Inside Social Games

Before Snood, before Dr. Mario, and before Scrabulous there was Tetris. Tetris is the ultimate in old school puzzle games. A killer Cold War-era soundtrack, a great concept, and an increasingly challenging game design made it one of the first real gaming hits.

Tetris Friends is the best adaptation I’ve seen of Tetris to the Facebook Platform. Tetris Friends is actually three variations of Tetris in one - Marathon Tetris, Tetris Solo, and Tetris Blockstar. The latter is old school Tetris while Tetris Solo is a time-based game that pushes you to rack up as many points as possible in the time allotted. Marathon Tetris is the updated standard game with better graphics, a remixed soundtrack, and the ability to see where your block will be placed before you place it (that’s cheating in my book). The interface is friendly and you can even pause the game and adjust various controls including sound and affects. It’s one of the first games I’ve seen to afford the player those kind of options.

The social elements for games like this are all there: You can challenge your friends, see their scores, or invite other players into the game. That said, there have been Tetris versions in the past where players can compete in real-time against each other, including things like bombs and various other traps to screw over the opposing player. So Tetris Friends is well-adapted to the Facebook setting, but it has room for improvement.

Tetris Friends is easily the best Facebook Tetris game I’ve seen, and worth checking out if you, like me, can’t get the theme song out of your head.

Game play: 9

Development: 8

Music: 9

Classic Biplanes is a simple flash animation game developed by Michael Edlavitch.

The charmingly retro game puts you in control of a little biplane that must bravely shoot down other biplanes and unarmed parachuting soldiers. (I guess we’re supposed to assume these unarmed paratroopers have done something wrong to justify our shooting them down?)

The animation is very simple and the game play isn’t particularly deep or compelling. It does, however, have a two-player option for those of you who like to get chummy and share a keyboard. That said, for high schoolers who want to play a game while in computer lab, the two-player arcade elements may prove compelling.

There isn’t much to say for other social elements - the Facebook game is exactly the same as the flash game hosted on the website. There are other Flash arcade games out there, but few as boldly retro.

Game play: 4

Development: 3

Graphics: 2 (but they’re cute)

It’s a glorious day in a nascent industry when cheaply-produced movie tie-in titles are released. Just as console gamers have experienced Iron Man and Hulk games recently, social gamers now get to do the same.

Traitor - Special Agent Games is actually three small games in one - or, depending on how you look at it, one big movie advertisement with three little widgets that you can play with. However you look at it, it’s not a real social game, but a glorified ad unit. Essentially, the screen shows you a link to the movie’s website and three games you can click on to perfect your “spy” knowledge.

With “Think Global” you’re given a name of a city and a country and a blank map. With your mouse, you must point out where that city is. You only have a limited number of “resources,” which are essentially “mistake points.” For every mile off from where the city actually is, you get a point. When you run out of resources, you lose. It’s that simple. And since it’s almost impossible to get your mouse to click exactly where the city should go, it’s frustrating too.

The “Photographic Memory” game asks you a series of questions after you review five photos. I took this quiz four times with the same questions and still have no idea what some of the answers are. There is no variety - the questions and pictures don’t change.

“High Value Target” is the third and final “game” and lacks instructions. Essentially, you try to block in the little person icon so they can’t escape the grid. The most challenging part of this game is trying to figure out how to play.

Traitor - Special Agent Games lacks any real social elements, and was really made just to promote the movie. Nevertheless, it’s one of the first of this genre that we’ve seen on Facebook.

Development: 3

Game play: 1

Preliminary movie review: 3

Tower Bloxx is an action/arcade game developed by Digital Chocolate. The premise is pretty simple: you must build the tallest tower you can.

A crane hovers over your construction site and will drop blocks of your building at your command. But the crane sways back and forth, and if you fail to line up the different tower segments exactly, the building begins to sway faster than you can say “Pisa.” Every time you do line up the tower segments correctly, you get a bonus meter and more points.

You can see more people umbrella their way into your building (don’t ask me where they come from) if it’s structurally sound as well. Every time your crane misses the site or the tower proves too wobbly to support a new block, you get a block deduction in a little meter. Three misses and you lose.

Essentially, Tower Bloxx is like playing with wooden cubes as a kid, only in digital form. It’s fun, challenging, and well-animated. The little people who appear to drop into your building are adorable and the game requires enough skill to keep players practicing at it. But game play becomes tedious quickly and it is obvious that the full game is only the one you want to play. The full version, sadly, is only available through purchase. Though there are numerous icons that claim you can “Try for Free” the full version, it’s just a link to the game developer’s site where they have other games that are available for trial.

