Gamezebo Archives - January 2012

Along with Big Fish Game Studios, ERS Games has become one of the most highly-regarded purveyors of hidden object adventures. Known for its spooky storylines and exemplary graphics, ERS has gained a reputation for making hauntingly beautiful games; unfortunately, as the new solid-but-not-overly-innovative hidden object adventure, Maestro: Notes of Life demonstrates, the developer is in serious danger of becoming the proverbial one trick pony.

Are you a racing game fan? Then stop what you're doing and watch the trailer below. It's OK if your jaw has dropped; mine did too. This is trailer for Speed Blazers, which looks like it may very well be the craziest platform racer to hit mobile platforms yet.

Little Empire is good stuff. It's not great - it's too simplistic and slow for that - but it's fun, easy to play, won't take up too much of your time, and even has a hint of addictiveness to it. If you've got an itch for a casual Facebook-style strategy/world-building game, then this might be the fix for what ails ya.

Riddle me this: What’s blue, fast, and finally on your PC? If you said Windows 7, well… you’re a few years late to the party. But if you said Sonic the Hedgehog, you’re spot on!

Another free-to-play business simulation game has launched on the iOS platform with Breaktime Studios’ new app, Sweet Shop. As yet another addition to the sim genre though, it’s hard to truly classify the title as “new,” and even more difficult as Breaktime takes the TeamLava route of essentially reskinning one of its older games. In this case it’s the app of Pocket Potions, and while that wasn’t a bad game, the newest incarnation does absolutely nothing different.

Much like Monopoly Millionaires, Risk: Factions is an attempt to take a well-known board game and make it fit on Facebook. But unlike Monopoly Millionaires -- which turned the game into a more single-player experience -- Risk: Factions retains its multi-player focus, letting you engage asynchronous battles for world domination with friends. For the most part it works quite well, offering accessible and (once you get the hang of it) fun gameplay. But it’s also a bit too bogged down in typical social game requirements that limit progress.

There’s something to be said about the strange. But even when things appear a bit odd, the stylization of it can truly make a game pop. Such is the case with the new iOS title of Jazz: Trump’s Journey. A platforming game set in what looks to be a 1920’s version of New Orleans. The title offers a semi-interesting story coupled with a beautifully wacky art style. Along with a few new, or at least uncommon, platforming mechanics, this release from BulkyPix is a quality number for fans of the genre.

Temple Run is an endless running game from Imangi Studios for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Mutants are chasing you, so you need to run as fast as you can to stay away from them! Keeping up without falling off of a cliff can be difficult but with Gamezebo’s quick start guide you’ll have all the tips and tricks you’ll need to stay ahead at all times.

It’s official: arcades are back, except now they’re virtual and on your favorite mobile devices. With Stop Those Fish, Eye Interactive adds one more chain in the link of pay-to-play time wasters, helping to strengthen the reliance mobile games have upon in-app purchases.

If you haven’t had your fill of suburban daydreaming with the TV series Let’s Make a Deal, GameHouse now has a Facebook companion to help out with any additional cravings. With the voice and caricature of Wayne Brady in tow, how does this game show-gone-social fare against the competition?

Popcap Games has announced that on January 31 Facebook restaurant game Baking Life will be shut down for good.

Back in August, we reported that Zynga may have acquired Astro Ape Studios. All of the signs were there. The company had made some great mobile social games, and the CEO and other employees had updated their LinkedIn profiles to say they worked at Zynga NY. But asides from this one small act, no official confirmation ever came. At least, not until now – and it turns out Astro Ape isn’t the only acquisition Zynga didn’t tell us about in recent months.

We already knew it was coming, but now it's official: social puzzle game Triple Town is now available on mobile devices.

We all know that Mojang's Minecraft is crazy popular. How crazy? Well, Markus Persson (better known as Notch to many) announced that the game now has 20 million registered users. In medical terms, that's somewhere between "straightjacket" and "lobotomy" levels of crazy.

When it comes to personal entertainment, there’s one stone cold fact that film and television producers have relied on for years: everybody loves a car chase. It’s what made The French Connection so great. And The Italian Job. And Bullitt. And in more recent years, any local news station with a traffic copter. Smash Cops is a game that takes a page right out of the playbook of that last example, putting players in control of an officer behind the wheel and in hot pursuit.

Obviously, Gamezebo is not shutting down today for the SOPA Blackout. We’re a game site and shutting down for political reasons is not fun. Also, I wouldn’t know how to turn the site black without shutting the whole site down technically (and that would really not be fun).

I would like to go on record that we are against the SOPA legislation being considered in US Congress and encourage anyone who believes in a free Internet to contact your representative today to voice your opinion.

Cut the Rope's been very good to developer ZeptoLab. While the studio won't reveal just how much money it's made off of the game and its adorable mascot Om Nom, CEO Misha Lyalin revealed that roughly a quarter of the game's 85 million downloads were paid for. According to Lyalin, who recently spoke to paidContent, this is only the start of things to come.

All great puzzle games have one thing in common: they're easy to learn but difficult to master. Then there's UFHO2, which is simple to learn but progresses to "such strategic depth that it could easily melt your brain." These aren't my own words but those of the game's developers, who are hoping that funds raised through Kickstarter will allow them to put the finishing touches on the project.

Welcome to the Grim Tales: The Legacy Collector's Edition walkthrough on Gamezebo. Grim Tales: The Legacy Collector's Edition is a Hidden Object Game played on the PC created by Elephant Games. This walkthrough includes tips and tricks, helpful hints and a strategy guide on how to complete Grim Tales: The Legacy Collector's Edition.

Whale Trail was, in a word, wonderful. Unfortunately the game didn't sell anywhere near as well as it should have. As of right now, iOS gamers have paid for only 140,000 downloads of the game. That said, UK-based developer ustwo is casting the dice one last time in an attempt to prove that its premium game model can work.