Less than two years ago, teen-dominated social portal iminlikewithyou changed its name to Omgpop, partnered with like-minded MyYearbook, and began producing hit title after hit title.

Late last year, Omgpop moved onto Facebook with Cupcake Corner, a restaurant tycoon simulation akin to Zynga’s Restaurant World. Though Cupcake Corner appears to have reached the pinnacle of its popularity and has begun a slow decline, Omgpop shows no signs of following suit. January’s announcement of $10 million in additional investment to integrate with Facebook and iPhone has resulted in bringing what is arguably Omgpop’s most popular title, the tragicomically named Draw My Thing, to Facebook.

Draw My Thing is a fairly straight-forward online version of Hasbro’s Pictionary. Groups of two–to-seven players attempt to guess what is being drawn. Different colors, varying pencil widths, paint fill and other methods of helping the player to complete the image are available but with 60 seconds on the clock it is rare that they are used. If no one has guessed by 30 seconds, the word (not phrase) begins to fill in; if the word is guessed, both the person drawing and those who guessed correctly earn points.

Monetization is achieved through the purchase of the ability to choose a different term to be drawn, buying extended time, or buying hints in the form of letters before they become available to the room. Every three games a Super Tool unlocks – but only for that instance. I was given the option to purchase a t-square (yeah! straight lines with a mouse) for 15 Facebook credits; refuse and the offer becomes unavailable for at least three more games.  The immediacy and utility are strong motivators to purchase these Super Tools.

A successful answer to the question of how to match and begin a multi-player synchronous game on Facebook has to date, been out of reach. Omgpop has solved this elegantly with lobbies, hosted by the players, started by the players (small or large groups), and more importantly private games.

Private games are managed using Facebook chat. Upon starting, the player receives notification if any friends are in an active game. From here, the player starting the lobby can invite any friend who shows as available in Facebook chat through one of three ways:  friends available through chat appear in a dropdown for bulk invite (though it doesn’t refresh); friends in active games can simply be click upon;  a final option copies a link directly onto your clipboard. All of these use Facebook chat for notification either automatically, or in the case of the last by the player pasting a link into chat. The link does not work outside of Facebook.

In its native environment on omgpop.com  – not in an iframe – Draw My Thing has a few additional customizations such as a cosmetic choice of pens or the ability to buy a vowel. None are particularly important or detract from the experience on a smaller canvas. The move has been done elegantly, with efficient lobby design and exemplary positioning for micro-purchases. Most impressive is the near linear growth curve of players older than the original audience since launch. What lies ahead for Omgpop and Draw My Thing is not finding an audience, but keeping it.

Few members of any entertainment medium in the United States can boast of more than 500 published creations in their field; certainly no board or card game designer. Not so of Reiner Knizia, a household name in Germany and most of Europe. Dr. Knizia has been creating board and card games since he was a child. In 2008, he made the leap to interactive media when card game Lost Cities was published on XBLA. Original titles for the Nintendo DS and iPhone soon followed. With the release of Lost Cities in November of last year, Knizia entered the social game space. In early January, publisher Zabu Studios followed up with the release of one of Dr. Knizia’s fastest selling titles ever, Pickomino, and a promise of more to come.

Pickomino (known originally as Heck Meck) feels like a mash-up of Bunco, Yahtzee, and Farkle. Using eight 6-sided dice numbered one through five with the sixth side a dragon worth five points, the goal is to earn the most pearls. This is achieved by rolling the dice and earning 21 through 36 points; each score is represented on a tile. Pearls are earned for each tile, for doing so with as many dragons as possible, for completing scores in numerical order and so on. If a dragon is not rolled or the needed score is not achieved before all eight dice are used, the most valuable tile is removed.

The game is simple to learn, the UI clean and intuitive, visuals are pleasing, and the sound reinforces positive achievements.  There are three different modes: Classic – trying to roll for tiles worth 21 to 36 points; Random – six random tiles are placed in a bonus pile with the remaining ten that will be pull from as the player tries to clear five (the ten can be numbers 23-32); and a newly released Progressive mode that uses both fewer and greater quantities of dice, dice with greater numbers, lower and higher valued spectrums and vary the rules with each successive round.

