For a long time now, (Lil) Green Patch has been the number one game on Facebook, and from the success of this application has come the next iteration known as (Lil) Blue Cove. However, (Lil) Blue Cover purports to be more than just a game: every game play generated revenue that is donated towards saving our rainforests. The most recent donation went to the “Adopt an Acre” program of the Nature Conservancy.

The game itself is similar enough to its predecessor. Players start with their own little patch, well in this case a cove, in which to place all their fish and decorations. Every day, various tasks need to be done in order to keep your cove clean and safe, and you can use the money you earn (“Greenbucks”) to purchase various decorations, tools, grab bags for special rewards, and themes for your “(Lil) Blue Cove.”

Of course, as this is a Facebook application, it has to have its social benefits, and like (Lil) Green Patch, you are capable of sending fish and gifts to your friends to use in their game. In fact, you can even “visit” their cove and take care of some of the problems there (i.e. a bird is going to eat their fish, use some bread to distract it). While this sounds simple, the real beauty of it is that players can actually measure the amount they are helping the world’s rainforests.

Here, sending fish is not merely a game mechanic. For every 10 friends that receive a fish, you effectively save one square foot of rain forest from deforestation. Granted, one square foot doesn’t exactly seem like a lot, but one has to consider the huge number of people playing this game.

The growth charts for (Lil) Blue Cove has shown that in the few weeks that it has been available to the public, this game has grown from 0 to nearly 800,000 players. Perhaps, part of this is because both (Lil) Green Patch and (Lil) Blue Cove are linked to each other from within each respective game, and that players can switch back and forth between them whenever they wish. There is no denying that fans of such a popular game would not at least try a new title by the same developers. However, the cause behind it has to help a great deal too.

In this day in age where “going green” is such a huge deal in the world, there is no doubt that any opportunity for someone to help out would have a large impact. And with the vast accessibility of Facebook, (Lil) Blue Cove is a great method to reach out and help the environment.

The method is definitely working too. All ready, the community for this game has effectively saved 59,098,167 square feet of rainforests. If this is what can be accomplished in just a few weeks, imagine what the next couple months will bring. It’s about saving our world, and if playing a game will help do it, then so be it. After all… it is the only Earth we’ve got.

By their very nature, sports are meant to be social outlets for people. The spirit of competition and teamwork brings people together as one unit and through this, social bonds are established.

Such friendships have spread to the virtual world as well. There, people compete with each other in any number of game genres: Be it through cooperative, head-to-head, or tournament based play, this competition creates both rivals and friends alike.

This is the mark of a truly strong game. The social features that bring people together in competition is what makes any game, but especially a social game, worth playing. There have been many games on Facebook in which a social premise seemed lacking, but in the spirit of competition, Tennis Mania serves an ace.

At first glance, Tennis Mania looks like your standard pen and paper Facebook RPG. You start out with limited money and energy, and as you do various tasks, it drains away. You start with level one skills (backhand, forehand, footwork, and serve) and have to spend money to train them to the next level. As one might suspect, each level costs more money than the last to train in.

In order to use up energy, the player has to play tennis matches. The key word here is play. When the player chooses to start a match they can either play against their friends or choose to play against a random player (in which the computer seems to pair you up with similarly skilled people). Once you have your opponent, you have two options: Option “A” is your typical RPG option where you see both player’s stats and can “Simulate a Match.” The match is “played” and you see your result. Option “B” is where you actually play in a Flash powered game against a simulated version of your friends.

The computer plays with all the stats of your friends, and while it takes a while to get used to, quickly becomes a great deal of fun. Granted it is not quite the same as playing your friends themselves, but it is an entertaining representation of them. Of course, if you loose you may feel a bit silly, but if you win you will earn a small some of cash to spend on more training.

As would normally be expected, the game also provides other social features such as the options to issue and accept challenges from other players (you can challenge specific people or leave them open to the public). This incorporates large cash sum bets on each of the matches that can either break you or quickly make you very rich depending on your skill level, thus adding a whole new level of depth to the game that keeps players eager for new challenges.

By all means, if you haven’t given Tennis Mania a try, you certainly should. It has a number of the familiar choices that a typical Facebook RPG has, but beyond that, it offers a greater level of depth to the social and competitive nature of sports style games. The added Flash game that allows you to play virtual versions of your friends provides a tremendous amount of fun that lasts significantly longer than most Facebook RPGs and the challenge system keeps a steady stream of new goals flowing for the veteran players. This is not an app to fault on: Tennis Mania is certainly a game worth noticing.

