Inside Social Games

Zen Bound 2 Revealed for the iPad – Despite the buzz circling Apple’s new iPad, little has been actually seen regarding games on the coming platform. However, via a post from Kotaku, we’ve been able to catch a glimpse of Secret Exit’s Zen Bound 2, a “sequel and a revision” of the original iPhone application. In a nutshell, the original rendition is about attempting to wrap a rope around an oddly shaped object, with the sequel’s concept being more of the same. However, as you can see, the bigger and more powerful iPad sure does make it look better. A full gallery can be found here.

Frosmo Expands to Asia – Frosmo has seen a good deal of success with its tournament and team-based platform of the same name, in terms for social gaming. Already the company has expanded its collection of titles across Europe and into Facebook, but now the Finnish company is expanding into the Asian game market as well. Currently, the company is slated to let 10 different Asian game companies use its tournament system, and be available through 51.com, China.com, Ren Ren, and Mixi.

Platogo Gets Casual Games Facebook Ready – Though third party firms helping developers socialize their titles is nothing new, a social games platform from Austria, Platogo is looking to socially enable casual games directly for Facebook. Dubbed “Platogo Wrapper” this tool allows developers to integrate their games into Facebook withonly a few lines of code. With this new tool,  apps will be able to take advantage of Facebook friend invitations, leaderboards, achievements, and player challenges.

Game Investments Dropped 29% in 2009 – It would seem like the video game industry has seen some hefty decline due to the recession as VentureBeat reports that of 115 game startups, only $663.1 million in funding was raised during 2009 (discounting those with undisclosed amounts). That is 29% lower than the $936.8 million raised in 2008. In fact, had it not been for Zynga’s acquisition of $180 million deal from Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies, the year would have been down a depressing 48%.

Tapulous Taps Into Kings of Leon – The popular rhythm-game company for the iPhone, Tapulous, has added another new title to its collection of Tap Tap games. The new app is dubbed Kings Of Leon Revenge, and if you hadn’t guessed already, features, well, the Kings Of Leon. In addition to hosting 10 of the band’s top songs, the new game will also include a curious ”Battle Mode” that will allow users to directly compete with each other using the iPhone’s bluetooth capabilities.

Unity Games Gain a Social Platform Through dimeRocker – More and more frequently, social games empowered with Unity3D are appearing around both Facebook and the web. To that end, Overinteractive Media Inc. has announced the launch of a new social platform, specifically tailored to support Unity enabled games, dubbed dimeRocker. Through the platform, games will be able to support microtransactions, achievements, leaderboards, friend invites, challenges, and be deployable on both the Facebook and MySpace networks. Already, around 150 developers have signed up for the service’s beta stages.

Facebook App Penny Drop Teams Up with Kiva – A simple Facebook application called Penny Drop – powered by CircusPop - is out to help the working poor. The quasi, game-like app consists of players using tokens (earnable through logins every few hours and inviting friends) to drop the price of featured items by one cent until someone purchases it. However, working with Kiva, from March 11th to March 22nd, for every token used in Penny Drop, a penny will be donated to Kiva in order to help poor entrepreneurial individuals and businesses grow.

Gowalla Adds New Platforms & Branded Goods – Location-based iPhone app Gowalla has launched its social game on two new platforms this past week: The Android and Palm’s webOS. In addition to this new support, the game is also bringing branded virtual goods to the table from the Travel Channel’s show, Food Wars. With the new deal, players will be able to earn special badges and virtual items by visiting locals featured during the show.

IMVU adds Voices as a Virtual Good – Popular teen-oriented virtual world IMVU announced a curious partnership with Vivox this Thursday. Now, the virtual world will be capable of integrating voice services, but beyond being just another feature, it will also add a new source of revenue. Currently, 25 different voice styles are being offered for the cost of 990 IMVU Credits.