As a dice game in and of itself, Pickomino is pleasing but not particularly outstanding. What Zabu Studios has done to integrate the title with its first release, Lost Cities, and its upcoming releases (all Knizia titles) is where this truly shines.

Like Lost Cities, at the end of each game, the player receives gems as a reward. There are four different gem colors, and three win options available: a chest with a red gem and one other, a chest with 2 to 3 gems, and a third with one to five gems. These gems can be used in wildly varying combinations to purchase power-ups in both Pickomino and Lost Cities. Additional energy to continue playing requires using Facebook Credits. As Zabu Studios and Knizia continue to publish, the gems will be available in Lost Cities, Pickomino, Ra, Take it Easy, Poseidon’s Realm, Buccaneer, Deck Buster Poker, and Tower Tycoon.

The mitigated risk behind the design is rather impressive. As proven titles that work well in single- as well as multi- player the risk of designing a bad game is very low; board/card/dice games require a far less rigorous development schedule and allow for greater polish; and in using the same designer to create a network of games with a shared currency, building a sticky player base is much simpler task. Zabu Studios could still fail, but I for one, would be surprised.

The Mafia Wars design reminds me a bit of a coffee cup: it can be tall or square, made of ceramic or glass, hand painted or textured… and sometimes just to spice things up a bit, there might be a funky handle. But still, it’s just a coffee cup. The original Mafia Wars concept has been used for zombies, pirates, gopher pirates, vampires, horses, aliens, alien zombies, and every manner of fantasy RPG.  Too often, unlike the metaphorical coffee cup, the biggest change has just been the paint.

I first experienced the Chronicles of Herenvale on Hi5 where my social network is limited at best. It struck me as a charming text RPG; a rather decent translation of the Hero’s Journey.

I was more than three chapters into the title before I realized I was playing a modified Mafia Wars design. Herenvale has recently come to Facebook bringing with it the same look and feel that made it an appealing RPG on Hi5.

The title, which still has just a small amount of traffic on Facebook, according to our app tracking service Appdata, is classic RPG fare. The player creates a character, battles creatures, purchases the best possible weapons and armor, assigns skill points for an optimum build, chooses a faction… all the while completing the quests in the various chapters.

Player-versus-player is available as one-on-one duels or in timed tournaments. Raids against boss monsters spawned by GMs occur throughout the day; these enable the less affluent player an opportunity to obtain premium items. All of the familiar tropes of the fantasy RPG are there.

What sets Chronicles of Herenvale apart from other, more derivative titles is the execution and polish. Rather than the standard rows and columns, developer Mososh has quests and sub-quests laid against corresponding artwork in patterns that complement the images. The writing is in character; the item descriptions apt and often amusing. And though only 10 chapters exist in the current storyline, duels, tournaments and raids keep the player occupied.

It would be easy to dismiss this title as derivative and in many ways it is; but in the search for The Next Big Thing in social gaming sometimes it is forgotten that doing what has been done before, just well can be enough.

Today’s release of Monopoly Millionaires seems a natural symbiosis between EA’s Hasbro licenses and its acquisition of Playfish. With the success of Family Game Night on the console, it was just a matter of time before said titles arrive on Facebook.

Much of Monopoly Millionaires is familiar to players of the classic board game from Baltic Avenue to the “metal” game tokens (everyone starts as the race car). The art style and music are pitch perfect but this is not your grandfather’s, or even your, Monopoly game. The key aspect – monopolizing the board – is left out of the gameplay in favor of each player having their own board.

All players begin with the ability to place houses on every property; all it takes is Monopoly Money.  Each property color requires housing of the corresponding color with ever increasing prices. Place a single house on each, and hotel construction begins. In order for construction to complete, friends must “invest” by clicking on a wall post a prescribed number of times. For investing, said friends are paid.