It’s nice to see some bigger developers take an interest in Facebook, but they’re just feeding you their table scraps with this game. You cannot unlock various features of the game through inviting your friends, and though you can see your friends’ scores, the game never really exploits the social context of the Facebook platform. In short, the developer was smart enough to provide a taste of it in Facebook, but did not fully integrate it into the graph.

Facebook fans will know they can find full games with better game play without having to throw down money. The developers should recognize this strategy is outdated and incongruous with the platform and should move to incorporate other ways for players to unlock the full version’s features.

Game play: 6
Development: 3
Potential: 8

The Oregon Trail remains, with the likes of baseball cards and freeze tag, a symbol of my youth. I’m not alone in these warm feelings of nostalgia for the iconic pioneering adventure game that put you at the reins of a party of foolhardy travelers trying to make it to Oregon. You were told that they would then enjoy a new life in the west, but in all likelihood probably founded a basketball program that would routinely make the worst draft choices in the history of the NBA. Developed by Kickflip, The Oregon Trail is a decently faithful adaptation of the original game, but with some noteworthy alterations for the Facebook Platform.

For starters, you can only unlock new jobs upon beating the game. Initially, you are given a job that you had back east (banker, teacher, Kathy Griffin’s personal assistant, etc.) that determined how much money you had and other bonuses. Some devotees of the series may be miffed at being forced into a set job, but those who play a lot of casual games are used to having to play a lot in order to unlock features.

Your party this time around consists of a mix of friends you’ve invited and friends who have the application. Don’t worry, if they die in game, you can still use them next game and they don’t die in real life. It’s fun to be informed of your friends having some archaic disease, especially if you like to play god and decide to not rest and push the pace to grueling. Their fates are in your hands and you can be as cruel a party leader or as lazy as you’d like.

One major change between the old game and the new is the hunting aspect. If your party is getting filling portions and there is a lot of them, you’ll burn through food quicker than John Daly at the 19th hole. This means you’ll get used to hunting like every three days. While this gets old fast, you have two options. You can play a guessing game (which costs a bullet) and pick one of nine cards to shoot at (some of them have animals behind them, some of them have scenery). It’s like Russian roulette, only with deer.

For the more adventurous, you can go to a shooting range Flash game where you can aim at images of deer and pheasants that fly across the screen. They move very quickly, but if you learn their patterns it’s really easy to come back with 300 pounds of meat every time. Again, the animation is cheap and it seems easier to program than the original game’s shooting system. That said, it fits in with the game overall just fine and if there wasn’t an economy issue that made you have to hunt so much, no one would be complaining.

There is a saloon and a traveler’s chat option to keep the game social, and there are plenty of other little mini-games tacked on to play to pass the time. It’s a slower-paced game than most casual games, and has a lot of built in depth. The developers do a solid job of making it more social by allowing you to talk to your party, talk to other players, and see a leader board. Plus, it’s a lot of fun to have your friends’ icons in your party as you travel. The ability to choose which friends join you and add in random names would be nice (especially if you want a smaller party with fewer mouths to feed), but perhaps I’m looking for something to find fault with, a buffalo chip among the barbeque, if you will.

It’s a solid adaptation of a classic game. The developers could incorporate some more features to promote synchronous game play and a better hunting feature, but other than that, I can’t complain much, I reckon.

Gameplay: 8.5

Developers: 8

Nostalgia: 10

Kick Ups is an action arcade Flash game on Facebook developed by David Livingston Kirby, Davy Campano and Robby Campano. The game essentially calls for you to juggle a soccer ball with your mouse before it drops to the ground. For anyone who has ever played soccer/football/futbol in their lives, they know the concept of the game and how freaking hard it is. This game is equally challenging, which is a good step to making the game memorable and addictive.

However, game play isn’t varied (just click the ball before it hits the ground) and staring at a ball bouncing around your screen isn’t the best way to pass your time. That is to say, unless you’re a huge soccer nerd, I’m not sure how much “fun” this game can be. Sure, you can upgrade the ball to a football, a banana, or your friend’s picture (a nice touch), but its essentially the same point-and-click game forever. Put the body of a Mercedes on a donkey, and its still a donkey. And probably a horribly uncomfortable one at that.

On the viral side, they do an admirable job of marketing their product and helping it grow. You can challenge your friends, and you can view both your friends’ scores and worldwide leaders (and grow frustrated as you realize you can barely juggle in the single digits while the pros seemingly can juggle for hours).

Inviting friends will get you new ball types, but you aren’t inviting them to play this great game you’ve found; instead, you’re inviting them with the slim hopes that a better ball will make this game more enjoyable. The animations are solid, the four ball types are fine, and the developers know the social network game enough to insist on friend invitations and cross-promotions with other games.

