Gamezebo Archives - April 2010

Are you a player with a thirst for knowledge, or do you like to save your brain for more creative pursuits? If you can excel at both, ngmoco and On5 want to reward your talents with an iPad.

A couple of award-winning indie game darlings, an experimental MMO and a turntable-inspired Flash game are taking on Zynga's Facebook juggernaut FarmVille in the Games category of this year's Webby Awards.

With Earth Day right around the corner, there couldn’t have been a better time for developer Oceanhouse Media to dust off The Lorax, Dr. Seuss’ classic allegory about the environment and the impact we have on it. If you have a green thumb and you’ve been looking for an app that’ll let you scratch that gardening itch, Lorax Garden might just be the game you’re looking for.

A month after GOG.com announced a partnership with Atari to bring some of the company's PC classics back to life as digital downloads, the first Atari games have started to appear on the vintage gaming destination. Beginning today, GOG.com is offering the sci-fi strategy games Master of Orion 1 + 2 bundled for $5.99, and the action/adventure Outcast for $5.99.

Jimmy Pataya digs jumping out of airplanes without a parachute or a plan. It's that kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants thinking that got him into the mess known as the “Grinder,” which is a pretty accurate name for the gauntlet he’s about to run. Now it's up to you to and guide Jimmy through the blades as he falls to Earth. Spoiler warning: he'll never make it to the ground; he'll just fall forever. Which I guess is just as well since he's got no parachute. Jimmy, you gotta start thinking before you leap!

Free games are all around us, but they may not be as easy to find as you’d think. We help you sort through the App Store to find the latest price drops and limited time offers so that you won’t have to spend a penny. Today’s free games include a dragon-themed slot machine, soccer in the snow, color-popping arcade action, and more!

Fiction Fixers: Adventures in Wonderland has a marvelous premise: A villainous member of the Illiterati has transported himself into Lewis Carroll's famous novel, Alice in Wonderland, and is wreaking havoc by changing the story. Unfortunately, the game doesn't quite live up to the cleverness of its setting, but it's a decent hidden object adventure, nonetheless.

Welcome to the Fiction Fixers: Adventures in Wonderland walkthrough on Gamezebo. Fiction Fixers: Adventures in Wonderland is a hidden object game played on PC created by Fugazo. This walkthrough includes tips and tricks, helpful hints, and a strategy guide to how to complete Fiction Fixers: Adventures in Wonderland.

When you hear the term "Mikado", you probably assume that the conversation has veered onto the topic of Gilbert & Sullivan musicals. However, what many people don't realize is that the word is actually an old term used for the Emperor of Japan that eventually fell out of style. Mikado Defenders, a new tower defense game out for the iPhone this week, has nothing to do with the former topic and much more to deal with the latter.

As the third spin-off of Farm Frenzy 3, you'd think that Russian Roulette would bring something new and interesting to the popular time management series. Instead, the game delivers more of the same, with little in the way of surprises, and lacks even the simple visual change made byits predecessor.

Hero World is a game that should be more fun. It’s a text RPG (think Mafia Wars) using a superhero theme, where you create your own superhero and then go out adventuring. In theory, you can grow your superhero from a dull newbie into a mighty powerhouse by completing missions, forming a superteam with your friends, and battling supervillains. Superheroes should be a good fit for the text RPG format, but Hero World squanders a lot of its potential.

With more than 80 million users every month, it’s seems downright criminal that Zynga have dragged their heels on bringing FarmVille to mobile devices like the iPhone and Android. It’s not that Zynga’s afraid of the market – the company offers both an iPhone and SMS version of its popular mob game Mafia Wars. And it’s not even that squeezing a game like this onto such a device would be all that difficult – the developers of Zombie Farm have pulled it off swimmingly. Whatever the reason, some clues have surfaced that suggest our long mobile wait may finally be coming to an end.

Did you ever see that great wartime movie about those dastardly wolves and their defeat at the hands of the triumphant underdog sheep? Us neither, but Saving Private Sheep from BulkyPix tries to rectify that with goofy fun and head-scratching physics puzzles for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Facebook developer Playdom has brought David Sobeski, a former exec with Yahoo! and Microsoft, on board as the company's new Chief Technology Officer.

Need some help getting started in Playdom's brand new Facebook game Big City Life? Check out this Quick Start game guide for helpful hints, tips & tricks. This walkthrough is your Big City Life how-to!

Playdom just released a new Facebook game, Big City Life, aimed at Facebook gamers who deem themselves fashionistas and socialites.

Will Big City Life be the next Facebook fashion trend or fall off the fashion runway? Play Big City Life and click READ MORE for more details.

When is a twin stick shooter not a twin stick shooter? When the developers trade in their sticks for tilt. Tilt to Live is an arcade shooter that combines the frantic pace of games like Everyday Shooter with the tilt mechanics of games like Labyrinth. The end result is a crazy, challenging, perfect shooter experience that could only happen on the iPhone.

Manomio, the developers who brought the popular Commodore 64 emulator to the iPhone (recently featured in our free apps round-up) have just released a YouTube video showing off a similar project for the Atari 2600. What’s more, Manomio has confirmed to Slide to Play that they’re working on getting the rights to make this project a reality.

Big Fish Games just released Treasure Quest which can best be described as a casual games portal built for the social platform.

Players can play a variety of free games based on the most popular genres, such as hidden object, brain/logic, match 3 puzzle, strategy, card, and riddle games. As you play, you level up and earn gold that you can use to unlock new games content and access new power ups.

Big Fish Games plans to add different treasure quest challenges daily. You can click read more for a specific list of games as well as to view video and screen shots and play Treasure Quest here.

When you really think about it, Pocket Legends is a game that shouldn’t exist. How could a developer possibly get a 3D MMORPG like Everquest or World of Warcraft to work on the iPhone? More importantly, how can they possibly afford to be giving it away for free? It may not be as massive as its desktop counterparts, but Pocket Legends offers up an experience that few of us had believed was even possible on the iPhone.