Let’s face it, not everyone has a green thumb. Okay, most people don’t have one, but that doesn’t mean you can’t at least have some form of garden. That’s where a subtle breed of zen-like Facebook titles come into play. We’ve seen them as far back as June of last year with Hive7’s Zen Garden, and though they have never caught on strongly, there is something to be said about the gentle, relaxing nature of virtual gardening — and the success of other simulator games on Facebook.

Perhaps a developer will find the perfect combination of social gaming features and beautiful plants. That in mind, we took a look at a new beta release from Canadian developer, Springbay Studio, and their current Facebook title, Living Garden.

It’s a simple app that has players growing and caring for a variety of different flora as they decorate their own virtual space. Ranging in size from a simple container to a farm field, to a back yard, players watch as their seedlings slowly sprout and bloom.

Okay, to be fair, it actually isn’t that slow. Whenever the player logs in, mousing over a plant will display what it needs, be it water, nutrition, pruning, or “magic.” Once all of the plants requirements are met, it will begin growing to the next stage of development, which often only takes a few minutes.

The “magic” element appears to be what causes your flower buds to actually bloom. But there’s not a big barrier here, as the element is not terribly hard to get. It only costs a small amount of in-game currency and it’s also given as a reward every day.

Unfortunately, as an early beta version, the caring element feels a bit buggy. Perhaps it is intended, but as the flowers are growing, it seems that you constantly have to prune and water them. Granted, doing it constantly does earn a lot of experience towards new levels – which, like most games of the virtual space ilk acts as a gating mechanism for earning better decorations – it does feel like nothing is getting done.

Of course, periodically the plants do change, and even though they are static images, they don’t look half bad. In fact, you can actually make some very beautiful looking scenes as you expand to bigger gardening palettes.

The only real disconnect, artistically, comes from the avatar. Honestly, it is nice to have, but it has a sort of paper cut-out look that feels a bit different from the rest of the game. Everything else is vibrant and shaded, but the personal character is a bit flat. Again, it doesn’t look bad, it just doesn’t seem to fit.

Another nice thing that Living Garden does is a small social element. Yes, yes, you can visit and help out friend’s gardens, but Springbay takes a page out of SnappyTouch’s book – the developer behind iPhone app, Flower Garden – in the form of gifting.

After the player has fully grown their flowers, they can cut them, and while selling them is an option, they can also choose to send them as gifts. It’s not a lot, and yes, other players can grow the exact same thing, but it’s the thought that counts, right? The feature actually does put a nice personal touch to gifting, and something we hope to see expanded upon, perhaps with bouquets or custom made flowers.

Certainly, custom flora would prove most useful as, currently, the selection of decorative items is a bit lacking, but then again, that’s a common complaint for just about any virtual space application that just goes live. More likely than not, this will be beefed up as time goes on.

That said, the only really significant complaint is that the game doesn’t really seem relaxing. Aesthetically, it will appeal to many people, but the mood of the game is, well, stagnant. This goes beyond just some form of movement. Apps like these benefit from peaceful sound effects and music, but the only sound in this app is an outdoor ambience loop of birds that is a bit too short to be effective. Consider the sort of music one might hear on a tropical beach, the gentle melody of a classical score, or the zen sounds one listens to during Tai Chi. Those are the best soundtracks for gardening games. Of course, that’s just an opinion.

In the end, Living Garden feels like it’s still growing. It has some kinks to work out, but the core of the game is still well rooted.

Leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers is putting $100 million towards funding developers building for Apple’s forthcoming iPad device. This comes on top of the $100 million it has already put in to companies building for the App Store iPhone/iPod touch.

Sectors the firm will focus on include mobile healthcare initiatives, personalized media, mobile education and mobile commerce — and mobile gaming — partner John Doerr says. The so-called iFund has already put money in to familiar developer names like Booyah, Cooliris, Gogii, InMobi, Ngmoco, Pinger, Shazam, Shopkick, and Zynga.