Sometrics Launches GameCoins.com – Social analytics firm, Sometrics announced the launch of GameCoins.com this week - the company’s first direct-to-consumer play. Game Coins will serve as a community site for gamers, allowing them meet new people as well as participate in forums and blogs that revolve around various social games and virtual worlds. More than this, however, the site, per its name, will also be an online marketplace for virtual goods and currencies. From the portal, players can make use of the Sometrics Offer Solution to complete ad offers and earn goods and currency for their MMO, virtual world, or social game of choice. The company tells us it plans to help grow the community through users discovering relevant content in searches. The idea is that by helping people play these games better, its monetization services will get even more usage.

50% of Gamers Will Earn Virtual Currency – According to a survey performed by comScore for Offerpal Media, and released at the Game Developers Conference this week, alternative payment methods enable greater monetization capabilities that one would think. Derived from comScore and Offerpal’s own monetization analytics, 53.3% of players are “very likely” to complete a marketing actions (i.e. completing a survey, watching a video, or shopping online) in order to earn virtual currency for their favorite games. Conversely, only 22.8% of those surveyed stated they’d be willing and able to buy it.

In fact, 29.7% of social gamers actually don’t have the means to buy virtual currency in the first place; at least not with cash options. Curiously, even among those that could, 34.9% stated that they were “very unlikely” to do so.

As an open platform, Facebook sees a lot of curious uses. Occasionally, it is an international company looking for a little more freedom, other times it is used to advertise something bigger, like a game, and still other times it is just some bizarre idea. Okay, so what happens when you combine all three? You get a very… ahem… interesting Facebook game called Park Fight.

Created by Mccann Digital (part of marketing conglomerate McCann Worldroup), the application is an extension of an advertising campaign for Goldstar Beer. Apparently, the beer is targeted at men, so the entire campaign is centered around explaining why it’s a man’s beer through a classic battle-of-the sexes parody.

Of course, all of the ads are hyperbolic. Which is where Park Fight comes into play. It is a very simple app highlighting the supposed end-all-be-all difference between men and women: Parking a car.

Unfortunately, the game is all written in Hebrew, so it takes some clicking about to figure out how to pull out into the street, but once you do, the parking contest begins. Oh, and is it ever a tough challenge. This isn’t just any parking; it’s parallel parking, and it’s in traffic no less.

Using the arrow keys, you try to navigate their way into a tiny virtual space, while traffic stops around you with blaring horns grating user concentration and patience. This, of course, leads mistakes such as to hitting the sidewalk or other cars, and should you hit too many, you fail and the game prompts you to post something along the lines of “Man, you’re embarrassing the firm! You could not shop. The average male stands at 0:42 seconds.”

Why someone would post this to their feed is an enigma, but it does point out a key feature. The game actually averages all of the male and female users’ parking time and updates them within the game itself. Out of around 219,000 monthly active users, the average male parking time is 42 seconds, while women are currently at 53 seconds.

Of course, the times are not solely due to parking or video game playing skills. Actually, they feel pretty high for both sexes — and the primary culprit is extraordinarily backwards controls.

The game is actually an overhead view where the car drives right and left. However, the up and down arrows go forward and back, while the right and left arrows turn, well, right and left. It is logical when you think about it, but considering the orientation of the street and car on screen, it isn’t exactly intuitive, and a bit frustrating.

As far as the advertising goes, it is certainly a funny concept, but the game doesn’t offer much in its own right. There are a few logos, but nothing that looks like beer, and they are all in Hebrew anyway. Basically, that means that for anyone unfamiliar with the campaign itself, you won’t get the whole point.

Nonetheless, Park Fight is certainly an amusing concept and if you look up some of the other ads, you might get a kick out of those, too.

While Hi5 has increased its amount of rhetoric against Facebook, it has made some precise moves to attract game developers — especially from the Facebook Platform. It’s not clear if the moves will work, in part because Facebook has likely grown by the size of Hi5’s 50 million monthly active users already this year.

Hi5 is continuing to aggressively make the social network more of a gaming destination. Last week, it began supporting Facebook’s platform APIs, meaning developers with Facebook applications can more easily repurpose them to Hi5’s platform. Now, it’s announcing a special “Game Developer Program” intended to give third parties numerous advantages in reaching Hi5 users and making money. The catch is that all developers need to apply (here) to get into the program — a way for Hi5 to maintain quality. The specific benefits of the program include special ways for developers to reach users and make money.

