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Hello Gamezebo-ers,

 

This is Ryan Modjeski again, designer and producer of Legacy Interactive's upcoming hidden object adventure, The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 2. Since my last developer diary, things have gotten really hectic around here. Murder, She Wrote just launched (at the time of writing it is #1 on Big Fish Games and Legacy Games) and the energy surrounding that project amplified our stresses as we are quickly approaching our own release date in December.

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Zynga, the leading social games company and creators of popular games that you've probably have played (such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Café World) is officially having the worst week ever. Read more»

So fresh off production of The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes and Emergency Room: Real Life Rescues, it seemed like a natural fit to combine the two elements and start on a game based on the TV series House M.D. I was very enthusiastic to start working on the project because I was a fan of the show, which is saying a lot because I don't watch very much television (I'm more of a movies-kind-of-guy) so finding a show that I've actually seen, let alone enjoy, is pretty challenging. (Nothing against TV programs per se, I just generally prefer to play games and watch movies.) Read more»

What Halloween-themed games are you playing this weekend? Gamezebo put together a roundup of 13 of our favorites to help you get into the spirit. Some are light-hearted romps with pumpkins and dancing zombies, while others are downright scary. So turn the lights down, pull out the bowl of candy, and let's get spooked! Read more»

Casual Games and even games in general are not known for engaging its audience with with heart felt emotion. Gold Sun Games newest title hopes to put an end to that with the first Romance casual game Broken Hearts: A Soldier's Duty. Help our madly in love heroine Maria Lopez restore her memories in this heart breaking romantic tale of love, romance, deception, and tragedy.

My name is James Bernard (Lead Designer and Producer at Gold Sun Games) and I am very pleased to present to you a sneak peak of our upcoming game in the form of this Developer's Diary. I'd like to take this opportunity to give an inside look at the development and creative process starting from the very first day of the original concept. Read more»

Learn how Playrix Entertainment's Gardenscapes evolved from "Fishdom with butterflies and flowers" to the hidden object/gardening hybrid that it is today, which characters didn't make it into the final version of the game, and what 1960s British pop group inspired Austin the Butler's sideburns in our Behind the Game interview with Playrix's VP of Production, Igor Elovikov. Read more»

What's the most popular video game these days? If you think it's Halo: ODST, Batman: Arkham Asylum or Wii Fit, think again. While high profile console games are hogging the consumer spotlight, Zynga's FarmVille - a free-to-play Facebook game about tiling soil and tending crops in a virtual farm - has quietly amassed more than 58 million active players. Read more»

Seattle residents have various ways of coping with the city's notorious rainy season: Seattle-based iWin chose to create a game set on a sunny tropical island paradise. iWin's Andy Megowan talked us through the development of Coconut Queen and how what started out as a relatively modest project evolved into one of the company's flagship titles of 2009. Read more»

Hello Gamezebo readers,

 

My name is Ryan Modjeski, designer and producer extraordinaire at Legacy Interactive and I am writing to give you all a peek at my latest project, The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes Vol. 2.

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ARRRR!!!!! T'day be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and Gamezebo is proud t' bring ye 10 pirate-themed casual games that are ripe for the plundering.... er, downloading. Read more»

Howdy folks, it's time once again for another edition of The Dracula Files Developer Diary with eGames Product Manager Greg Zesinger (that's me).  As always, follow us on Twitter and Facebook for your chance to win some very cool Dracula-related swag! We last awarded one copy of The Complete Dracula #1 comic book to a lucky Twitter minion, and this week we'll be giving away at least one advance reader copy of Dracula: The Un-dead, the Stoker family-endorsed sequel to the original classic, set for release in October. Read more»

Alawar's producer and VP of publishing, Kirill Plotnikov, took us behind the scenes of Farm Frenzy to talk about the evolution of its heroine Scarlett, getting the right game balance, and... flying bears? Read more»

Alawar's fox cub Sprill has become a recognizable mascot in casual games, having headlined three successful titles including his latest hidden object adventure Sprill & Ritche: Adventures Through Time. In this post-mortem, Alawar Entertainment's Maxim Michaelis and Tatiana Chernova, and Alawar Five-BN CEO Eugeny Sokolov look back on the development of Sprill & Ritchie: Adventures Through Time and how the character of Sprill evolved. Read more»

Greetings casual game fans!  It's time for another installment of The Dracula Files Developer Diary.  As always, I'm Greg Zesinger, eGames Product Manager and your host as we tiptoe through the development of our upcoming vampire-themed hidden object adventure.  Read more»

It's been an interesting couple of weeks here at Legacy Interactive.  It's sort of like life imitating art - now that we're deep in the development of the Murder, She Wrote game, we're practically tripping over the bodies all over the office around here.  Read more»

Her Interactive has given us an advanced look at the cast of characters who you'll get to meet in the upcoming Nancy Drew Dossier: Resorting to Danger when it launches on Sept. 1. Read more»

Attention super sleuths! Her Interactive is just a few weeks away from releasing the second title in the Nancy Drew Dossier series, Resorting to Danger After the amazing success of the first game, Lights, Camera, Curses!, Gamezebo was excited to try the sequel. We've had some hands-on time with it, and everything looks like it's shaping up to be a worthy successor to the Nancy Drew moniker. Read more»

An iPhone version of Ranch Rush recently launched, and Ranch Rush 2 is on the way for PC. While we've yet to get our hands on a demo of Ranch Rush 2, we have the next best thing: an interview with FreshGames President Stephan Smith where he talks about the making of the original Ranch Rush (a game we liked quite a bit). Read more»

Developers can best weather the storm of increased competition and falling prices in the casual game space by creating strong, innovative brands rather than cranking out greater numbers of cheaper low quality titles, said Last Day of Work Founder Arthur Humphrey during an inspired talk at Casual Connect. Read more»

Playdom's VP of Game Design Steve Meretzky and Executive Producer David Rohrl, along with Hit Detection Founder N'Gai Croal, used their Casual Connect panel to present a survey of the 12 most interesting and ground-breaking trends in social games to emerge over the past year. Read more»

When Tim Conkling was asked to design something for his new employer Three Rings' casual MMO Whirled he pitched the basic concept for Corpse Craft, a casual real-time strategy game that combines collapse match-3 gameplay with a real-time combat mechanic. The idea came out of a desire, as Conkling put it during a post-mortem at Casual Connect, to create a RTS that he could "actually beat people at." Read more»

An awkward name can put an otherwise fun game at a severe disadvantage. Just ask GamesCafe.com, the developer of Mahjomino. Read more»

Kongregate's CEO Jim Greer and Developer Relations Manager Greg McClanahan used their Casual Connect panel to talk about some of the design decisions that just don't work for Flash games, and offered the following advice to new developers: Read more»

The casual games industry should struggle less with "micro-demographics that target 40-year-old cooking soccer moms with two children" and focus on creating more crossover games that play well in both the hardcore and casual space, said PopCap Games CEO David Roberts.

 

In his keynote address to kick off the second day of Casusal Connect in Seattle, Roberts took the industry to task for not doing enough to court crossover gamers.

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Social networking platforms like Facebook offer ways for casual game companies to break away from the traditional try-before-you-buy PC download model, but developers who think they can simply port their existing games over to Facebook and expect them to do well will be disappointed according to Facebook Platform Manager Gareth Davis.

 

Speaking at Casual Connect, Davis said that developers should instead design games that leverage Facebook's unique powers as a social platform.

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