Zynga isn’t adding much more about its plans for the iPad, although it was present at KPCB’s launch event today. “Zynga games are already available on the iPhone and we are very excited about the iPad and its abilities to bring gaming to more consumers,” a company spokesperson tells us. “Gaming will be one of the biggest applications on the iPad and we will have our popular games available on the device soon.”

Of course, the iPad allows any developer with existing apps in the App Store to easily port those titles to the iPad. The problem is that the iPad, we and many others believe, is a uniquely different device. With a nearly 10-inch screen and a variety of other performance-enhancing features, many game developers believe it will provide new opportunities. Ngmoco and Booyah got on stage to talk more about their experiences so far — both are looking at building specifically for the iPad, of course. Quotes from TechCrunch’s live-blog:

Keith Lee, Booyah: When we saw the iPhone, we knew we had to leave our jobs at Blizzard. Camera, GPS, this was huge for new experiences. 4 months ago we launched MyTown. It’s the most popular location-based social game. It’s real-world Monopoly. We’ve been able to hit 1.6 million registered users. 130,000 new users a week. We’ve always been in the top 50 of the charts. People spending 70 million a day (per user) in our game. We have 4 million daily check-ins.

Neil Young, ngmoco: We believed the iPhone could revolutionize mobile gaming, and the iFund backed us early. We’ve have over 30,000,000 downloads of our software. We’ve had 15 top 10 (total) apps. We Rule is huge now. We run the plus network, over 20,000,000 downloads of those games. Every single day users play over 20 million minutes of ngmoco games. The iPad will revolutionize gaming in the home. The iPad radically reshapes the way you interact with software. We’ll have 7 applications available at the launch of the iPad. All built specifically for the iPad. And yes, We Rule is coming to the iPad.

In total, Ngmoco plans to release the following games: Flick Fishing, Castlecraft, NBA Hotshot, Charadium, We Rule, GodFinger and WarpGate.

Note that mobile social kingdom-building game We Rule just came out earlier this month and is already number 4 on Apple’s App Store top “Free Apps” rankings. Whatever Young means by “huge,” the game certainly seems to be, compared to most other free rivals. Also — and this is key — it is also #7 on Apple’s “Top Grossing” apps rankings. It reaches more users through being free, then makes money in part from selling virtual goods.

Judging from leaks, gaming titles should be well-represented when the iPad ships to consumers this Saturday.

We’ve been covering the rise of free-to-play mobile games that grow using social features and monetize through virtual goods. Like Ngmoco and Zynga, we expect this area has the potential to grow significantly this year in the way that social gaming grew on Facebook and other social web sites over the last couple of years.

Scoreloop is launching a new version of its white-label Core Social software development kit (SDK) today, a service that provides social features to mobile games. With it will come the support for in-game currencies as well as downloadable content. This is a significant upgrade for the company, as it comes at a time when mobile game developers are starting to get more traffic and revenue by making their games more social.

Essentially, through Scoreloop, developers will now be able to monetize their mobile titles through the virtual goods model as well as charging for new, downloadable content. As an example, FDG Entertainment, developers behind Parachute Panic, say that Scoreloop is already “powering our new downloadable themes and in-game currency.” To that end, developers can choose to let players earn the items through in-game means, or charge them a small fee, such as $0.99. As for the payment processing itself, this is done through Apple’s App Store.

Rivals, like OpenFeint, have already been moving in this direction — that company introduced a version of OpenFeint X in February, which includes virtual currency options.

Nevertheless, Marc Gumpinger CEO of Munich, Germany-based Scoreloop tells us that this Scoreloop upgrade has potential much greater then just in-game themes and virtual goods.

Through the new upgrade, actual game features are sharable. Confused? Gumpinger says the upgrade will allow players the ability to actual work with their friends in Scoreloop-powered titles, rather than just competing via challenges and leaderboards. As an example, and on the most basic level, users can issue challenges to their friends and place virtual goods or currencies on the table as a wager, granting significantly more meaning to the now-old concept of “beat my high score.”