Facebook recently took away notifications, a tool that many apps engaged users. Hi5 says it will give games a special one-click game install interface, access to let them send notifications to users in friend updates, and “un-capped invitations.” The last item means that developers in the program will not have apps limited by, say 30, invites a day — Facebook has made limits to help control spammy behavior. Hi5’s solution is to carefully approve and monitor its game developer partners, presumably kicking them out of the program if they get too spammy. Other special access points include APIs allowing games to add items in to user profiles, including user achievements and high scores.

And, Hi5 is going to be providing free banner ads, special appearances on its Games page (which is linked directly from the homepage) and in its games toolbar, recommend games to users, and more it will announce later. The plan here is to give smaller games a boost in users without having to buy advertising — on-site advertising is an increasingly important way for developers to reach users on Facebook.

Regarding money, some developers have been using Hi5 Coins, the site’s virtual currency, in their own games for many months. Now, anyone in the program will be able to, although it’s not saying what payment cut it’s taking. The currency includes 60 payment methods in 30 currencies. Hi5 also runs premium advertising alongside games, and it will share some of this revenue with games in the program.

So, while Hi5’s application platform will still exist, the program is intended to lure developers in to a tighter relationship with the company. New partners include: Detonator Games, Exponential Entertainment and Immortal Games.

Given its size and mature platform, Facebook is still going to be the priority for many developers. The second-largest social gaming platform, MySpace, has also just made big improvements to attract game developers. Hi5, however, is arguably the social platform most focused on games — specialization is a classic business strategy for a smaller competitor, and given where Hi5 is at, we think it’s making the right moves. We’ll see if it will work.

Apparently, the end of the world isn’t going to be a nuclear war, the rise of Skynet, or even a biological weapon that turns us all into zombies. No, evidently the end will be cybernetic cats and radioactive elephants. Well, at least that’s the image that Islamabad-based social developer White Rabbit paints with Feline Frenzy: Robot Wars.

The game is a quirky, simple, arcade-shooter that has cyborg storks dropping cyborg cats onto the flanks of a simple hut with a giant cannon on the roof. Using the arrow keys and space bar, players rotate the cannon right or left in an attempt to shoot the balloons that are floating the cats down to safety. Unfortunately, your ammunition cache is comprised of mere boots, so hitting the balloons and sending the evil felines plummeting to their doom is all that will work. However, four reaching the ground safely on either side spells failure for the player.

The goal of the game is to last as long as you can, and brag about it to your friends later. As players shoot the various storks and cats, they score points (which of course means there is a leaderboard system), with more being earned the quicker they hit the target. However, the catch is that for every shot fired, it costs points, so it is prudent to be accurate. It is possible, though, to get some free shots by inviting friends.

To a degree, this is quite useful in racking up higher scores, as some of the unlockable ammunition – better shoes, of course – have higher point costs to use, but extra benefits. As a general example, the Cowboy Boots are larger, so they cover more area, while the Khussa Shoes are small, but ricochet. Each piece of footwear acts as a makeshift achievement as well, since they are not all unlocked the same way. Some are unlocked by reaching a new level during a game, which is basically symbiotic with your score, while others require you to win gold medals in the app’s eight mini-games.

In fact, these games do make for an added bonus as they are all more curious adaptations to the main shooting concept. Some are merely survival games, only giving the player two cats on each side before losing, others have tiny balloons, while still other involve a deluge of radioactive, nuclear elephants.

This actually leads to a major complaint with Feline Frenzy though. The controls feel extremely sluggish, for it seemingly takes forever to rotate the cannon from one end to the other. It isn’t too much of an issue for the storks and cats, but these blasted elephants come out of nowhere from the top of the screen and fall faster than the cannon can turn. As an example, if your cannon is aiming far left, and one falls from the right, they will hit you, and when they do, it’s game over. Period. Obviously, it is frustrating to be able to see, it coming, but it is not possible to hit.

Overall Feline Frenzy is a moderately amusing game, but once the novelty of the cybernetic cat invasion has worn off, we wonder how many players will keep coming back. The name suggests that we will be seeing more Feline Frenzy titles in the future. The title has been growing steadily over the past week and a half since launching, with about 2,700 monthly active users to date.