Rent can be collected from completed houses every few minutes but only if electricity is run to the homes. This is purchased in blocks of five minutes to 24-hours. Rent is accrued over time; there is no need to check in every few minutes..

Collecting property is achieved by visiting a friend’s board. Rolling the dice and landing on their property will earn them rent but also grant you the opportunity to earn a card of that color. A full set can be traded to upgrade a home for increased rent.

Circling the board can be expensive, though. Not only will you pay rent, you will contribute to the Community Chest, Free Parking, and Luxury Tax each time you pass. Land on them and you might win serious Monopoly Money but until then simple play can drain your funds.

Upon returning to your own board, you will collect any funds earned from friends visiting your board, collect your rent, upgrade buildings and hope a few hotels have completed.

Interaction between friends is a requirement. There is no earning of properties on your own board. Though hotels can be purchased with gold, it will become costly very quickly. At the same time, the wall posts quickly become spammy. In 15 minutes of play, I had five hotels needing upgrades by three friends each as well as notifications of money to share, free dice rolls, leveling up and mission completion.

A final note should be made regarding the in-game advertisements. Charles Schwab chimes in to give game advice whenever the game loads, a player returns from a friend’s board, or it sits idle too long. The news suggests sending a friend a 3^rd Generation Prius, then Mr. Schwab says hello. Hopefully, time and balance will tone down the commercial interruptions.

Of all the great Bullfrog games – and there were many – Dungeon Keeper is arguably the most beloved. Many a developer has tried to recapture the feeling of “Evil is Good.”  Dungeon Overlord from Sony Online Entertainment and Night Owl Games has the same hopes, but in a multiplayer casual environment – which, as it turns out, may have been too lofty and difficult a goal.

My first encounter with Dungeon Overlord brought memories of late-night gaming sessions spent torturing minions rushing back. Overlord is spot-on accurate in its attention to detail, witty animations, and subtle manipulations of creatures. (Shock an orc, anyone?)

Though the theme is drawn from Dungeon Keeper, the gameplay of Overlord feels similar to Kingdoms of Camelot – or, even more accurately, browser-based titles such as Evony or Ikariam. Players start by building their dungeons inside volcanoes, harvesting the necessary resources to create a lengthy list of items and supplies that grows longer with each level. Over time, the player can move into dungeons in other volcanoes (those that spawn different resources), trade for his needs, or begin a campaign of raiding other players to keep in stock.

But despite the similarities, Dungeon Overlord misses the mark that Kingdom of Camelot seems to hit so well. It’s highly polished, well-written, has incredible art direction — and yet it simply feels like a game intended for another audience. Given the amount of work that obviously went into Overlord, and the storied pedigree itdraws from, we got in touch with Chris Mayer, CEO of Night Owl Games, to talk about the design decisions behind their first (and SOE’s sixth) Facebook title.

“When Night Owl was forming in 2008, the goal was to build the company not based upon a single game but upon an idea, long term,” explained Mayer.  “We wanted to distinguish ourselves. Looking at what had been happening in Europe, particularly in Germany with companies like GameForge and BigPoint, we determined that browser games were not a future but THE future.”

“But we didn’t want to copy what the big players were doing; we didn’t have the experience.  We really wanted to do something different so we focused on making a browser game for gamers. Something they could play at work for a little while.”

This statement readily explained one aspect of Dungeon Overlord that had been nagging me: the UI is obtuse, the nomenclature is straight from a gamer’s lexicon, and the menus are at times four deep.  Still, the hand of SOE is readily apparent. An excellent tutorial carries the player through most of the first half of level one; the writing is exceptional and funny (there IS writing!); and the initial gameplay is explained well.

