Inside Social Games

Facebook has grown dramatically in the last year, now reaching over 250 million users per month around the world. However, there is always room for more growth around the world. As such, foreign developers are increasingly creating apps and games for the platform. Berlin based social gaming company, wooga (which stands for “world of gaming”) has just released the latest game from a European developer, called Brain Buddies.

It’s a quiz game, of course, and somewhat reminiscent of the Playfish title, Who Has the Biggest Brain? Players are tasked with completing brain-stretching mini games – for an enigmatic looking alien – that test one’s memory, logic, mathematical, and visual acuity skills.

Presented in a clean Flash format set in a space-age, alien world, the four games are very easy to play and understand (some of which will also be familiar to veteran players of Who Has The Biggest Brain?). Of course, “easy” is a relative term. While the games are simple to pick up, it becomes difficult to attain the intellectual goals you are hoping for.

Unknown to the user at first glance are a number of hidden mini-games that can be unlocked as players improve their score. If you are good with names, then you’ll probably like the memory games better. If you enjoy numbers, then the mathematics will likely be your favorites. However, in between those come different variations that tend to be a bit more specific to your personal mental agility. For example, one memory based game is more of a pattern recognition test (clicking spaces on a grid that held an object a few seconds earlier) while one of the bonus games is more object oriented (X object was removed, which one is it?).

Regardless of what suits your fancy specifically, this is certainly an entertaining app for connoisseurs of thinking games. The game was launched in eight different languages which, according to founder and managing director, Jens Begemann, is “paying off nicely.” In fact, Begemann goes on to say that Brain Buddies is “probably the most international game of its kind on Facebook.” With nearly 3 million monthly active users to date (roughly five weeks after release), a reach now within over 200 countries, and the recent investment by Holtzbrinck Ventures (investment amounts are still unknown), things are looking good for Brain Buddies.

AppData for Brain Buddies