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Big Fish Games has always been known for their diverse library of casual games, but now their lesser-known online game offerings have taken a step into the spotlight with the launch of Big Sea Games. Formerly known as "Ion Thunder," "atlantis," or the "Big Fish Games Game Community," Big Sea Games is a free casual game portal containing many fan favorites such as Riddle O'Day, Unwell Mel and Fairway Solitaire.
The games are totally free to play and there are no ads (with the exception of a small Big Fish Games advertisement at the bottom of the logged-in home page). All of the games require the latest version of Flash and a screen resolution of at least 1024x768 to accommodate their new and larger game windows.
There are currently nineteen games available:
- Deuces Wilder
- Fairway Solitaire
- Farm 52
- L.O.B.E.
- Mahjong Towers Eternity
- Mush!
- Oz Video Poker
- Plunder
- Riddle O'Day
- Shape Shifter
- Suits Me Canfield
- Suits Me Free Cell
- Suits Me Pyramid
- Suits Me Solitaire
- Suits Me TriPeaks
- Suits Me Yukon
- Team Bingo
- Thunderbolt 21
- Unwell Mel
And nine more games scheduled to be released soon:
- Badda Bingo
- Big Fish Slots
- Diana Fortune
- Dive Deeper
- Lightning Bingo
- Looking Glass
- Madama Libra
- Patchworkz
- SnowGlobe
Each of these games is the same game that was on the original Game Community site, but with updated graphics and sound. Deuces Wilder, Farm 52, and Riddle O'Day feature new game play as well. (Farm 52 is an upgraded replacement version of Farm 51, with more features near the end-game such as cloth creation and farming on the alien planet.)
Each game has been outfitted with twelve ranks and its own set of twelve in-game achievement awards you can earn by playing. Some awards are simple (for example, one of the awards in Riddle O'Day requires you to answer a riddle each day for seven days) and some are based on luck (in Team Bingo, you'll earn an award if the balls come out of the hopper in the order B, I, N, G, O). The ranks and awards add new challenges and re-playability to many games that may have otherwise been lost among more popular games like Team Bingo, L.O.B.E., and Riddle O'Day.
Big Sea Games also launched with an avatar feature: each member can now create and outfit their very own "Sea-Me" in addition to updating their profile with their biographical information, interests, and hobbies. Right now the avatars are somewhat rough around the edges, with few customization options and a limited wardrobe. Hopefully in the future more backgrounds, outfits, facial features, and body types will become available.
The transition from Big Fish Games' Game Community to Big Sea Games has been pretty smooth all things considered. The site has remained up for all but a few hours total since its official launch and their fantastic customer support has been helping people with login and username mix ups, getting games to load, and smaller issues like adjusting their screen resolution. The biggest outstanding issues at this point are game loading in the resource-intensive Farm 52 and always-full rooms in Team Bingo which has taken on the load of both Badda Bingo and Lightning Bingo's players since those two games have not yet been re-released. Both of these issues are being addressed by Big Sea Games developers and should be completely resolved soon.
Currently, Big Sea Games is still in beta and access is by invitation only. Current Big Fish Games members who had logged into the Game Community within the first few weeks of August should be able to log in and start playing, however if you haven't logged into the Game Community recently or if you need to create an account entirely, you will be placed on a waiting list until more invitations are sent out or the site becomes available to the general public.
Big Sea Games was launched on August 18, 2009 and is located at BigSeaGames.com.
Lura "Lure" Ellington plays at Big Sea Games as bigfishgamer_com. She also runs the only Big Sea Games fan site, BigSeaFans.com, and BadgeHungry.com, a wildly popular Pogo.com fan site.