Just in time for the World Series, Social Gaming Network has released the its 3^rd Wii-like sports title for Apple’s iPhone. Of course, considering that there have been well over 2 million downloads for iGolf and iBowl, it’s not entirely unexpected that SGN would pursue more titles in the family.

As with SGN’s other iPhone titles, iBaseball uses the built in accelerometer as the primary input control for the game. You start by pitching either fastballs or curveballs in an attempt to strike out three batters. As you might expect, you play by actually “pitching” your iPhone, and the accelerometer picks up on the speed and angle of your arm. Furthermore, the game tends to enhance each of your pitches to more “professional” speeds that average over 100 mph, so you don’t have to worry too much about hurling your phone through a window (assuming you haven’t all ready).

After you have struck out the three batters, it is your turn to bat. The batting is simple enough as you just watch the ball come down the plate and swing at the appropriate time. If you manage to connect, you will hit the ball into ground-ball, pop-fly, or line drive and based on the timing of your swing, you will either knock the ball fair or foul.

The game also allows you to challenge your friends, but as with the other titles, the challenges are asynchronous. According to CEO, Shervin Pishevar, however, head-to-head play will be coming soon.

With the development of this 3^rd Wii-like title, there has been a little bit of interesting debate about SGN’s series of sports games for the iPhone. While a large number of people do enjoy the games, more and more are beginning to request deeper game play that provides more than a few minutes of entertainment, as the initial novelty is beginning to incur some diminishing returns.

Now with three titles, a number of people are hoping to soon see improvements to each of these titles as far as competition, smoother controls, and more in depth game play (check out the touchArcade forums for some of the latest banter). Of course, at the same time, people are still hoping to see new titles as well.

Considering SGN’s track record for quality games, it is unlikely that these concerns will be ignored. Multiple improvements, as well as new games, are no doubt on the way (some are already known for sure), and with these three games serving as the backbone for SGN titles on the iPhone, the quality of new applications or even iterations of old ones is bound to be outstanding.

All that is needed now is one of those Wii-Mote rubber sleeves for the iPhone….

Top social game developer Playfish announced today that it has raised a $17 million round of financing from Accel Partners and Index Ventures. Along with Zynga and SGN, Playfish becomes the third social game developer to have raised over $20 million for the creation of a new wave of social games.

Playfish will use the money to build out its game studios around the world.  It already has offices in San Francisco, Beijing, and Norway.

As we noted last week, Playfish sports 4 of the top 10 applications on Facebook. Collectively, the company has over 10 million monthly active users on Facebook alone, though it will be moving onto other platforms soon. Playfish released its first games on MySpace in recent weeks.

“Social gaming is a significant evolution in gaming and is in some ways a return to the roots of games,” says Playfish CEO Kristian Segerstrale. “Our games are designed around social emotions – people play our games with the same people that they would play cards, play board games or go bowling with in the real world. Sharing the game experience with friends makes it more compelling and fun and results in more play time, viral distribution and better monetization potential over time.”

With the investment, Kevin Comolli from Accel Partners and Ben Holmes from Index Ventures will both join Playfish’s board of directors. Congratulations to the Playfish team for bringing more top tier investors on board.

Over time, our expectations for new games has evolved exponentially. In the beginning, it was thought that blinking pixels on a screen were the pinnacle of graphical capabilities and presentation, but as the game development industry grew beyond a garage hobby and the technology began to flourish, the graphical expectations of new titles began to rise as well.

A similar trend is happening with social games on Facebook. At first, games looked simple (and many still do). They were point and click games that most consisted of RPGs and sending gifts to friends. However, as time passed, these games followed a path similar to that of their mainstream counterparts. Now social games are beginning to incorporate cleaner graphics, stylized presentation, and fitting sound effects that once seemed home only on other platforms.

Below are the Top 10 best looking Facebook Games. Please note that this list is purely subjective, and by all means feel free to leave your opinions in the comments.

10. Bubble Town – I-play

Bubble Town is certainly one of the older games on Facebook, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve a spot on this list. The game is a simple puzzle game app in which the player shoots little bubble people at their counterparts in an attempt to clear the board before time expires.

