Zynga’s Reynolds, Nexon’s Kim appointed to ISAS board –

Harmonix working on Facebook Game – Boston-based Harmonix, best known for its Rock Band and Dance Central franchises is working on a Facebook. Shacknews reported the news based on an updated resume for the company’s lead designer Brian Chan. There is currently a Dance Central Facebook app called Dance Central 2 Challenge. It has 2000 MAU.

Square Enix adds Facebook to FFXIII-2 – Andriasang is reporting that the Japanese version of Final Fantasy XIII-2 has been patched to add Facebook support to the game, allowing a player to post information about their game to their wall.

Crytek unveils GFace, a PC-mobile social game network — PC game maker Crytek has created a PC to mobile social gaming network. The GFace network is currently in beta and focuses on cross-platform, multiplayer gameplay.

Final Fantasy Brigade now has 1 million players – Square Enix’s first mobile social game Final Fantasy Brigade is proving to be extremely popular. The game, which is available on DeNA’s Mobage network, now has over 1 million users according to Andriasang.

Monster Hunter coming to Mobage – Capcom’s ultra-popular Monster Hunter series is coming to DeNA’s Mobage Platform. The game will be a collectible card-battle game and will be called Minna to Monhan Card Master, according to Andriasang. It will launch on both smartphones and feature phones on Feb. 21.

Japan’s social game market to double value by 2016 – The Nomura Research Institute has predicted that the Japanese social gaming market will be worth $5.1 billion dollars by 2016 according to industry watcher Serkan Toto, who translated the report.

Nintendo will allow devs to offer microtransactions - Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has said his company will now allow third part developers on its Nintendo Network to offer microtransactions. Iwata revealed the information at Nintendo’s third quarter financial results briefing on Jan. 27.

DeNA, GREE continue legal slugging match — DeNA and GREE are continuing to play out their rivalry in the Japanese courts. In November, GREE sued DeNA, claiming the company was pressuring developers to sign exclusive contracts. According to Serkan Toto, DeNA is now suing for damages related to GREE’s actions.

[Launch] NASA releases new Facebook Game – NASA has released a multiplayer Facebook game called Space Race Blastoff that tests users knowledge of the space program.

[Launch] ESPN Return Man comes to Facebook - ESPN.com’s popular casual arcade game ESPN Return Man is now available on Facebook. The game was a collaboration between ESPN and Disney Social Games, and is the third collaborative release between the two studios. Our full review of the game can be found here.

[Launch] Microsoft Research launches new Facebook game - Microsoft Research has released its second Facebook, Doubloon Dash, in order to study the reactions of real people engaging in game theory like interactions.

The game casts players in the role of a graveyard keeper, and tasks them with defending the graveyard against frequent attacks from disgruntled locals. This is achieved by sending undead minions into battle to confront the locals, and gradually building up the graveyard with useful structures, crops and decorations.

Gameplay blends several popular social and casual game styles together into one coherent experience. Sending minions into battle is somewhat similar to the “tower defense” genre, where enemy forces approach the player’s base along a predetermined path, and the player must deploy defenses (in this case, minions) to deal with them as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the building and crop harvesting is similar to city-building and farming games, with actions taking time to perform, and crops ripening and spoiling over time. In an interesting twist, the player acquires new troops with which to defend their graveyard by planting them just like normal crops. Finally, the combat involves elements of role-playing and strategy combat games, with both player minions and enemies having varying strength levels, and some working better than others against one another.

Since the game is currently limited to a ten-level beta demo on its own website, social and monetization features have not yet been implemented, nor can it be tracked via our traffic tracking application AppData. Planned social features include a “fear factor” rating for players’ graveyards, where friends will be able to compare what is effectively the “net worth” of their land of horrors. There will also be the facility for players to send gifts to one another.

Meanwhile, monetization will be accomplished through use of the game’s hard currency of skulls. The current version doesn’t give any specific indication of what players can expect to purchase using skulls, but the placeholder menu promises “special items, structures and creatures.”

When the game launches in February, however, it will be simultaneously released on Facebook, iOS and Android. This is made possible by the  HTML5 and cross-platform export support found in YoYo Games’ newest Game Maker product, Game Maker Studio, set to release shortly after Grave Maker’s launch. Game Maker Studio’s export pipeline means that the game can be made once and easily deployed to multiple platforms rather than having to go through a lengthy and complex porting process. The multiplatform support also allows one game account to be used across all three versions, meaning a game can be started on Facebook and later picked up on the go via an iOS or Android portable device.