Mayer went on to explain the connection to Dungeon Keeper.  “After looking at what Flash can do, we looked back to some of our favorite titles from the late 80s and early 90s. Dungeon Keeper really stood out. The true magic of was the single player, not the multiplayer – the multiplayer only lasted about 20 minutes. Our goal was to build a game we could build a company around, a service around. Dungeon Keeper may give us our look and feel, but its games like Travian, Evony and Ikariam that inspire our gameplay.”

Being web-based, these titles self-select for the hard core player hardcore gamer fairly quickly. They also begin with casual gameplay which later rewards the player who logs in most frequently rather than has the best strategy. Part of the design philosophy common to them all (including Overlord) it the unsubtle, macro-managed economic system, which opens the way to focus on petty political squabbles that lead to vicious player battles. (My level four warlocks and orcs were creamed by five level 35+ players just a few days ago.) Dungeon Overlord currently lacks any subtle systems; it’s all about become big and strong as fast as possible.

Further explanations regarding design decisions are found in the fact that it wasn’t built as a Facebook title. It was initially platform agnostic. The decision to place the game on Facebook was made only near the end of production. As a browser-based title following in the footsteps of its inspirations, the design is one of solid asynchronous real-time strategy. But in being on Facebook, the designers are depending heavily on the availability of a non-traditional sector of Facebook gamers, which might be a difficult path. As was mentioned before, this game design caters to the player who logs in most frequently which is decidedly anti-social network game design.

I’m of two minds when it comes to Dungeon Overlord. I want to like this title. It appeals to the gamer in me; I want to ensure I have the perfect balance of minions, best use of room tiles, and every piece of furniture that provides a bonus I can manage. But once I’ve set up the basics I find myself on the defense against raids if I wish to attempt to be a trade force, or I must enter the raids that will become my path should I plan to play past a certain stage. And checking on my resources to start production (lest they be stolen) all day long becomes a chore.

Building for the hard-core gamer is an admirable goal and a demographic that is currently very much ignored.  But building the game in a manner that allows a player to lose, requires manual resource collection, and thereby necessitates active management of dungeons removes any casuality of the Facebook platform. Dungeon Overlord isn’t a bad game; it’s simply a bad Facebook game. Were it a browser-based title along with its cousins Ikariam, Evony, and Travian, it would have the potential to become an excellent game.

When the first Cooking Mama title hit the DS as a budget title in September, 2006 I placed it at the top of my list for birthday gifts. I’d played it at that year’s E3 and was one among many who instinctively  knew it would be a hit. Three malls and seven stores later, I had a copy in my hands. Mama’s charming Japanese accent, the strange dishes she asked to be prepared, and the game’s perfect use of the DS controls made it an instant classic. Two additional DS titles, two Wii titles, and a gardening spin-off later, Mama has come to the PC in the form of Cooking Mama for Facebook.

Players of the series will immediately find the game familiar and comforting. Bright, loud colors abound with music that sounds like Sesame Street on a visit to New Orleans Square. Images are drawn with simple lines, few colors, and nearly but not quite out of proportion. Mama has yet to attend any ESL courses; her accent is as thick and charming as ever.

Gameplay centers on creating menus for Mama’s Kitchen, a 24-hour diner. Initially, the player is both limited in what can be cooked and the number of items that can be served. There are four types of recipes: drinks, appetizers, entrees, and desserts. Recipes are level restricted – I still can’t serve chocolate cake – and players can eventually serve three types of each recipe per menu.

The key to playing the game well is determining which items to serve. Waiting outside the diner will be ten customers with thought bubbles to indicate what each would like. Place that item on the menu and you will satisfy that customer, earning bonus experience and coin.  All other items will earn experience and coin based upon the level of the item, modified by the length of time the menu runs for.

How long a menu is available is determined by the player, with 30-minute menus being free, and anything longer costing additional coin in addition to earning less experience and coin per serving.  Though some benefit is gained by running longer menus, the gain is minimal. At most, it allows friends to complete missions by tasting and rating menus.

Missions are a key part of earning coin at the beginning of the game. Without the missions, ingredients are cost prohibitive. Each costs a minimum of 500 coins, with the maximum reaching 750 coins. The cost isn’t based on intrinsic value; one unit of water is no different than a unit of chicken.