However, the concept goes much deeper than just this. Game designers will now actually be able to incorporate mechanics that let users asynchronously work together in a single game. Sadly, he couldn’t give us specific games that are using this yet, but general examples include the ability for one player to work on constructing an item, then “gift” it, so-to-speak, to a friend to work on it, and so on. You can see this mechanic in action on Facebook already. Players need to work together to get a killer whale in Rekoo’s virtual fish-caring game Sunshine DeepSea, or call in their friends to fight a boss in the role-playing title Castle Age, for example.

Currently, a number of iPhone developers have started taking advantage of the new Core Social features, including Astro Ranch and Parachute Panic HD. Moreover, as Scoreloop is cross-platform – iPhone, Android, and the iPad – the latter title will appear on Apple’s new device come April 3rd.

FarmVille, PetVille and Texas HoldEm Poker: between these three games, Zynga has gained as many new daily active users on this week’s AppData list as the remainder of the top ten. All three have enjoyed a significant bump in DAU over the past few days, although not enough to move the needle for Zynga as a whole.

But the growth certainly answers the question a reader put to us last week, as to whether FarmVille has peaked. The short answer is no, although many of Zynga’s biggest games do seem to be on a growth plateau. Part of the problem is that FarmVille and its peers have become so large that even a few million new DAU isn’t necessarily a big deal.

Here’s the full list:

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	FarmVille	31,620,643	+1,134,429	+3.72
2.	PetVille	5,828,407	+929,667	+18.98
3.	Texas HoldEm Poker	7,009,693	+490,812	+7.53
4.	Zoo Paradise	574,505	+460,385	+403.42
5.	Zoo World	2,383,368	+333,692	+16.28
6.	Hotel City	357,902	+315,935	+752.82
7.	YoVille	2,178,567	+225,570	+11.55
8.	Bubble Island	1,019,306	+137,181	+15.55
9.	Ameba Pico	135,612	+114,427	+540.13
10.	Tiki Resort	822,493	+111,343	+15.66
11.	Family Feud	127,812	+103,425	+424.10
12.	Ninja Saga	905,202	+91,387	+11.23
13.	Country Life	3,125,005	+85,044	+2.80
14.	Sorority Life	932,140	+76,740	+8.97
15.	Birthday Cards	1,509,405	+70,617	+4.91
16.	Restaurant City	3,662,042	+54,506	+1.51
17.	My Tribe	47,192	+41,540	+734.96
18.	Games	327,095	+39,677	+13.80
19.	Wild Ones	409,376	+32,205	+8.54
20.	Ninja Warz	238,003	+31,416	+15.21

You may notice that Playdom’s new game Social City is conspicuously missing. Never fear, the city builder hasn’t ceased to grow; the inflated DAU numbers Facebook reported as the game took off after its launch are simply leveling out. Tiki Resort, another new Playdom game, did make it in at number 10.

The pairing at numbers four and five of Zoo Paradise, by CrowdStar, and Zoo World, by RockYou, is somewhat ironic. CrowdStar created Paradise as a challenger to Zoo World, and the game has done fairly well so far. But it has a long way to go to catch up to Zoo World’s 19 million monthly active users and 2.3 million DAU.

Hotel City, the latest game from Electronic Arts subsidiary Playfish, is also coming up quickly, with growth really taking off last Friday. In our review, we found the game to be fun if a bit odd at times, unless you think it’s normal to poke your guests as they sleep.

We’ll finish by pointing out Ameba Pico, a quirky Japanese game focused on tiny avatars. It’s the first significant success for CyberAgent, which previously failed to gain traction with a game called NinjaTrick.

While fantasy-themed role playing games have been around for years, new ones with new takes on teh concept continue to launch. Here’s a look at one of them, Haven, from Clipwire Games.

Set in the realm of magic, elves, and kingdoms, Haven takes all of the familiar mafia-style elements – leveling, quests, battle, and so on – and adds in a bit of flair of its own.

The story is a bit weak, as the player starts as an ancient hero of prophecy called Skybrand (who looks like he goes to the same stylist as Zorro). Anyway, after the intro story, it’s off to doing quests.

Each quest has the now-standard “progress meter” in which you develop a level of mastery for it by repeating it umpteen times. For each one there is a small blurb of flavor text that incorporates a small element of story, and each one requires various equipment, soldiers, and a particular general.