Japanese internet company CyberAgent is bringing its popular virtual world, Ameba Pigg, to the U.S. market, and to Facebook, as Ameba Pico.

Ameba Pigg has gained around 2 million users in the last 11 months, making CyberAgent one of the larger Japanese companies of its ilk. Here’s our look at the new app.

At first glance Ameba Pico does not look like much. It has a very simplistic art style, and a stiff, child-like, and limited set of animations for the avatar. But the variety and activity within this virtual world bring it to life.

Essentially, the world is broken up into various chat rooms. Each one has a distinctive theme, and since this is a western, U.S. version, they are all parts of New York City. Players are capable of visiting downtown NYC, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the New York Academy, and so on. These areas are more than just aesthetics as well, for players can actually shop at stores in these rooms that contain themed furniture and clothing based on the area. New York’s downtown, for example, sells fedoras while a more creative room, like the Stone Age (which you need to by a “Time Machine” to visit) sells… cave man stuff.

As with most virtual worlds, these purchases go into decorating your own virtual room and avatar. There’s actually a pretty hefty selection too. For the former, users select a base theme (we went with traditional Japanese), and build from there. From the room, players can order new, non-themed, items from a catalog and move, rotate, and remove items from their space. Unfortunately, placement is based on an invisible grid, that has a snapping mechanism similar to Adobe products like Photoshop or Flash. Trying to get a small, single grid-space, item into place is frustrating because it constantly snaps to where you don’t want it.

Clothes, however, work much better. It isn’t that they look better, by any means, but you obviously don’t have the snapping issue, and you can throw on as much clothing as you want. Basically, this allows users to create their own look, to a limited degree, with layers of their own choosing (i.e. a jacket on top of a scarf, on top of a shirt) rather then just have a single slot for one top item, or one bottom item.

As for the purchasing itself… this gets a little interesting. The earnable in-game currency, called Gummies, is not used at all. Purchases can only be done with the buyable virtual currency, Ameba Coins. Traditionally, this is a cardinal sin for a virtual world, but it is mitigated by a third currency called Tokens.

Now, tokens can be used to buy anything in the game, and it only takes one. When the user starts, they are given five, but more can be won in a game called Gacha. For 300 Gummies, users can press “Play,” and it will spit out a random prize, which could be a token, furniture, clothing, etc. And before anyone thinks 300 is a high price, you get Gummies constantly through daily logins, receiving “Pico Props” (a button players can press when they click on your avatar), or accomplishing achievements.

Of everything Ameba Pico offers, however, the best element is not in the game features at all. It’s that the game is global and linked between a stand-alone site, using Facebook Connect, and Facebook. So far, we have seen English, Japanese, and French in those seas of chat bubbles. Heck, there have even been people from Australia and the Philippians walking around. It is very cool to talk with them, if you can, or even play mini-games such as Match Card or Reversi.

Despite a rocky first impression, Ameba Pico turned out to be a wonderful little virtual world. Aesthetically, it certainly won’t appeal to everyone, but as soon as you log in, you can immediately immerse yourself within a highly populated and global realm. Quite frankly, however, it is the latter that makes this Japanese title stand out, and a little taste of other cultures is something we all can always benefit from.

Currently, Ameba Pico has already gained more than 104,000 monthly active users.

Well, it looks like yet another big name developer is getting in on Facebook. This time around it is Sony Online Entertainment, as the game developer brings its popular turn-based strategy game, PoxNora, with a stated 2.5 million registered accounts, to the social network.

Despite a few hang-ups trying to use the game in Internet Explorer (text wouldn’t display properly), we were thankfully able to take a look using Firefox.The game actually proved to be extremely fun.

Okay, it’s fun once you get through the tutorial — which is terribly boring, by the way. Essentially, there are two players on a map, each with their own shrine. The objective of the game is to destroy that target. Of course, it’s hardly that simple. Each turn, the user is granted a resource called “Nora” – a sort of magic – which determines what they can deploy.