Certain ingredients rotate through “out of stock” status. When this is the case, the player must purchase an item using Mama Money. Other items are hard-to-get and can be purchased using either Mama Money or coins. Gifting between players is not yet active but promises to allow the exchange of foodstuffs thereby reducing costs – something much needed.

There isn’t much in the game design to truly set Cooking Mama apart from other cooking games on Facebook except for the one thing makes that it Cooking Mama: gestures. This is, unfortunately, where Cooking Mama shows its weakness. The mouse is a poor input modality for gestures; the track pad only moderately better and then only for specific movements; and the trackball fails in all respects.

In addition, problems inherent in Flash – a preference for higher-end machines, memory allocation issues, and variable input lag – make some of the twitch movements common in the Mama experience difficult to achieve with any success. This is not to say that the game is unplayable — Cooking Mama has never allowed complete failure. But it’s not always clear exactly what the motion difference is between a score of 99 and 100 on a recipe, or why does one earns 75 experience and the other 100.

Majesco and Arkadium have made changes to the game design try to compensate for the deficiencies of Flash and the available input modalities. Unfortunately, they yet to strike the right balance, a problem that will certainly compound with the many other as-yet unreleased features of the game. As it stands, Cooking Mama’s Facebook version has a significant distance to go before it can live up to the brand first created on Nintendo’s platforms.

“I want to make games.” Most gaming professionals hate this statement, and all the ignorance it usually implies. Trying to disabuse the person making it does nothing to dissuade them from wanting “to make games.” Drecom, in association with Kairosoft, has had a successful simulation launched in Japan that responds to this statement, and is attempting to translate it for an American audience.

Game Studio Story is an ambitious simulation of the basics of what it takes to create a video game, any video game, from platform consideration to budget to time constraints.  Players begin with a studio of four developers – not necessarily friends. More than four friends can be playing the game, but only four slots are open to be team members. Any team members who are not players reduces the number of studios the player can visit.

General play is the flow of developing a title: choosing the platform, the genre, the theme, distribution of points, and then choosing whether to spend money on quality, time, or research. Though Game Dollars are the primary currency, Research and Time are just as important. Research can be thought of as intellectual property and is terribly difficult to obtain. It’s spent on leveling up members of the team, increasing specific qualities of a game (fun, sound, art, etc.), or to ensure attempts to improve a game in production.

As a player levels up, he can add more team members, assigning duplicate roles to those already on the team – sound, designer, programmer, or story writer – or advanced positions later, such as producer or hardware engineer. Events representative of E3 and DICE occur, marking just how well (or poorly) the team is doing.  Sequels can be produced, licenses purchased from other studios, team members contracted to other players.

A myriad of reports are available to the player: demographic popularity, effectiveness of PR campaigns, sales history of active titles, bulk history of complete sales, awards,  and rankings according to other players. Each game is ranked with a Metacritic-type score (including a negative bent towards less popular genres regardless of quality and vice versa) that affects sales and awards.

Game Studio Story is faithful enough to the overall reality of game development, but after nearly eight weeks, the game is still in alpha and shows little if any signs of further development, with features like virtual currency remaining unfinished. Of course, one might easily complain about the faults and holdups, but a quick play of the game itself should serve to disabuse players of the notion that progress is easy.

Several times a year I tell myself that every possible manner of match-3 has been created. I am always wrong.  Last year’s summer release of Puzzle Quest 2 and its multiple variations of the match-3 mechanic was a reminder of how easily this simple premise could be used to create player-versus-player gameplay. Similarly, Atari’s new Facebook title Faeries vs. Darklings takes what could have been a simple arcade title and adds enough variation to keep the match-3 mechanic interesting, while including a touch of competition.