That said, this is one of those ideas that doesn’t translate to a long-lasting and addictive gaming experience. I’m reminded of the old “Ren and Stimpy” fake commercial “It’s log!” The entire commercial is about a new toy which is literally just a log of wood. The kids seem engrossed, however, in this very simple object. It’s a poignant satire on kids’ imaginations and the ability for adults to try to cash in on that creativity. Similarly, this is a simple idea that people enjoy and take for granted but is being used to make adults money. Kicking a little soccer ball round the screen is like doing the digital dishes. Yes its well animated, but really, what’s the point?

Gameplay: 3

Developers: 5

How much of my childhood died while playing: 6

This is one of those times, as a reviewer, where I wonder if the developer thought his/her Facebook application would be seriously reviewed as something worthy of critical analysis. While many social games have a long way to transcend their mere utility to become something like “art,” there are definitely some games out there that can be considered sublime. This application has some of those games within it, although the application’s name is anything but sublime.

Old School Retro Games, despite its overly casual title, is a solid little Facebook application. Essentially, it packages many old early 90s and late 80s arcade games like Contro, Mario, and Pac Man, into a single Facebook app. It gives some basic directions on how to play and has links to other applications, but that’s essentially it. I don’t even know if I can give the developers credit for converting most of these games to their current medium, as a number of programmers likely contributed to the sum total.

So this is a tough review - I want to applaud the meal that’s been presented for me but I have to question the means by which it has been prepared. That is to say, most of this is stuff taken out of the freezer and the developer is getting credit for creating it. Kung Fu, Bobble Bobble, Donkey Kong- all of the old classics are here. Any serious gamer would love this application and this is probably my favorite Facebook application, easily. That said, there may be some legal issues.

Without taking into account how the material got here, the gameplay is what you’d expect from such varied and classic titles. Some of the games take a while to load and some of the controls are sluggish, but that’s probably pretty true to the source. On the developer side, the presentation of the games menu could be better and they need to better take advantage of the social platform. Why not add a score feature, or a chat feature, or unlockable elements? Overall, while its content is excellent, Old School Retro Games’ presentation is lacking.

Gameplay: 9

Developers Score: 4

How much fun this really is: 11

There is something to be said for name recognition. If people recognize your brand, you’re more likely to get customers. That said, cashing in on the name of a superior product is the saddest form of imitation.

CrazyTaxi, the Facebook game, is just such an imitation. The game is a cheap knock-off of the popular Crazy Taxi series of video games while possessing none of the charms, humor, or graphics of the original. The gameplay is essentially limited to steering your taxi cab left, right, forward, or up (as in jumping). You must guide your taxi to the checkpoint before time runs out, and must maneuver through a never-ending traffic jam worse than anything you’ve ever witnessed on the 405.

The graphics are hokey, the gameplay gets tedious, and though it’s challenging, there isn’t enough here to keep people coming back. You can invite your friends and see the top scores of the global world and your friends, but the only way to unlock the extra features (limited to the “collection” tab), is to invite people.

The game includes sponsors and ads, so the developers have done a good job on that front. But gameplay itself doesn’t open up new features, leaving the game far behind much of its competition. You can’t achieve the customization of other games and the game isn’t fun enough by itself to warrant continued investment. Leave this one by the curb.

Gameplay: 4

Developers: 6

Boredom Sets in: 5 (minutes)

Poppit! Stress Buster is a puzzle arcade game on Facebook developed by Pogo Games and Electronic Arts. You can play a sample of the game for free or go to the PogoGames website to access the full game (warning: may require purchasing).

The gameplay is similar to Dr. Mario or Snood in that you need to line up like-colored objects to clear them from the board. In this case, they are balloons, and thus the “stress buster” moniker. But the game is hard, really hard, so the “stress busting” name is a bit ironic.

The game also has an interesting twist on the puzzle genre. You don’t need to clear all of the balloons, but rather, only the ones with the prizes in them. So you must think before you pop that row of four balloons. In five moves, that could prove fatal. Luckily, the game provides you with an “undo” button. It’s a fun and well-conceived game, well animated and adorned with cute little prizes, balloons, and an anthropomorphic cactus - what more could you need?

On the social side, there’s not much to be said. The application only allows for invites or playing the one stage repeatedly. Other than that, you are directed to the Pogo games website to try other downloadable games or perhaps buy something high-end at EA. The developers don’t try to integrate the game into the social network other than using Facebook as an interactive advertisement ala those Orbitz mini-putt games. You need another application to even share statistics with your friends.

Still, the game is a challenging strategy game that is worth adding, but don’t look for this to be your gateway to a new addictive franchise.

Gameplay: 7

Developers: 4

Difficulty: 7