What makes this game better looking than others, however, is not only the clean graphics, but the style incorporated with the bubble people: They fall asleep, yawn if you don’t hit them, and generally respond to what is happening around them. These are not “necessary” features, but the added style makes it stand out amongst the crowd.

9. Tennis Mania – Viral, s.r.o.

This may look like a typical Facebook RPG, but it is in fact much more than that. Yes, the RPG element is very clean and good looking, but so are a lot of other RPGs out there. What catches the eye most in Tennis Mania is the actually tennis game you can play when matched up against your friends.

This minor Flash application built into the main game adds a great deal of style to the entirety of the game and the added effort really goes a long way in improving the game as a whole.

8. KickMania! – TheBroth

Okay, graphically this game is decent. However, it isn’t simply the graphics that earn KickMania! the #8 spot. In fact, a lot of the game outside the actual kicking part is rather bland. What stands out with this app is the actual act of kicking. The rag-doll animation used when you kick your friends through the air is one of the most entertaining things to watch as they flail about, crashing through walls and across explosives. This impressive and gratifying animation earns KickMania! a solid spot on this list.

7. Stack’em – Gogogic

Simple and clean graphics: This means a lot in any game, but for Stack’em it’s the animation and comedic style that really adds to the game’s look and feel. Dropping those sheep is truly amusing to watch as they flail about helplessly and bounce about the stack as you drop them from the hands of a stylized farmer.

Not only do the sheep facial animations bring value to the table, but the sound effects and music really add a great satirical feel to the whole package.

6. Bowling Buddies – Playfish

One of Playfish’s older titles, Bowling Buddies brings clean 3D looking graphics to Facebook. What probably stands out most, however, is the stylized, almost caricature-like avatars meant to represent the player.

Granted there are better looking games out there, technically, but Playfish really encompasses an overall style and feel to this game. Everything fits and feels so colorful and animated. Even with the older looking graphics, that style really stands out in a crowd.

5. Who Has The Biggest Brain? – Playfish

These very simple cell shaded graphics go a long way in showing what can be done with flat, 2D artwork. Everything in the game has this sort of “game-show” type of feel to it that can truly be appreciated. The animations are smooth, the game is bright and cheerful, and the sound effects perfectly tie everything together.

4. YoVille – Zynga

This avatar game looks great with its isometric view and interactive environment. Because of the choice of perspective, and the time taken on the visual look, the game feels more like a desktop game than a Facebook application.

Also, with all the decorations and items you can collect and use in your virtual home, Zynga really had to put in a great deal of effort to make it all fit together fluidly. Its almost feels like an online Flash version of The Sims. Regardless, it looks great.

3. GeoChallenge – Playfish

This game is basically Who Has The Biggest Brain?, but with a newer and slightly better look. With the number of moving parts and characters, this game really feels like a bustling airport (or at least as much as a 2D Flash airport can bustle). Also, the characters are all wonderfully designed, and really create a silhouette image that you can remember long after you’ve finished the game (that’s not to say that other Playfish characters don’t stand out, this one just has more).

Of course, there is also the fact that the mini games are all highly stylized and animated. Nothing is static and everything feels alive and moving. As was said earlier in this list, this is a style choice that isn’t necessarily needed for a game, but it really makes it much better.

2. Space Movers: The Bloom Initiative – SGN

Space Movers: The Bloom Initiative was made in conjunction with the Arbor Day Foundation. It’s bright and colorful artwork, combined with multiple moving parts, memorable characters that have their own unique personality that is shown through their animations, as well as perfectly suited sounds and music truly puts this Facebook title on bar with any desktop game.

1. Lucky Strike Bowling – Large Animal Games

By far one of the most beautiful games on Facebook. This bowling game, while simple truly raises the bar on the capabilities of this space. This title easily compares with any desktop game. The graphics are a beautiful 3D rendering and the game play is filled with dynamic camera angles and perspectives.

The game also incorporates a great sense of lighting and sound that really creates the feel of a living, breathing, bowling alley. If for nothing else, it is worth checking out just to see what can be done.

This is a guest post by Andrew Chen, reprinted from his blog. For more great articles by Andrew on games, product analytics, and viral marketing, check out his blog here.