The deployed items cost X amount Nora, based on their power; as the game goes on, more powerful units become available, and are dubbed “runes.” These runes range from basic champions, to spells, to relics, and so on. Each has its own special abilities, and there are a lot of different runes, so the game gets strategic, fast. Some champions can only attack – some melee, some ranged – others can block incoming attacks, others heal, and so on.

The spells and relics also cost Nora but obviously do not always remain on the battle field. Relics, as an example, might give your champions extra health or damage so long as it survives, while a spell might heal, do area of effect damage, or hinder enemy movement.

This is where the next level of strategy appears. Each rune can only be deployed near your shrine – sans spells which can also be deployed near any friendly unit – or near a Nora Font. Each unit gains a set number of action points each turn and can move a certain distance on a grid based on those points. One grid space is one action point. However, these points are also needed to perform most attacks and special abilities a champion has, so budgeting them becomes very wise.

The Nora Fonts, or fountains, around the map are controlled by having only your faction adjacent to them. If there are no enemies near it, it will provided the controlling player extra Nora per turn. So, these are highly strategic locations to control.

Of course, PoxNora wouldn’t be much of a Facebook game without social capabilities. The game does allow for automatic feed postings, but it is actually turned off by default — an unusual move for an app. Furthermore, it doesn’t spam the player with “post this,” “share this,” etc. Actually, most of the social elements are within the game world itself.

Players are actually able to play synchronous multiplayer with one another. Even better than this, they can play in ranked ladder matches, unranked casual matches, unranked casual matches for those ranked under level 25, or just chat in “The Bazaar.” Moreover, if they just want to hone their skills, they can just play single player campaigns as well.

One issue, however, is that most of the biggest social games rely on asynchronous features. The point isn’t to have an immersive experience, but to do something simple — like watering a strawberry patch in FarmVille — a couple times a day, and communicate about it with friends. Many social game players don’t even think of themselves as playing a “game,” per se.

Regardless, virtual goods do a good job of complementing other features. In addition to just social play, users can also log on to the “Rune Trader,” and make requests to trade for runes they want or need. Consider it virtual card trading.

As a matter of fact, the game is even more like trading cards in that you can actually purchase packs of runes for Sony’s Station Cash (SC) virtual currency. The currency can be used to buy entire boxes of runes (around 3000 SC), new avatars, single player campaigns, and so on.

Artistically, PoxNora is a pretty nice treat as well. The artwork on the runes is fantastic and everything looks crisp and clean. That said, however, the movement and attacks of the champions in the actually battlefield look a bit uninspired by comparison. Nonetheless, this is just picking nits at this point.

PoxNora is certainly an in depth game, and one of the most strategic strategy game on Facebook that we have seen. It looks good, it plays good, and if you like strategy – and especially competition – then this is a game you will most certainly love. Additionally, Sony say that this title is only the first of many it has planned for the social network.

Mochi Media, the Flash gaming platform company that sold to China media giant Shanda Games for $80 million earlier this year, is continuing to focus on social. It’s announcing new tools for developers today, allowing them to provide ways for users to play games against friends and share activity to their social networks. It’s also offering a new $10 million fund for Flash and social games, in conjunction with its new corporate parent, to help finance promising new ideas.

The company worked last year to apply concepts from free-to-play social games to the Flash widget games on its site, introducing a platform-wide virtual currency, Mochi Coins, and a way for users to find friends from social networks and share things like high scores with them.

Mochi had begun live providing ways for developers to integrate pre-roll and other advertising into their widgets. Developers can then let anyone embed their games anywhere the web, and make money for themselves (with Mochi also getting a cut). On top of this, Mochi provides game analytics tools so developers could track usage and figure out where to improve their products. The company now says it reaches 150 million monthly active users, who play 15,000 games on 40,000 different web sites.

The Social API (application programming interface) lets users sign in to play a game via their identities on Facebook (using Facebook Connect), MySpace or Twitter, then play friends from across these sites and and access each site’s communication channels — say, posting a big gaming win to your Facebook wall.

