Inside Social Games

Here’s a benevolent little application by the name of Willy’s Sweet Shop. The game is developed by Mob Science, and is rather similar to their previous title, Sea Garden. However, what is so generous about this app is that the more you play, the more the developers donate to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. In fact, the game so far has generated (according to developers) approximately $7000+ in charity.

Like its predecessor, Sweet Shop lets players buy and send various virtual candies as gifts to use in their very own candy store. Each day you are allotted a small amount of “sweetbucks” and presented with a little maintenance issue for your store.

As with anything else, you have to take care of what you own, and every so often, you will come back to the store to see some new form of challenge to be handled (i.e. giant ants). As such, you need to purchase tools that can get rid of the issue. Each tool has a set number of charges, and can be used for not only your store but for the stores of your friends as well.

This is where the bulk of the game play comes into play. One objective of the game is to arrange your sweet shop and make it look great so you can show it off, but to do so you need something to decorate with. In order to do that, you need money, and the way you get money is rather slow unless you have friends. As was mentioned before, you can purchase tools to maintain your and your friends’ shops, but doing so earns you some extra cash. Thus, the more friends you have, the more potential income is available to you, and the more income you have, the cooler store you can create. Of course, having more friends also equates to more gifts as well, and who doesn’t love that?

Regardless, the game is very simple, and those who enjoy games like Sea Garden will likely enjoy Willy’s Sweet Shop as well. Granted, the game is a little bit more of the same, and it can be a bit slow to get started since you need a lot of friends to join in order to really get going, but the cause is honorable and it is still fun.