Found on YouTube: Mario and Luigi’s insightful commentary on MySpace top friends

Cultural differences are always interesting!
I got interested in the games world first as a consumer of video games, but after I worked on an unsuccessful project to monetize MySpace using ads, I got interested in the monetization potential of virtual items in social products. For the last 2 years, I’ve been wandering around on the edges of the games industry to try to cross-pollinate some of the best ideas with what I knew from the web world.

Early on, after attending the Game Developer Conference and speaking with folks from many of the top publishers and studios, it became clear that there were lots of interesting cultural differences between web folks and games folks. I wrote some of these points down a while back and I thought I’d share them.

I want to caveat that these are purely anecdotal and my own experiences, and I’m sure that I’m overgeneralizing I also think that people that come from the casual games world (and in particular flash games) are much more similar to web entrepreneurs – the aliens I talk about are mostly big packaged games people. So please share your opinions in the comments if you disagree or have another perspective.

But here are the major ones:

1. Eyeball worship vs. Game genre worship
2. Distribution vs. Content
3. Utility vs. Experience
4. Open vs. Content gating

Let’s drill into each of these…

Eyeball worship vs. Game genre worship
First off, one of the big surprises for me was that many of the folks working at big games companies like EA have a very specific type of game they want to work on. Many of the folks I talked to wanted to make so-called “hardcore games” – very rich, deep, FPS/RTS/RPG/etc packaged games that sell at Walmart, and were completely uninterested in anything else.

While I excited about building simple Web-distributed games that could be played by millions of people, for many of these folks, if it didn’t look like a game, didn’t have monsters and guns, it was uninteresting. In fact, there was a pretty derisive view of folks who make so-called casual games as lower in the food chain.

This reminds me of a project I worked on a long time ago in the video space, pre-YouTube. I had interviewed a bunch of art students at Unviersity of Washington to talk to them about publishing their videos online, and they were very uninterested. For these art students, they had such a romantic sense of what it would be like to show your work in a theater, at Cannes, that the idea of millions of people watching a 400×415 pixel player seemed completely uninteresting. Perhaps the hardcore games folks I talked to felt the same way about their work.

The analogous concept in the web world is probably that a lot of entrepreneurs only want to work on “cool” startups involving fancy technology. They are less likely to think along the edges for products targeted at different (possibly more mainstream demographics). I also think that web folks get more excited about the eyeballs factor than anything else. The more simple, stupid, and widely used something is, the better!

Distribution vs. Content
Another interesting difference was the perspectives around content. For many of the games people I met, the content is everything. How good your game is perceived to dictate its ultimate success. I think this makes sense in an industry where distribution is essentially commoditized! The big publishers have many of the same relationships, and games developers in general have been outsourcing their distribution expertise out to the publishers for the past couple decades. As a result, it seems clear that the only place to compete is in the content of the game, rather than in the distribution.

Compare this to the web entrepreneurs who have to deal with the constantly changing landscape of distribution. Many of the top Facebook apps were simpler, dumber, and better distributed than their competition, and distribution in itself can be a competitive advantage. Eric Ries recently wrote about the distribution techniques that have recently been found for the iPhone App Store – these techniques include a primitive version of SEO via the App Store search function, as well as folks who constantly release updates to their app to try to get on the New and Hot list.

And of course, ad networks, affiliates, and leadgen companies represent the logical extreme in the distribution equation. Because they are selling other peoples’ products, they focus exclusively on distribution and differentitation via novel techniques and analytics.

It’s clear that both communities have a lot to learn from each other on this one, but because of the fact that distribution is extraordinarily important in the new social network ecosystem, I think this is why we’ve seen the top games coming from Web teams rather than Games teams. (With the possible exception of Playfish!)

Utility vs. Storytelling experience
One of my favorite cultural differences is the way web folks think about the role of their products in peoples’ lives. There’s often talk about making your product as “useful” as possible, or “social utility.” In the world of utility, oftentimes the main factors that are discussed involve terms like:

• pain points
• efficiency
• productivity
• ROI
• maximizing
• etc

These terms are great, and the world is better off for having products that make us all better worker bees!

Compare this to many games discussions, like the ones I sat through at GDC, which involved concepts like:

• characters
• plots and storytelling
• mood
• music
• fun
• etc

Now, I think that the productivity-inclined have their claim to the world, as does the fun/entertainment games people. But the intersection of this, in web media, is where the fun happens. For example, is the fact that Facebook has such an efficient newsfeed system a good thing, or a bad thing? I think it depends on whether or not you feel like the process of exploring peoples’ profiles and clicking through things as a good thing or not? In the MySpace world, given the degree of customization, you might argue that it’s more game-like in the way that it encourages people to click around and explore, whereas Facebook is clearly more efficiency-oriented.