But the API goes beyond what the company launched last fall, as vice president of product management Ryan Nichols tells us. It’s a layer on top of these other networks, and mimicks Facebook’s API so a social game developer on Facebook could easily port their game to it. Once a user adds a friend on Mochi from one of the social sites, that person becomes their Mochi friend — if Facebook goes down, for example, Mochi can still maintain its connection between the two people. The API =also includes a way for developers to message all users on a game, regardless of which social platform they are on.

This is a smart idea, but one issue is that many social gamers prefer playing games on social networks. Why? Many don’t even realize that they’re playing “games,” per se, but rather passing the time doing something entertaining with friends on the site.

The $10 million fund, meanwhile, “will be managed by members of the management team of Mochi Media and Shanda Games. Through participation with the fund, developers will gain access to technical, design and testing resources from Shanda Games, as well as a host of development tools and distribution….”

The big picture here is this: Shanda Games, a publicly-traded company controlled by Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd., wants to compete outside of China. Mochi offers distribution and monetization services that allow it to do so; the social features are another step in that direction. The fund is, too. The other interesting angle we’ve been hearing is that netbook usage is exploding in China, and the lightweight devices can’t handle the processing power required for many of the downloadable and massively multiplayer online games popular in the country. The company has organically gained millions of users in China — people who have just found Mochi-powered games on their own — so Shanda is aiming for Mochi to bring its 15,000 games to bear on the Chinese market.

Over the weekend, popular developer CrowdStar released a brand new Facebook app, Zoo Paradise. However, this one isn’t following the recent trend of city-builders. Rather, it’s an iteration on the “tycoon” concept. After the successes of RockYou’s Zoo World, who could blame the developer, as the zoological wonder not only reached #8 in this past month’s Top 25 Facebook Games, but is one of the contributors to the developer’s current popularity.

Nonetheless, Zoo Paradise is a lot like its predecessor in the core sense. The idea is to build the best looking zoo one can while coaxing the little computer-player patrons to spend as much money as they can.

The game is actually simple enough that there is no real tutorial, merely a giant purple arrow above the “Shop” icon. From here players can purchase animals, habitats, concessions, and decorations for a very reasonable price. However, based on the player level, only a limited number of these (save decorations) can be purchased at any given time.

As for the level itself, it seems that most of the experience needed to increase it is done by buying and placing new items. Periodically, players must also feed their animals and even water certain decorations such as a handful of trees. Also, all habitats and concessions seem to be upgradeable.

Unfortunately, Zoo Paradise is a bit of a slow burner. When first starting the game, players are able to pick up coins that were presumably dropped by customers. Nonetheless, no new ones were ever dropped during play, when we played and not once did a customer buy anything from a concession stand. Likely, since the game is in beta, this is merely a bug, but if it isn’t, then it certainly is a significant turn off to the game.

Thankfully, the lack of new income from the in-game currency (Zoo Coins) wasn’t too terribly hindering, as the game’s decoration’s panel in the shop has a fairly sizable collection of plants, bushes, rocks, and so on, that only cost anywhere from two to 15 coins, making it easy for the player to get started aesthetically.

This is a good thing too, as the game actually looks very nice. Everything has a sort of overly cute and saturated look to it (complete with great big watery eyes for the animals). All the habitats are animated as well as the animals who move about in a fairly believable fashion, for a Flash game anyway).

Of course, all this movement also corresponds to the zoo visitors as well, and while their wandering presence makes the game feel like a bustling park, their pathfinding AI isn’t exactly refined yet. These guys constantly walk out into the middle of nowhere, including through decorations, and at one point, every single one got stuck in the entrance and couldn’t enter. As a side note, multiple animals in a habitat seem to get stuck, too. Again, all are just beta bugs, but something to be aware of nonetheless.

Another curious point, is that this CrowdStar title actually doesn’t use its own virtual currency. Instead, it makes sole use of the Facebook Credits system, directing you to a Credits purchase screen if you try to buy the currency. Only a low percentage of items require Credits currency – about one-third of each section. That said, however, there isn’t exactly a large selection of items yet, so it is currently a bit limiting. For example, there are only three habitats – jungle, savanna, and polar – and the savanna costs 67 Facebook Credits, leaving a player that doesn’t want to spend money with very few style choices.