These generals, more or less, work the same way they did in Castle Age. Essentially, they must be selected as the primary general (conveniently doable from the quest page via a pop-up prompt) and as players earn overall experience, so does the general. This, in turn, allows that non-player character to increase its own statistics of strength, agility, intelligence, health, courage, and willpower.

Likely, it is the latter two that raises the most eyebrows, so to clarify, these increase the rate in which the general gains experience and their maximum health respectively. Nevertheless, strength, agility, and intelligence might not work exactly as one would think.

These actually increase the abilities of three separate classes that you or your generals can become. This are warriors, rogues, or mages respectively. For the record, it is a bit unclear as to what these three stats do specifically,as the only direction is that they “increase your abilities.” Presumably, these increase your overall combat capability for that class (i.e. damage, defense, health, etc.), and the general’s stats are added to yours, but it is hard to tell for sure.

However, these classes are there for more than just the heck of it. The three are basically rock, paper, and scissors with each one being strong against one, while weak against the other. This comes into play in battling other users. As an example, if you play as a warrior and choose to fight a rogue player, you still have a very strong chance to win, even if they are at a higher level than you.

In regards to battling, players can either duel or invade that person. Unfortunately, it is very unclear as to what the difference between the two, because each time one was used, the battle results looked the same. If you win, you gain experience, gold, and something called Victory Points.

However, to earn these points, one must fight players higher level than themselves, and sadly, the battle rankings aren’t organized very well as you will see users ranging from level one to 40+ sometimes, so a little bit of browsing is needed.

Regardless, these points are actually a very nice incentive to battling; even to players that don’t really care for this sort of thing. The more you fight other users, the more points you earn, and in turn, increase your rank and title (rank one being Civilian and rank 19 being Warlord). As users reach the top tier of each ranking group – broken up by fours – they earn unique and powerful weapons and armor.

This is actually quite valuable, as these items are not easy to come by. Even in the shop, the beginning items are a couple thousand gold and it takes a good while before you can buy even one. Furthermore, there are weapons, shields, helmets, breastplates, and so on, so becoming fully equipped is certainly a task. On the other hand, soldiers, which also boost stats, and estates, which earn periodic income cost significantly less by comparison. We’re not sure why a soldier costs 10 gold while a sword costs 1000 but oh well.

Another interesting element to Haven is that player stats are handled a bit differently. No longer do users have to worry about giving up stats like attack and defense in order to have more stamina and energy. Each level earned through questing and battling earns both skill points to put into energy and stamina, and upgrade points to put into the three class stats – strength, agility, and intelligence. Moreover, if you feel the need to change your class, you can use five skill points to switch.

These high energy and stamina pools certainly help in allowing the user to do more, by themselves at any given time, and is a bit more fun, actually. Of course, as the game goes on, these larger pools are certainly needed, as quests also give you reputation for given areas. This isn’t anything significant yet, but it does have potential.

For each level of reputation a player earns within a quest area, the “people” of that area pay tribute to the user (namely with increasing amounts of gold). From here the player can choose to take the offering or be gracious and tell them to keep it. Player choice like this is always great, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason to be gracious, other than a line of text that says thanks.

Of course, this repeated questing uses up energy. The stamina, on the other hand, and beyond fighting players, is also used for battling bosses. As players find rare items, or complete quests, they can summon massive creatures to battle. Attacking them eats up stamina, and these creatures have massive health pools. However, like in Castle Age, users can issue a Call to Arms on their Facebook feed, asking friends to attack it as well. For each swing they take, experience is earned, and it is a pretty generous amount.

As an additional social element, players can also appoint friends to special slots called “Oath Knights.” These jobs – War Monk, Thief, General, etc. – will grant players significant percentage bonuses to everything from stats to gold and rewards. Granted, this is nothing that hasn’t been done before, but the significant reward for doing so in Haven certainly warrants a mention.

