Inside Social Games

Mob Science, a developer of social games, is trying something interesting in the market with Sea Garden: cloning the biggest app on Facebook, Lil Green Patch. Unlike Lil Green Patch’s theme of growing fruit, Sea Garden does it with sea creatures. Players are incentivized to send different creatures to each other – the more you send to friends the bigger the variety of creatures you can choose from.

While this sounds eerily similar to Lil Green Patch, it doesn’t stop there. Mob Science is also donating money to different ocean-saving charities, such as the Surfrider Foundation, for every 10 creatures you send to friends. It’s a pretty smart idea, and has brought Sea Garden to #15 in the Facebook game charts.

In terms of game play, it’s a very ‘what you see is what you get’ with the game’s main pull being its ‘green fingers’ approach. While it’s fun if you have plenty of friends to play with you, Sea Garden’s overall lack of features right now makes its replay value low for many. Forcing players to earn plenty of ‘SeaBucks’ currency before they can even start getting into the meat of the game might not make as much sense as letting players start with a few items to clean out their garden and get to grips with what’s going on.

Mob Science seems to be taking a step in the right direction – and with its early success, we’ll see if any other (Lil) Green Patch clones emerge in the next few weeks!