In regards to social ramifications, the game is typical of about any CrowdStar game, or any other virtual space type of app, for that matter. Players can send each other gifts, publish feeds to adopt rescued animals, send gifts, and visit each other’s zoo (to help out) via a leaderboard system. Nothing out of the ordinary, but why fix what isn’t broken?

Overall, Zoo Paradise isn’t too shabby. Especially considering its traffic — somewhere in the neighborhood of 112,000 monthly active users already. The game looks good, and it plays well (even if it is a bit slow). Moreover, despite its initial bugs, it was actually thoroughly enjoyable. We look forward to seeing a cleaned up version in the near future.

Of all the popular genres seen in free-to-play games – be they social, casual, or otherwise – ninjas seem to be a highly reoccurring theme. Be they in Naruto RPGs, epic sagas, or battling armies, these Japanese assassins have been anything but stealthy. So why not make a free-to-play massively multiplayer online Facebook-connected social game about them? And thus we get the open beta rendition of Nindou International from 1001F Interactive.

Incorporating players from not only the United States, but other regions such as Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, the Facebook Connect-using site provides a competitive battling ninja war, of sorts, set within a Japanese, cel-shaded world. As a matter of fact, the art style is one of the most noticeable element to the game, as it is likely inspired by the PlayStation 2 title, Okami. For those unfamiliar with the game, the entire world looks similar to a Japanese semi-e ink painting (just with more color). This style, coupled with over the top and quirky animations make Nindou most interesting right off the bat.

Despite a warming aesthetic style, the core of the game is anything but. Using a click and hold technique, along with a mouse drag, players charge up “NP” and dash about a screen in order to reach and attack various objects and, ahem, inflict “great suffering” upon any enemy players who get in the way. Attacking with these objects is basically point and click (though eventually you do get ninjutsu), with the point being to complete the objective of various game modes.

Each mode is a hosted battle within the game’s world, with each having a unique objective. “Save the Princess” grants victory to the team the breaks the wall containing the princess first; “Spooky Hunters” marks one person on each team as a ghost while the other team hunts them; “Death Instructions” is a team deathmatch; “Thousand Kill” is a timed deathmatch where the team with the most kills wins; and “Last Man Standing” is a free-for-all with a self-explanatory goal.

For each match played, players earn experience and gold. The former obviously goes toward new levels which is primarily used as a gating mechanism when it comes to buying new weapons and equipment. Gold, on the other hand, actually buys it. Nonetheless, like most free-to-play MMOs, players have the choice of buying most items with either the in-game currency of Gold or the buyable virtual currency, Nin Coins. Essentially, using the latter is not required, but it allows for faster progression through the game.

As for the world itself, it is broken up into various villages, which serve as community chat rooms where people can walk around, view profiles, and join games. Beyond these, there are also a surprising amount of shops that you can visit. These include weapons, armor, ninjutsu (spells), dougu, seki, plastic surgery (changing your avatar), and more.

If you’re a bit confused by the terms of dougu and seki, that’s to be expected, as the game doesn’t do a very good job of really explaining what all of this is or how to use it, at least not yet. Essentially, these are temporary enhancements to your character and weapon enhancements. And though it sounds a bit clearer when put in layman’s terms, the only tutorial to find this information is a link to a help page that contains a tremendous amount of information that most people are going to forget in a minute or two.

The majority of players are going to learn through doing, which is the other key issue with Nindou. Any sort of matchmaking system feels, currently, non-existent, making a new player’s life a nightmare. At best, there are areas labeled level 10 and under, but are often barren, and thus when a player goes to a more populated area there isn’t any real limitation on who joins a battle. A level one can be put up against a level 21, and there is no way to tell what the levels the players in a battle will be until you join the waiting room.

This is a hindrance on two levels as not only does the match itself become unfair, but for anyone that has played an MMO of any type, they can tell you that internet anonymity leads to a lot of elitist players that often shun the “noob” that doesn’t know what they are doing. Such attitudes are no fault of the developer, but are still something that they need to be aware of and attempt to mitigate. New users need a place to learn and grow at their own pace to see if they like a game. Baptisms of fire aren’t what many players are looking for.