Overall, Haven is a pretty solid RPG from the game-play standpoint. It is a bit lacking in the story department and not wholly original on some major elements (generals, bosses, etc.), but the new features it introduces are definitely noticeable. Frankly, what it really needs is a bit more clarification on what some of these new things do, as the player really does just make educated guesses on a lot of them, and your standard role-playing player likes to be informed so they can make the best decisions each level. Nonetheless, the game only came out this week, so expect it to improve.

It’s been a while since we heard any news from Chinese developer, Rekoo. Having had great successes late last year with both Animal Paradise and Sunshine Ranch, the company has been hard at work with a new social game, Sunshine DeepSea. Having first launched the title in Mixi of Japan, the company tells us that it has been quite successful within that market for both the web and mobile devices. Only recently, however, has the title become available within North America – on Facebook, of course – and it already garners over 300,000 monthly active users.

At its core, Sunshine DeepSea is essentially another virtual aquarium game in the long line of such titles. Players buy fish, feed fish, grow fish, sell fish… one fish, two fish, red fish… wait…. With the coin they earn, gold, as well as the virtual currency, K-Coins, players buy new fish and decorate their virtual space.

However, this is where similarities begin to dissolve. Users do not actually raise an aquarium, but fish within the ocean itself. Granted, there have been games in the past that have stated they were in the ocean – such as Little Rock Pool or Ocean World – but they really only came down to a single static screen. DeepSea, on the other hand, literally lives up to its title.

While the player cannot move about the ocean in a horizontal fashion, they can, in fact, dive down deep; very, very deep. Rather than buy new aquariums, players expand their space vertically into the black abyss of the ocean’s depths. Of course, in order to unlock these depths, players have to be X level and have a chunk of gold on hand. If they do meet the requirements, then new types of fish can now be purchased for those levels of the ocean.

What is most enticing about these deeper areas, however, is a very mainstream concept called indirect control. Players want to get there, not necessarily because they want more room to decorate, but out of curiosity. Hidden in the depths are two silhouetted objects. There is a beady-eyed cave, of sorts, that says something is “shining” inside in one part of the darkened deep, and at the bottom of the ocean is a mermaid. Obviously, the user has no idea what these do, but they are inclined to find out, especially when you click and the game says things like “It is too far to hear that.”

In addition to just these silhouettes, the game also shows a mermaid getting captured (or something) right as you first load the game. Now, presumably, you can save her, but since you have not done the tutorial yet, you have no idea how, as she gets dragged to the bottom of the sea screaming your name for help (great, now we feel guilty, too). Though we haven’t reached the bottom yet, we assume you use a feature called “Sunshine” to melt the ice she is encased in (something that you learn to do when your fish get frozen – don’t ask why they do, they just do).

Socially, Sunshine DeepSea also brings a lot more to the table than other virtual aquarium games. Yes, there are still leaderboards, and you can visit and help out friends, but there are a few things that you have to use your friends to accomplish. For example, players can actually earn a killer whale for their world. However, in order to do so, they must get the help of five friends. This not only looks awesome, but actually doubles all earned experience.

Another power item is a shipwreck, complete with the lights still flickering. Evidently, it can be salvaged, but you must ask friends, via your feed, for salvaging materials such as diving suits, steel, rope, and so on. There are five items needed with five of each after that. Of course, those that play can always gift these as well, and once the total has been acquired, users can explore the wreck in search of treasure. Frankly, it’s a very creative way to use the social graph.

Though DeepSea has come into play past the prime of virtual aquariums, it still holds pretty strong. The only real complaint is that there is an extremely small selection of decorations to choose from. This is made up for slightly by the fact that players can reshape and scale them like images in a Photoshop file, but of the 15 available, four are retextured starfish and two are retextured plants.

Regardless, Sunshine DeepSea has all the fun qualities that Rekoo’s past Facebook apps have had, so it certainly is a nice rendition of a now common genre. True, the decorative elements are a bit limiting, but most of the focus seems to be on the expansion of the world and the fish themselves anyway. Of course, more will likely be flushed out in the future. Basically, if you’re looking for a new virtual aquarium app to play, or you just haven’t found one you like, this is one worth checking out.

