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Winning at any card game takes skill and luck, but for pure chutzpah, it's hard to top winning by bluffing. The upcoming trading card game Fantasy Rivals has bluffing (or at least the threat of it) right at the heart of its gameplay. This simple yet deceptively deep game is out to have people proving how clever they are on browsers and mobile devices this spring.

Zynga and EA have reached a settlement in their ongoing lawsuit, Inside Social Games is reporting. For those who don’t recall (it began half a year ago, after all), the impetus for this legal battle was EA’s belief that Zynga stole several concepts from The Sims Social for use in The Ville. 

Free-to-play games, whether downloadable, web-based, or mobile, have become a predominant force in the market that’s here to stay.  After several years of growth and expansion in this area, I think we’ve finally reached a point where no one is disputing this.  And with growing success comes a growing number of developers eager to get in on the action – including some whose previous work lies in AAA home console games.

Timo Dries, Product Manager at Wooga, believes that love, passion, and creativity are important ingredients to a good social game. If utilized correctly, they can the hook the player in ways a game defined by metrics and statistics never could. Dries gave a talk on the subject at this year's Casual Connect Europe.

Akaneiro: Demon Hunters is an action RPG developed by Spicy Horse. Hunt down the demons that are threatening the land and become the best Akane hunter you can be. Gamezebo’s quick start strategy guide will provide you with detailed images, tips, information, and hints on how to play your best game.

Roses are red, violets are blue, I spent most of my morning pinning Valentines for you!  That’s right folks, the season of love it upon us once again – and what would Valentine’s Day be without Valentine’s cards? 

Back in the first half of 2012, a little point and click adventure by Waffle Friday Studios appeared on Kickstarter. The funding was quite the success and today we have Duck Quest?. Yes, with a question mark. Because... why not? Duck Quest? is built like an adventure game of old, and when we say old, we mean a dozen colors on the screen and characters so pixellated you can count their edges old.

I thought I could do it. It had been a while since I had fallen off the wagon. All the devices in my house were purged of Triple Town, and I hadn’t been caught in public screaming about “ninja bears” for quite some time. So when Spry Fox released their newest game, Leap Day, in a browser beta, you have to believe me when I say that I genuinely thought I could just take a quick look…so you’ll lend me the money for some extra crowns, right?

Ecol might only be one letter and a period away from something most people don’t care to be around, but T Play Interactive, YD Interactive and OnNet are hoping everyone will want to know what it’s all about in the next few months. That’s because the studios are putting the finishing touches on Ecol Tactics, a tactical fantasy RPG that looks like it might bring back warm, fuzzy memories of certain alliterative console games of the past.

We spend a lot of time looking at games here at Gamezebo.  You’d expect as much – heck, it’s in our name!  But have you ever wondered which games the Gamezebo staff are really passionate about?  The ones we can’t personally wait to get our hands on?

After being announced many moons ago, Minecraft has finally arrived on the eminently programmable Raspberry Pi. But before all you Pi owners get too excited, you should probably know that it costs the extravagant amount of… free!

Hi there readers of Gamezebo! I’m Ben Furneaux, one of the developers at Wonderstruck working on our first project: Polycraft. We’re working with Gamezebo to bring you a series of developer diaries following the development of Polycraft. There’s going to be lots of behind-the-curtain insight into how we’re making Polycraft, exclusive information about upcoming releases, photos of people looking pensively at a whiteboards, blood, sweat, tears and polygons. Lots of polygons.

Video games are a decidedly visual medium, so it only makes sense that the Gamezebo crew are a group that love to look at things.  With that in mind, we’ve been doing a fair bit of pinning and re-pinning lately, and wanted to share with you some of our favorite Pinterest finds over the past week.

The FarmVille franchise is really going places. First it was announced that FarmVille 2 is coming to mobile, and now it’s been revealed that a FarmVille show is in the works. Even crazier, Brett Ratner (director of films like Red Dragon, X-Men: The Last Stand, and the Rush Hour series) is the man in charge of producing it.

It wasn’t so long ago that Zynga was on top of the world.  But after a 2012 filled with layoffs, executive resignations and plummeting stock prices, the company’s upward momentum has turned into something of a downward spiral.  And some upcoming changes, announced on an earnings call with investors earlier this week, will only make matters worse.

No one puts a dark twist on a classic tale like American McGee. Having already put Alice through her action-horror paces a couple of times, the designer and his team at Spicy Horse Games turn to Red Riding Hood for Akaneiro: Demon Hunters. This Red is no helpless girl, but a member of a team of demon hunters in the Edo period of feudal Japan. Those demons aren't going to kill themselves, so it's up to you in this free-to-play action-RPG.

Zynga revealed in an earnings call today their intent to bring FarmVille 2—amongst other franchises—over to mobile. This is meant to be the first step in a pivotal change for the company, and according to Inside Social Games, CEO Mark Pincus also announced that Zynga will be adopting a “mobile first focus” for the future.

Despite only being around for a few months each, CityVille 2, Party Place, and The Friend Game are all going to be shut down. The announcement was made earlier today during an earnings call, and in the words of Zynga CFO Mark Vranesh—as reported by Inside Social Games—“CityVille 2 missed our expectations despite pushing the envelope in 3D gaming and both The Friend Game and Party Place failed to achieve the mass market appeal Zynga franchise are known for.”

Popular theory holds that humankind will die out once countries inevitably start flinging nuclear fireworks at each other. Nuclear war may be nothing more than a grim power fantasy, however: When you get right down to it, Nature and outer space have huge vendettas against us, and either is more likely to show us out the door. Radiated Wasteland is a browser-based role-playing game that’s set in the flames of a very possible apocalypse scenario—namely, a world that’s been made a wasteland courtesy of a meteor strike.

It seems like every day, more and more people begin to realize the commercial success and unlimited potential of the mobile games industry. And with those realizations come the big business moves that make them all the more powerful. Kongregate, a powerhouse in browser gaming, has announced the creation of a “Kongregate Mobile Developers” program, which will pledge 10 million dollars to the development of mobile games. The funding will help indie game developers work on free-to-play titles for the company, and add a better management of paid ad campaigns on third-party networks.