Nevertheless, the game is still in beta so such issues are subject to change. Hopefully there’ll be improvements, as the game actually does have a lot of depth when players become more advanced in using the buyable abilities. Also, the game can be connected to through Facebook itself, so getting started is extremely quick and easy, and it doesn’t hurt that you can post your in-game accomplishments to your feed as well.

Currently, through Facebook, the game is earning around 350,000 monthly active users. However, as a stand-alone site with portals from Yahoo and Yam as well, it is likely getting much more.

Since we’ve been on the subject of classic games getting remade as social ones, there’s one “inspired” genre that has kept popping up periodically over the past months. These are social team battling games reminiscent of the Worms franchise. The first noticeable appearance was with Playfish’s Crazy Planets, and another was Playdom’s Wild Ones. However, now, the latest Worms-like game goes to a quirky turtle-slaying game from German developer Plinga called Turtle Squad.

The company’s name may have been inspired by Zynga, but Turtle Soup is nearly a clone of Worms — if you played Worms 2, then you’ve played the core of Turtle Squad. However, for those unfamiliar with the old PC title, players control a squad of five turtles, with the objective of wiping out the enemy team. Each turtle has a set number of hit points, and using a set of bizarre weaponry (i.e. a shark missile), attempt to bring all enemies down to zero.

The player and computer-controlled opponent take turns, with each choosing which turtle to move. Using basic controls (move left, right, and jump, though eventually you get tools such as a helicopter or teleporter), they can position their character (under a time limit) on uniquely designed maps, searching for the best vantage point from which to attack. From here, the player selects a weapon and fires it, but what is interesting, however, is that power (determined by holding down the fire button), direction, and angle all play a part in attack accuracy.

You see, Turtle Squad actually has fairly decent physics, as well as directional wind. Between these two factors, it is possible to curve bazooka shells, bank shot grenades, and so on. After each match the game grants you bonuses to your income based on how accurate your shooting is, as well as your average time per shot and damage per shot (determined by accuracy and weapon choice).

This money, dubbed Turtle Coins, comes in a bit useful when purchasing new weapons and tools that are unlocked in the game’s single player campaign mode. Thankfully, the task of unlocking items isn’t too frustrating as the mode is actually fairly fun, with players advancing through a number of creative levels that have increasingly difficult enemies in terms of health, numbers, and overall AI.

Regardless, once you have unlocked a weapon, you have to actually pay to research it. This actually plays into an interesting social feature where the more friends you have playing, the less time it takes to research. Unfortunately, you can only work on one development at a time, - making said expedience prudent – but likely, that is to entice further friend invites. Luckily, you can always speed things up even more by buying the weapon immediately with the virtual currency, Plinga Stars. Oddly enough, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to actually buy it. At least not in an intuitive or visible place.

As for other social features, there are the standard feed publications, but curiously, these are coupled with preset “Brags” that openly taunt people to challenge your turtle squad. In fact, that challenge mode is the next social feature, which allows you to battle the squad put together by your friends. Sadly, it looks to just be computer controlled, but does have some potential for synchronous multiplayer.

Of course, if you don’t wish to pick fights with your friends, you can always have them join your squad. All this really does is put their name and Facebook profile picture above the turtles on the battlefield, but if they play too, the character will be granted an added health bonus.

Aesthetically, Turtle Squad looks and sounds great. The visuals and animations, coupled with the high pitched turtle voices, make it a very amusing game to play (though it’s soothing to mute it from time to time). It’s especially entertaining to watch a defeated turtle turn into a can of soup. Unfortunately, this praise also brings up our biggest complaint.

The social elements and researching of weapons aside, the core game play is virtually identical to Worms 2. Beyond that, Worms was also known for it’s cartoon visual style and high pitched English voices. Granted, these turtles aren’t from the UK, but if someone playing were to walk to the bathroom, you could probably switch out the game for Worms and they wouldn’t notice.

In the end, Turtle Squad is a fun game, but hardly very original. Its social elements are really what saves the title from being a complete rip-off of the Worms franchise, but even they still have untapped potential. This isn’t to say that social developers should stop basing their titles on classic games, it’s just saying that perhaps they should truly be more inspirational rather than mere blueprints.