MyTown, the iPhone location-based game that has quickly picked up 1.5 million players over the past few months, is reaching into traditional media for partnerships. Developer Booyah announced yesterday that it has struck a deal with the Travel Channel to promote Food Wars, a new show.

Unlike some media partnerships, there’s actually a clear relation between the game and show. In Food Wars, the producers will move between cities in each episode, challenging restaurants to face their menus off against one another — in essence, it’s a competitive game between restaurateurs.

In MyTown, players move around within their own real-life city, buying and upgrading properties to gain levels and collect rent from friends. So to loop in Food Wars, Booyah only needs to add branded items at grocery stores and restaurants, giving players an extra edge and the show the visibility it wants.

Location-based social games have always had clear potential for advertising; Foursquare, the biggest competitor to MyTown, started getting ad and business service deals in mid-2009. Virtual goods and media deals are a more recent phenomenon, though.

Both Foursquare and Gowalla, another large competitor, already have deals with the Travel Channel and others, like Zagat and the New York Times. MyTown, for its part, also has a big campaign with H&M that adds virtual clothing on the game with the help of Appssavvy, which also led the current deal.

Expect more tie-ins that give location gamers a real-world incentive for checking out a brand, or vice versa. Once more marketers figure out how to tie their products to the compulsiveness of gaming, there will be no shortage of similar deals.

Google has been so busy building its Android mobile-focused operating system that its wide range of hardware and carrier partners hasn’t always kept pace, and now there’s four different versions live on various devices around the US and the world. But the company is tackling platform fragmentation this year, industry sources tell Engadget.

First, the company will begin pushing out its own apps in Market, its platform-wide app directory, instead of waiting for each manufacturer and carrier to do the upgrade. This means any user will simply be able to go to the directory and get the latest version of the hottest new Google app. The upgrade method applies to platform components as well, according to the report, so if Google offers a new version of a keyboard, for example, users can get that, too.

This change is good for encouraging users to buy Android devices, as it reduces the likelihood the phone they buy will be saddled with software that quickly becomes obsolete. The more important change for developers, however, is that Google is generally slowing down the development of new versions — it has come out with three in the last six months, for example, versus the iPhone’s one big update a year.

Android’s next version, called Froyo, is due out this year, and Engadget hears the following: “By the time we get to Froyo, the underlying platform — and the API that [developers] need to target — will be reaching legitimate maturity for the first time, which means we should have far fewer tasty treat-themed code names to worry about over the course of an average year.”

Despite the growing number of Android devices in users’ hands, it is not yet a competitive platform for building mobile games versus Apple’s iPhone because of the fragmentation problem. Two Android devices in different parts of the world may have diverging implementations of the operating system due to factors like the carrier’s version upgrade schedule, software customization and the type of hardware. Instead of building multiple versions of Android apps intended for all the possible iterations of Android out there, the iPhone has been more attractive because developers only need to build one app to reach the user base. While that ecosystem is still limited in size and revenue by the lack of means for discovering apps, some developers report making good progress building in social features that monetize.

Many social gaming companies we’ve spoken with say that they’re waiting for the mobile app market to get bigger than the iPhone before it is attractive enough to distract them from the opportunities on Facebook and other web sites. In the meantime, the closest possibility is using Flash (not available on the iPhone) on Android to play games within social networks, as the screenshot shows.

Google wants to change all this, however — game developers who attended GDC earlier this month likely noticed its widespread presence.

So, if the company does indeed make core user-facing upgrades easier to access, and if it does slow down development and help partners catch up this year, the fragmentation problem won’t be so bad. This will in turn strengthen the entire Android ecosystem, in terms of social gaming, because more users could be attracted to the devices, more mobile developers to the platform — and more social gaming companies to mobile app development.

[Screenshot via Redmond Pie.]

Considering how simple the concept is behind trivia games — provide questions and answers — lots of developers have tried to build their own on Facebook. That said, these types of Facebook applications need to attempt to do something a bit out of the ordinary in order to attract users. To that end, a simple game by the name of Triviable, from Big Bad Bird, came across our doorstep. Always wanting to give the smaller titles a chance, we took a closer look.