Faeries begins with a basic tutorial asking the player first choosing whether to protect the forest as Faerie or try to claim it as the Darklings. Choosing the dark side will cost a cool 1000 Atari Tokens, a player’s entire initial bankroll. On Tutorial Island, the player is walked through what makes FvD different from the typical match-3 title before being set loose on two additional islands to either claim or reclaim the forest, as the case may be.

Initially, the game feels very familiar. One need only complete the standard vertical or horizontal matches of 3-like colored icons. However, above the board the opposite faction is advancing, attempting to claim the forest. To the left of the board are 2-4 colored icons. These are the matches that must be made in order to ready a creature to battle the onslaught. Each colored icon has an attendant number from 3-12 indicating just how many must be cleared. Complete the series, and the creature becomes ready.

As time progresses, the second, third, and fourth wave requirements become visible, allowing more matches to count towards releasing creatures for battle. However, releasing creatures out of order will not halt the progression in any meaningful way. The first faerie is intended to fight the first darkling; the second to fight the second, and so on.

Waiting for multiple creatures at the ready and then releasing them in succession does give bonus points, which increases the player’s score. This becomes important when determining exactly which faction currently “owns” that area of the forest.

Unlike the aforementioned Puzzle Quest where all matches counted towards increasing Mana, Experience or Coin, FvD requires specific colors for an action to occur and not every board works particularly well. (I played a board that had a single match before it reset and then another single match, causing me to lose that particularly play-session). However, like Puzzle Quest there can be other considerations when playing; one does not always play to fight back the opposing faction.

Matches of four or more produce Tokens, allowing the player to earn micro-currency in game. This currency can be used to change factions or to purchase spells. There are six spells available for purchase and they can vary from exploding a 9X9 grid, an entire line, or scrambling the entire board. But spells are a rather special consideration in that they have three uses which must be used – one at a time – in the next three games, else they expire.  And spells are particularly useful – and eventually necessary – when trying to manage the high score for a particular board.

Having the highest score is more than just beating a friend; it determines what faction owns a piece of the forest. If I play as the Darklings, have the highest score from among 15 friends and then take Mount Nekkara, Mount Nekkara is then claimed by the Darklings. However, if I change factions, either I or another player for the Faerie faction must beat my high score to reclaim the forest.

Additional Atari Tokens can be purchased to purchase spells or to switch factions but the cost is prohibitive.  The tokens can be used in other Atari games. Whether the cost is a result of balance in other games is difficult to determine.

Though it has a compelling match-3 mechanic, Faeries vs. Darklings is missing the special something that might compel a player to come back on a regular basis. Player notifications are not currently active, but as a skill-based game, eventually the players will reach the Law of Diminishing Returns.   Such incremental change leaves little impetus to continue to compete. Faeries vs. Darklings is promising, but still needs more attention from Atari.

Board games have had little success on Facebook, with the exception of Scrabble in its various incarnations. One might wonder whether this fact is due to the speed of the games (or lack thereof), the demographic’s inexperience with the play-by-mail style, or if it’s simply that not enough developers have actually tried. Socialspiel, an Austrian company, is giving the genre a try with an entirely new board game called Push.

Push is easy to learn, hard to master. It has few rules and even fewer options. Played on a hexagonal board of five units per side, Push initially resembles dual-player Chinese Checkers. Two players face off beginning 13 Pops (or marbles) with the intention of knocking three of their opponents’ Pops off the board.

The rules are simple: a player can move a group of one to three adjacent Pops at a time, in any direction — up, down, forward or backwards. In order to push an opponent’s Pop, you must do so with more Pops than they have. The first to push three Pops off the board, wins.

Pops also represent the in-game currency. During ranked games against other players, who are pulled from the worldwide pool, special moves paid for with the currency are available. Three are available, like recovering a lost Pop or transporting one to another location. However, all are on a timer, and I’ve yet to manage to use more than one in a game.

Ranked games are on a timer; non-ranked games can be played at your leisure over days or even weeks. But because the board is so small and the win condition limited, most games end very quickly. Though nothing has been announced, Push looks like it would lend itself well to tournaments.

