Gamezebo Archives - August 2011

There was a time not so long ago where the game you bought was the game you got. Sure, you might be lucky enough to get a patch from the developer if there was a critical bug or some other such nonsense – but even so much as five years ago, free regular content releases seemed like a laughable idea. Thankfully, we don’t live in the world of five years ago. Need proof? Bolt Creative has just released Pocket God’s 40th free content update.

According to an interview by Dean Takahashi of Venture Beat with Google executives Bradley Horowitz and Punit Soni, Google will charge game developers 5% for micro-transactions, not 20% as reported by this expert. And, much lower than Facebook’s 30% cut.

This is great news for game developers launching on Google Games in the short term. And such a stupid move by Google after making all the right moves so far.

Why? Because once you start out at a low price, it’s very hard to get the number back up without making your partners angry. Just ask Facebook.

I grew up obsessed with the history of the pioneers and westward expansion. I can remember long hours spent playing The Oregon Trail in all its EGA glory. So I was very excited to get to review Pioneer Lands, a new time management/simulation game from NevoSoft. While Pioneer Lands does have its moments of fun, it feels very familiar and doesn’t offer anything new. Still, the game is addictive, but it just doesn’t have the feel you would expect from a pioneer themed game.

Whoa, that was fast! Today, Google announced the launch of Google Games, with details on how it will work and launch partners.

According to the blog post, users will be able click on a games button on top of their Google+ stream to play games, view game updates from friends in your circles, and see the latest games played, invites, and accomplishments.

One of the best parts of surveying the mobile scene is its ability to surprise you. All too often I've started up a game having scoured screenshots or watched a trailer on YouTube expecting the worst, only to be pleasantly surprised when it finally kicks into action. If nothing else, you learn to look beyond your first impressions – something Desert Quest proves, sadly, can work both ways.

In a just-published Q&A with Nekki's Tom Borovskis, it was revealed to Gamezebo that the developer will be bringing its popular browser-based soccer game 11x11 to Facebook.

Shadow Fight is an interesting game. On a platform dominated by farming and city building games, the developers at Nekki decided to launch a 2D fighting game in the vein of Street Fighter. And the crazy part is it worked. Not only is the game a lot of fun, but it's proving quite popular and just recently passed the two million monthly active user milestone. So we decided to catch up with Tom Borovskis, head of European business development at Nekki, to learn more about the game and how it will continue to evolve going forward.

World Chef developed by CyberAgent games and played at Facebook is an adorable and enticing game that allows you to develop a restaurant with international cuisine. You start with a small restaurant, but you’ll be able to decorate it, develop your menu, and use your expertise to open branches all over the world. Gamezebo’s World Chef quick start strategy guide will provide you with detailed images, tips, tricks, and hints on how to play your best game.

Glass Breaker is something quite unusual for Facebook: it’s an arcade-style game that includes no role-playing or virtual currency elements whatsoever. It’s not a game where you can level up, gain experience, pursue quests, or buy anything of note. Instead, Glass Breaker is a fairly traditional Breakout clone, one of those games where you break bricks by bouncing a ball off of a paddle. It takes most of its level design and power-up cues from the king of Breakout clones, Taito’s Arkanoid series. Glass Breaker isn’t on Arkanoid’s level when it comes to quality, but it still makes for a reasonably good Facebook time-waster.

On the hit CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory, the characters all like to sit around and play a card game called Mystic Warlords of Ka’a ...or so I’ve heard. You see, I haven’t seen more than 23 minutes of The Big Bang Theory. I tried it once on the recommendation of people whose opinions I had previously respected, and found it to be a cringe-inducing mockery of everything I hold dear. Also, canned laughter in 2011 is just gross. Despite this, I’m a sucker for a good card game, so I was intrigued by the premise of bringing Mystic Warlords of Ka’a to the real world – albeit via Facebook.

The latest update for Zombie Farm, the iPhone farming game with an undead twist, added a key new element to the game: social features. Players can now visit the farms of their friends, trade items, and even play mini-games together. We decided to catch up with Thomas Chung from The Playforge to learn more about the update and what we can expect to see from the game and developer in the future.

Something about the Smurfs license is terribly friendly to social gaming, especially of the city-building variety. The Smurfs & Co takes more cues from FrontierVille than Capcom’s Smurfs social game, Smurfs’ Village, but actually manages to make the formula feel fresh, fun to play, and appropriate to the license. In The Smurfs & Co you’ve been tasked by Papa Smurf with building a new Smurf settlement as part of a complicated plot that involves making a magic potion to defeat Gargamel. For most of the game, though, you simply focus on trying to chop down weeds, build Smurfy buildings, and attract more Smurfs to your village.

Yesterday we reported on the news that The Sims Social was finally live on Facebook. But if you followed the link you might have not believed us, since the game has since been taken down and replaced with an image that lists it as "Coming Soon - Undergoing Beta Testing." However, according to EA the downtime is only temporary so you should be able to get back to your sims in no time.

Welcome to the Macabre Mysteries: Curse of the Nightingale, Collector's Edition walkthrough on Gamezebo. Macabre Mysteries: Curse of the Nightingale, Collector's Edition is a Hidden Object Game played on the PC created by Blue Tea Games. This walkthrough includes tips and tricks, helpful hints and a strategy guide on how to complete Macabre Mysteries: Curse of the Nightingale, Collector's Edition

Simple 20 second time killers are a dime a dozen on the iPhone these days – but ones that stand out are getting rarer and rarer. Extreme Road Trip may not technically break any new ground, but there’s something wonderfully addictive about the familiar physics-based fun of Road Trip that makes it impossible to put down.

Anuman Interactive, the publisher best known for re-releasing games from the Microids catalog (such as Return to Mysterious Island, Nostradamus, and Amerizone) onto new platforms, has announced some of the new titles it plans to release by the end of the year. They include a couple of hidden object games based on comic books, a new time management game, and a few retro game classics from Interplay's back catalog.

The hidden object game based on the popular CBS crime thriller Criminal Minds is set to launch this fall, and Legacy Interactive has released a fresh bash of screenshots to whet our appetites. Check them out behind the cut.

When Bizango Blast was first described to me, the phrase "first-person shooter version of Angry Birds" was used, which naturally piqued my interest. The fact that the game was built with the Unreal Engine made it even more fascinating. Was I going to see some crazy mix of Angry Birds and Infinity Blade, except from a first-person perspective? The short answer is "No. Not at all." Here's the long answer.

As far as ports go, there aren’t many better paths to take than Nintendo DS to smartphone. With Nintendo relying so heavily on touch (albeit with a stylus), it’s easy-peasy to move a game from one place to the other. This is especially true for a game like Touch Detective which, as the name suggests, relied purely on touch. Now this puzzle solving mystery game has made the leap to iOS, fully and completely intact.

Avalon Wars is an iPhone game developed by iFree Studio that lets you take control of a futuristic military base as you attempt to seize control over the planet of Avalon. Gamezebo’s Avalon Wars strategy guide and walkthrough will provide you with a quick start guide, tips and tricks, hints and cheats to help you dominate the planet.