Both approaches have their advantages, of course – and there are times where I use Facebook as a utility and times when I’m using it for time-wasting. The tradeoff between the two approaches are definitely interested to think about as your product is being constructed.

Open vs. Content gating
Related to the efficiency versus experience distinction, web products are very likely to make things very open and give the users all the features upfront. It’s very rare that you constrain what the user can do, and as a result, there’s no concept of leveling or grinding. As a result, oftentimes the experience that you get at the beginning is the same as the experience you have later on.

Games, on the other hand, have a clear concept of advancement and otherwise “content gating” their users. By withholding levels, powerups, weapons, trophies, etc., it creates motivation from the user to keep on playing. They say, “just… one… more… game…!!”

The Wikipedia article on this is instructive:

The most common form of level treadmill is the practice of killing monsters for experience points. The player constantly chases after the next level in order to be able to defeat the next slightly stronger monster. The outcome of MMORPG combat tends to depend more on the character’s numerical statistics than the player’s skill. Thus there is usually little for a player to do beyond clicking an attack button until he or she wins, or is forced to flee when nearing death. So whether fighting small rats or large demons, the player is performing essentially the same actions, the only difference being the larger numbers in his or her character and the monster’s attributes. In the eyes of players, the player is essentially running forward while going nowhere, as on an exercise treadmill.

As a result of this treadmill, there is a constant pressure for players to stay engaged and retained as customers. But the flipside of this is that it’s not enough to build one product – instead you build 70 product variations, and call each one a level!

Other observations?
I’d love to hear other thoughts on this issue, and any places where I’m overgeneralizing Comment away!

During the Tokyo Game Show, Jim Crowley, head of MMO developer Turbine, revealed that the popular The Lord of The Rings Online would be introducing a new social networking site specifically for the game’s players using ideas for the site from Facebook and MySpace, Eurogamer reports.

Crowley went on to say that the site will be like “a version of Facebook or MySpace that sits directly on top of the gaming world. This is a fully-featured, rich, robust social network. It has every single feature that you would find in the major commercial social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.”

Since its release, Lord of the Rings Online has seen significant growth in its user base, and this new social networking site, hopes to expand even further when it’s released 2008 running up to the release of the future expansion, The Mines of Moria.

The site promises to allow registered participants to challenge themselves and their friends to earn special deeds that unlock unique rewards including exclusive videos, images, and in-game items that will aid them on their journey. There will also be some unlockables for characters, and unlike the MMO itself which needs to be installed, the site will be able to be accessed anywhere – making it a convenient way to get that little extra slice of LOTRO when players can’t login at a friends house, internet café, or work.

But is this something that will become the norm in the world of MMO gaming? As far as I’m aware, no other MMO in Europe or America has the same idea. However, it seems like the networking site has been well received by MMO gamers.

Games have invaded social sites for a while now, is it time that social sites invade games?

We have just compiled the latest numbers and here are the Facebook gaming charts for October 24, 2008.

As you can see there were some pretty massive movements in the Facebook gaming world over the last month. Clearly, the impact of the Facebook redesign is being felt by different social game developers in different ways.

• Lil Green Patch extended its lead by nearly half a million monthly active users to 6.5 million total, remaining the largest game on the Facebook Platform. Green Patch also quietly released sister title Lil Blue Cove recently, which has been growing quite quickly.
• Kidnap broke onto the charts with over 2 million monthly active users. Interestingly, Kidnap was originally developed as a sponsored app by Context Optional for the Travel Channel. It’s not the first time that’s happened, Area/Code developed Parking Wars for A&E earlier this year and it grew to over 500,000 monthly actives.
• Playfish‘s Pet Society gained nearly 750,000 monthly active users since last month to reach nearly 2.5 million in October, while Who Has the Biggest Brain lost 600,000 to 2.9 million. Overall, Playfish retained its leadership position with 4 apps in the top 10.
• Several large games saw drops in their monthly traffic numbers – Owned, Friends For Sale, Nicknames, and Speed Racing.
• Zynga had a mixed month in terms of growth, but held its position with 4 games in the top 25. Texas HoldEm held at 5.1 million monthly actives nicely, and YoVille grew by over 350,000 users to over 2.3 million. However, My Heroes Ability fell by 300,000 and Scramble by 250,000 during the same time.
• Two additional games emerged on the leaderboards as well. TheBroth‘s KickMania and Tetris Online’s Tetris Friends each showed impressive gains of around 750,000 monthly actives, starting from scratch.