Special note is owed to the art and music. Pon du Bear, your guide through the tutorial (and your opponent when you can’t find a human), is decked out in cool 1930s attire. His bowler lifts off, his bowtie takes flight, and occasionally he sits back in his lounge chair and smokes a pipe while commenting on your play. When I first played Push, an option to dress him for Pops was “coming soon”, though that is no longer visible.

The music fits the art perfectly. Smooth, cool jazz the whole way, it’s just as mellow as Pon du Bear and fits the relaxed pace of the game.

Push has grown to over 140,000 monthly active users in under a month, but it probably won’t take off on Facebook. That’s not because it isn’t an excellent game. It actually is quite good, but it also doesn’t fit the harried and hectic pace of the Facebook demographic, appealing instead to the more cerebral gamer. Still, here’s hoping it finds its footing; it’s about time board games came into their own on Facebook.

Rail travel may not be the choice of most Americans, but there’s still something romantic about a train. Railroad Tycoon, Sid Meier’s Railroads!, Lucky Train on Facebook and the bazillion dollar model train industry are proof that we may not ride them, but we do love them.  Pixel Federation’s TrainStation continues this tradition by bringing single-player dynamics to a multi-player world using a unique leveling and resource system.

The concept is simple: the player begins in the Old West with a few trains, some passengers, mail, and freight cars, and the need to move said goods. Passenger and mail can be delivered together; nails and lumber can be picked up. Many, many levels later materials such as brick and glass become available — although with dense gameplay and little explanation, many won’t make it that far.

The materials are used to build along the rail line, thereby increasing passenger travel. Each building contributes to the number of passengers traveling per hour. Mail must be picked up daily from neighbors — a default neighbor is provided — to be shipped. Additional mail can be had by capturing letters that float to the sky from the rail line.

The primary decision to be made is how to balance delivering mail and/or passengers and receive goods. By design, the optimum decision is to choose short hauls for easily replenished items such as passengers and mail. Longer hauls are more cost effective and efficient when gathering resources. The player can run many short, 10-minute hops while catching floating mail icons, and consume the day’s collected passengers and neighbor’s daily mail for the greatest experience and income. Once complete, the trains are set with different cars and sent on long hauls to collect the maximum quantity of goods until the next login.

Neighbors do not affect route choice or profitability. What neighbors can do is increase the speed at which a player levels. This is accomplished in two ways.  The first is passive: the more neighbors a player has, the more mail there is to deliver each day; the more mail to deliver, the more income and experience to be earned. The second manner requires that a neighbor place a flag in a station, thereby increasing the number of passengers available by 10 percent.

Level determines what locomotives, cars, buildings, and themes can be purchased. Levels 1-12 will be spent in the default Western theme. By purchasing Gems, and upgrading to engines that carry more cars, pay less station tax, and transport more goods, these 12 levels can be accomplished fairly quickly. However the cost of the gems to upgrade a full train is significant. After eleven levels, even one engine upgrade is out of reach. It’s unfortunate, but in TrainStation, deeper pockets win the race.

Once a player does reach level 12, the Meadow theme is open for purchase. Themes are not cosmetic enhancements, but an option to move to a different era in rail travel. Once a theme is purchased, its attendant buildings, cars, and engines are opened. What makes themes particularly unique is that they don’t preclude advancing in a previous era. A player need only switch back to a preferred them to continue.

TrainStation is frustrating in that the concept is inspired; however the execution shows a lack of experience. The art direction is consistent, polished, and beautiful. A player can not only scroll in and out, but can also lift the scene for a better vertical view. Yet the tutorial is nothing more than a series of bouncing arrows that state “click here.” Only the most persistent will get through.

Time and experience may correct some of the inconsistencies in TrainStation. The single-player friendly design is a great asset that can carry the title as optional social interaction is added. But it will take a more fairly balanced economy, a less-steep leveling curve, and a user-friendly tutorial to increase retention and allow the more inspired design concepts shine through.