On the surface, Triviable is your standard trivia game. Offering the categories of geography, history, science, entertainment, the arts, sports, or random selections, players are presented with a series of 10 questions for them to answer. With each query, the player has only a few moments to input an answer before a 10 second timer begins counting down. From here, answers are removed one by one until only the correct one remains.

Of course, there is more to this removal of wrong responses than just the onset of knowledge. Triviable actually has players make wagers before each question is presented, and the longer you wait to answer, the less you win. Oh, and the minimum bet is “$1000″ in virtual currency. Sadly, this bet screen has a tendency to move on to the question before you’ve had a chance to read everything on it and change said wager, most of the time.

Regardless, it’s not a big deal as, obviously, it’s not real money, but, rather, players use it to buy virtual items such as virtual cars, collectibles, jewelry and so on. It’s nothing significant, in the grand scheme of things, but it does add an extra element to displaying your trivia prowess.

Truth be told, however, this rewards method is a bit dated. Static images of fancy merchandise was something we saw nearly two years ago on Facebook. Nonetheless, what did catch our attention, almost immediately, was the fact that the game actually offers chances to win various prizes. Periodically, the developer has a raffle, of sorts, with prizes that can be won. In order to enter, all a player needs to do is play the game.

Furthermore, these prizes are no slouches either. They range from electronics, to even useful appliances and kitchenware. At first glance, the latter might seem odd, but if you do consider the fact that a large number of Facebook users are older women, a fancy set of dishes is probably more useful to them than, say, an iPod touch.

Again, in order to enter, one only has to play a single solo game. However, by challenging friends you get entered five times and if you upgrade to a “Pro Member,” you get 10 entries. Moreover, these latter two play methods earns $50,000 and $100,000 in bonus cash respectively.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really seem like this is that much of a necessity if you know your trivia. If the user knows their stuff well enough, they can not only win a base $4,000 by answering correctly, immediately, but can even double down on the winnings for even more cash. Also, there’s that, and the fact that we couldn’t really find out how to “go pro” anyway.

A lot of Triviable does feel unfinished, and these Pro features, as it were, feels like one of them. It’s not the end of the world, as many young apps slowly build themselves out while open to the public. Furthermore, once all the features are done, all the gifts are added, and so on, Triviable could very well be a nice, quaint trivia game.

If there were any complaints to be had, it would primarily stem from usability. Evidentially, there is no way to stop an existing game and go back to the main screen. Granted, there are menu buttons strewn across the top of the app, but clicking them does nothing. Also, even if you refresh the browser and come back, it still seems to lock you out half the time; even if you click the option “Play Later.”

Another issue we had was that the developers try extremely hard to monetize the game. Now, this isn’t a bad thing, and all the advertisements are hardly a hindrance, but they do push the Pro membership very hard, yet when you click the link, nothing is there yet. As the game is still being built out, that, in and of itself, is not a big deal, but until you are Pro, you cannot choose the categories in which to receive trivia questions. Taking away user control with no way to get it back – that’s a bit annoying.

In the end, Triviable isn’t going to change the world with its developments, but it isn’t bad at all. At worst, it’s just not finished. There are a lot of features that are just “coming soon,” so here’s hoping they come sooner rather than later. Once everything is complete, the whole wagering and incentive to challenging friends (with the sweepstakes) feature is actually very nice. Perhaps something other than buying static images with your winnings would be more prudent, but time will tell, and we hope to see more Triviable improvements in the future.

Digital Chocolate launched its NanoLaunch of Siegeerse characters concept with the release of two games at the end of last week, NanoStar Castles and NanoStar Siege. Users can buy characters in the form of collectible virtual. Each character can be used in different games, where they’ll have distinct abilities

The first title, NanoStar Castles, turned out to be a very well balanced and tactical card game. We went into the NanoStar Siege’s review with high expectations.