As KickMania, Tetris Friends, and Kidnap show, ample opportunity exists for new games to emerge and grow quickly – even on the new Facebook. At the same time, top game developers must build increasingly engaging and social experiences to stay on top – otherwise, Facebook game audiences can fade away quickly.

Hatchery, developed by Kramaley Games, is a Tomagachi-like creature-hatching game that tasks you with nurturing and caring for an insipidly cute animal.

First, you buy an egg (or get sent one via friend invite) and then nurture it to life by warming it up and giving it attention. The egg, like all the stages of life in this game, is rendered purely in icon fashion (and thus without animation). When the egg is near hatching, you see a crack in your egg, and eventually it will give rise to a baby. The babies are cute little characters reminiscent of pokemon that require feeding, cleaning, playing, etc.

You can spent points on any of the things used to remedy a cold, hungry, or bored creature and then hopefully watch as your creature levels up and becomes fully grown. When fully grown, the creatures are self-sufficient. You can keep them around if you like (showing your grown creatures is one way to gauge success in the game) or you can send them to their deaths, er, battle at Battle School (a partner app called Battle Masters where you can take those cute little monsters and battle them against each other). This latter option seems against the maternal instinct you seem to be rewarding throughout the game, but let’s get back to this review…

The developers do a good job of making this a social game. You get points by either subscribing to partner offers or by taking care of other people’s eggs and babies. There is a forum, a ranking list, an update guide and a FAQ section. The interface is a bit wonky – you can feed your creature but there’s no real “back” button to then go and bathe it. The game screen is also sandwiched between a lot of ads which makes it hard to discern what’s part of the game and what’s not. There are also occasional instances of HTML showing through, which is just sloppy.

There are a few games like Hatchery on Facebook, and this is one of the better ones. It dances around having animations to depict the creatures, which is a shame because that’s really the next step to compete with the big boys. A better interface and some de-bugging would also do this app wonders.

Gameplay: 7

Developers: 7

Cute factor: 5 (honestly, puppies and kittens have more appeal to me, sorry)

There is always a balance to be kept in game development. One must weigh the values of design, story, community, presentation, and whatever else is applicable to the game genre. In a perfect world, developers would be able to produce games of near perfect value in all of these categories, but in reality, this is just not possible. The resources going into a game must be balanced and focus on what is most important for the game being created. To increase the value of one part of the game usually means that another part must be sacrificed. However, there is one aspect to all games that should never, ever be sacrificed in any way: Design.

Lucky Strike Bowling is easily the most beautiful looking game on Facebook. The graphics are incredible, the sound is flawless, the lighting is phenomenal, and the overall look and feel is truly top notch. It is perfectly clear where Large Animal Games incorporated most of their resources. Unfortunately, as fantastic as the game looks, it doesn’t offer much significant new game play beyond the eye candy.

Lucky Strike plays like any standard bowling game. You move the ball into position, click for the power meter, click again for the spin and release. Now, repeat this for 10 frames. After the initial awe from the graphics wears off, the game becomes a bit boring.

There are other features to the game. You can challenge friends like most other Facebook applications – but the game play is still the same. You can also attempt to earn trophies and awards for achievements such as “Play 50 Games.”

The developers also saw fit to include a means to earn credits and purchase new bowling balls. Each ball has its own unique style and costs a decent number of credits. You earn a few by playing solo, but acquire significantly more by challenging and defeating your friends. This does serve in stimulating some social play, but beyond a re-skinned graphic (or maybe collection purposes if you are a PackRat kind of person), there doesn’t seem to be any real change to game play, thus there is no actual point to purchasing them.

Overall, the fact that Large Animal Games spent such a large amount of time on the design of Lucky Strike is impressive, and the effort shows. The game is something that rivals the production value of many desktop games. Successful bowling games have had to find new means and controls to emulate the bowling feel, and the closer developers come to that goal, the more successful the game becomes. However, Lucky Strike sticks with the point and click method and almost rolls a gutter ball.