then again, it could have been 100 percent intentional. Toward the end of the infographic, the company shows that the game has launched on three other platforms than Facebook: StudiVZ, Orkut and Imvu. Not to mention that Ravenwood Fair will soon launch on Mixi. (You mean other social networks exist?) Developers have a hard time getting close to even Zynga's worst-performing games. So, how does a game that suffered controversy and even a shut down short after its launch just explode in an instant? Alright, maybe not an instant, but it sure feels that way in social games at times.
All kidding aside, players from these networks could have easily migrated from their native social networks to Facebook, where the game was originally developed and released. Perhaps payments are complicated on these networks, as opposed to the simplified Facebook Credits method. Perhaps the game simply runs more smoothly on Facebook. Most importantly, perhaps there are more players already on Facebook. Granted, this is all conjecture, but let's be honest here: How many Ravenwood Fair players could there be on Orkut when compared to Facebook?
Social games require friends to succeed. It's plain and simple, and social gamers are privy to that. Is it possible that LOLapps intentionally released the game on other platforms to increase its player base inversely on Facebook? Perhaps this is too tin-foil-hat for some, and it could just as easily have been a pleasant mistake. But will this same thing happen again to the Mixi players? LOLapps said it themselves: A large reason why Ravenwood Fair and social gaming work is because of the nature of friend networks. Why do you think FarmVille isn't popular on its own website? Because that's not where the friends are, silly. You'll see if we're right in a few months.
Do you think this could be the reason for Ravenwood's rapid growth, intentional or otherwise? How long do Aside from being a well- designed game, how else do you think LOLapps achieved this success? Sound off in the comments. 5 Comments
Full infographic
Then again, it could have been 100 percent intentional. Toward the end of the infographic, the company shows that the game has launched on three other platforms than Facebook: StudiVZ, Orkut and Imvu. Not to mention that Ravenwood Fair will soon launch on Mixi. (You mean other social networks exist?) Developers have a hard time getting close to even Zynga's worst-performing games. So, how does a game that suffered controversy and even a shut down short after its launch just explode in an instant? Alright, maybe not an instant, but it sure feels that way in social games at times.
All kidding aside, players from these networks could have easily migrated from their native social networks to Facebook, where the game was originally developed and released. Perhaps payments are complicated on these networks, as opposed to the simplified Facebook Credits method. Perhaps the game simply runs more smoothly on Facebook. Most importantly, perhaps there are more players already on Facebook. Granted, this is all conjecture, but let's be honest here: How many Ravenwood Fair players could there be on Orkut when compared to Facebook?
Social games require friends to succeed. It's plain and simple, and social gamers are privy to that. Is it possible that LOLapps intentionally released the game on other platforms to increase its player base inversely on Facebook? Perhaps this is too tin-foil-hat for some, and it could just as easily have been a pleasant mistake. But will this same thing happen again to the Mixi players? LOLapps said it themselves: A large reason why Ravenwood Fair and social gaming work is because of the nature of friend networks. Why do you think FarmVille isn't popular on its own website? Because that's not where the friends are, silly. You'll see if we're right in a few months.
Do you think this could be the reason for Ravenwood's rapid growth, intentional or otherwise? How long do Aside from being a well- designed game, how else do you think LOLapps achieved this success? Sound off in the comments. 5 Comments
Full infographic
Monday, September 26, 2011
Facebook game lets you solve anagrams to save Canada's forests
True to its name, in order to play Donate2Play Media's first new game, Wordraiser, you're going to have to pony up some change. Wordraiser is an anagram game that has players make as many words as possible out of one word.
If you manage to guess the key word, you get to level up. After leveling up a few times, you'll be asked to buy "Karma Points" that enable you to play more games.
Donation packages range from $1 to $20 USD, where $1 USD equals 10 Karma Points, which is good for buying one game. But right now, it seems that there's nothing stopping you from playing as much as you want. We're not sure if this is a bug, as the game just launched during the previous weekend.
While Wordraiser is supposedly free-to-play, it's also the offspring of Donate2Play's partnership with The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), a Canadian grassroots organization devoted to finding the balance between forestry jobs and preserving British Columbia's ancient woodlands (defined as tree populations that are over 120 years old). So half of the money given to Wordraiser will be split between AFA and Donate2Play.
Gallery: Wordraiser
Lastly, there's a top ten high scores leaderboard that displays players' names followed by their levels, and two of AFA's founders, TJ Watts and Ken Wu, are currently on the board in ninth and third place, respectively. According to its Facebook page, Wordraiser currently has 202 monthly users.
Keep in mind, though, that Donate2Play is doing all the heavy lifting here, with no risk or prior investment from AFA. Outreach for the game is done via automatic Facebook wall posts. Players will also receive facts about British Columbian forests during load screens and photos of these forests by TJ Watt.
[Hat-tip: Times Colonist]
Click here to play Wordraiser on Facebook now >
Would you rather donate to a charity directly than through a Facebook game? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment
If you manage to guess the key word, you get to level up. After leveling up a few times, you'll be asked to buy "Karma Points" that enable you to play more games.
Donation packages range from $1 to $20 USD, where $1 USD equals 10 Karma Points, which is good for buying one game. But right now, it seems that there's nothing stopping you from playing as much as you want. We're not sure if this is a bug, as the game just launched during the previous weekend.
While Wordraiser is supposedly free-to-play, it's also the offspring of Donate2Play's partnership with The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), a Canadian grassroots organization devoted to finding the balance between forestry jobs and preserving British Columbia's ancient woodlands (defined as tree populations that are over 120 years old). So half of the money given to Wordraiser will be split between AFA and Donate2Play.
Gallery: Wordraiser
Lastly, there's a top ten high scores leaderboard that displays players' names followed by their levels, and two of AFA's founders, TJ Watts and Ken Wu, are currently on the board in ninth and third place, respectively. According to its Facebook page, Wordraiser currently has 202 monthly users.
Keep in mind, though, that Donate2Play is doing all the heavy lifting here, with no risk or prior investment from AFA. Outreach for the game is done via automatic Facebook wall posts. Players will also receive facts about British Columbian forests during load screens and photos of these forests by TJ Watt.
[Hat-tip: Times Colonist]
Click here to play Wordraiser on Facebook now >
Would you rather donate to a charity directly than through a Facebook game? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment
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