If one could compare Siege to any type of game, it would be most closely released to a tower defense title. The objective is to deploy an army of footmen, archers, and “slayers” (archetypical barbarians, it looks like) to defeat an enemy castle. Once deployed, the units will march towards the top of the screen, automatically fighting along the way. However, this is where the tower defense similarities end.

To defeat the enemy, you have to reach their castle and attack it, dropping their morale to zero. However, what makes Siege more interesting is that unit deployment is done via small grid sections of the map. This map is actually, seven invisible grid spaces wide, and when you deploy units at the start of a battle, they will proceed directly from that point to the enemy castle without deviation. What this means, is Siege effectively has the tactical element of flanking (as you can see where enemy defenses are before you begin). You can very literally plan to go around areas with defenses that are too strong. Of course, if you have no units in the way, then that also means the enemy has a clear shot to your castle, so use flanking wisely.

This is where the next level of strategy comes into play: NanoStars characters, from the NanoVerse cards. As with Castles, each NanoStar has its own unique ability that can be employed, actively, by the player during play. There are 151 heroes that can be collected (if that sounds familiar, yes, when we spoke to Trip Hawkins he described NanoStars as “Pokemon for adults”), with each one granting offensive, defensive, or support type abilities.

Just like in Castles, the heroes come with a familiar play on words translated from modern vocabulary to what it might be in a medieval setting. For example, the NanoStar “Shizzledog” becomes an offensive hellhound that can decimate an entire row of enemies, while “Spam” is a support hero that increases the number of units you can deploy when free reinforcements become available.

This becomes another key element to strategy in Siege. As the battle goes on, a meter on the right-hand side of the screen charges. As it does so, different new abilities light up with increasing value: Free Unit, Free Platoon, Free Company, and Regroup Heroes. The first three are fairly self-explanatory, granting increasing numbers of free reinforcements. The last one, however, is the ability to recall all of your hero cards to the playing field. As a balancing mechanism, since they are very powerful, a user can only play a hero card once, but if they wait until the Regroup ability becomes available, then they get a second go around. Obviously, this can become very high risk. Should you receive more units, for example, or wait to try to regroup?

With each battle, players also get more experience and gold. Offensively, (when raiding an enemy castle), the former allows the user to hold more heroes in their hand during a single battle, while the latter allows them to deploy more units at the start of one. However, defensively, things are slightly different.

Yes, you can be attacked. This is a sort of asynchronous multiplayer element. Essentially, players can go into their castle and set up a defensive grid of units, heroes, and defensive structures. The higher level the player, the more hero units they can deploy within three defensive locations consisting of, essentially, the front lines, the main force, and the last stand. The AI will then use whatever heroes you place in these locations at the time the enemy is there. Furthermore, the higher level you are, and the more gold you have, the more units you can place on the field that will automatically defend against raiders.

Frankly, the defense system is actually one of the cooler parts of the game. Unlike other asynchronous titles, and even Castles, you aren’t just fighting against a deck of cards used by the computer on its terms. On the contrary, the player is setting up their terms, so while it’s not quite the same as fighting against them in a live match, it is still fairly close.

That said, there are a few shortcomings to NanoStar siege. They are nothing terribly devastating, but just some features we wish it had. For one, the heroes are fantastic, but the base units are so boring by comparison. Perhaps more will unlock at later levels, but as it stands, there are only three types – the footmen, archers, and slayers. This puts most of the strategic weight on the heroes and really undersells the base units.

In addition to this, the visuals within the actually battle are a bit, underwhelming. They don’t look “bad,” per say, but they do look a bit like they just came off of the Super Nintendo. Thankfully, graphics hardly make a game notable in this day and age — social gamers don’t play because they like the graphics quality — and since Siege is fun, we’re especially forgiving.

Overall, NanoStar Siege feels a bit stronger than NanoStar Castles. Likely, this is just a difference in tastes. Siege is a little faster paced and requires users to think a bit more on their feet, while Castles is strictly turn-based and allows them time to plan out each move and strategy. Conversely, the asynchronous play for Siege also feels a bit stronger, and while Castles does have synchronous play, it is the asynchronous that tends to be the preference for most Facebook users. That said, it will be most interesting to see which one of the two titles does better.