“Grave Maker is a huge project for YoYo Games and in many ways, it represents the culmination of everything we’ve been working towards with the Game Maker package,” says Stuart Poole, head of publishing at YoYo Games. “Grave Maker is every bit a modern social game, but its cross-platform abilities and the power of GameMaker’s HTML5 support means that the player gets the same gameplay experience across all three platforms, with the game in play accessible from any of them, at any time.”

The game offers three main modes of play: a simple “Arcade” mode, which allows players to jump in to a variety of different race types immediately; a multiplayer mode which is currently undergoing beta testing; and an in-depth “Career” mode that tasks players with completing license tests along with purchasing and upgrading cars as well as the racing itself.

Racing takes a realistic approach, featuring 111 different licensed cars from 26 different manufacturers. It’s possible to play the game from a variety of camera angles, including an in-cockpit view featuring authentically-recreated interiors of the cars in question. A healthy degree of skill is required to make progress in the game, though a variety of assistance options are available for those with less experience in realistic racing simulations. These include a “suggested line” superimposed on the track, indicating where players should accelerate and brake; traction control to help prevent out of control skidding; assistance with braking; and an Electronic Stability Program (ESP) setting to help the player stay in control of the car and keep it on the track.

The game is monetized through the sale of soft and hard currency. Most cars can be purchased with either soft or hard currency, and hard currency can also be spent on skipping challenges such as license tests. It’s also possible to purchase experience points directly, which is unusual for a social game. Since experience levels unlock game content such as new cars, those players who wish to jump straight to the part of the game with high-end concept cars can do so by spending money. Conversely, those willing to put in the time and effort to work their way through the early game can gain access to almost all of the game content — though some later cars and performance upgrades can only be purchased with hard currency.

“Gameloft is very excited about offering our games to Google+ users,” said Baudouin Cormon, VP of publishing for the Americas at Gameloft. “GT Racing is bringing a stunning racing experience right in the browser, and we are happy to be pioneering the field with Google to bring the social gaming platform to the next level.”

We didn’t hear back from Gameloft prior to the publication of this review, but it’s clear what the future could hold for GT Racing. Racing games are, by their very nature, modular experiences to which it will be easy to add new cars, tracks and challenges. The game’s multiplayer options will also ensure that an active community will arise around the game, particularly as regular play is incentivized by daily bonus packages.

The social network version of GT Racing: Motor Academy is currently exclusive to Google+. The game is also available for iOS and Android devices, but the mobile editions do not have any link to the computer-based social network versions.

The Learning Company

A game of piecing together clues in order to locate and apprehend criminals of Carmen’s V.I.L.E. organization, it tacks on a handful of social elements on Facebook but lacks the difficulty and style that made the original version memorable.

Carmen Sandiego, if you’ll recall, is a former member of the police agency ACME, and the most notorious criminal on the planet. Traveling around the globe, she and her criminal underlings steal everything from the bizarre (all the pedestrian signs in a city) to the grandiose (e.g. a monument).

The idea behind the game is that players need to travel around various global cities in search of clues that will either (a) narrow down their list of suspects in order to issue a warrant, or (b) point the player to where the criminal may be hiding. For each area of a city investigated, a bit of time is consumed, and for each time the user must hop a plane to another city, even more is eaten up. The goal is to find the correct city the criminal is hiding it, narrow down the suspects enough to issue a warrant, and do so within an allotted amount of time.

As a social game, it tends to have a finite amount of play in any one sitting. Players are given a series of missions that change every couple of hours, with the experience reward depending on how difficult the case is. As best we can tell, cases that change every, say, 30 minutes, are easier than those that take several hours.

Yet, none of the cases seem very hard. Possibly, “harder” cases will be come about at higher levels, but based on initial impressions of the game, difficulty is likely going to be increased along arbitrary lines of less time to do them. It’s the clues that need to be harder, and for the several cases we solved, many of them were cringe-inducingly lame. Some examples are his eyes “were on the non-green side of teal” or “her eyes nearly set off my smoke alarm” (when there is an eye color called “smoky”). [Update: We did hear from the developers and there are, in fact, significantly harder clues that take on a more riddle-like feel such as "When he switched the lights off, I thought he was trying to hide his face. Turned out he was trying to offset his morning toast." Unfortunately, it may take some time until players are presented with these challenging, and much more fun, cases.]

Even clues in terms of figuring out where the suspect is headed are easy. Each one is worded in such a way that one merely has to type it into Google and the city and country are probably within the first two results. Heck, players don’t even have to type: They can copy and paste! In a sense, this is a problem caused by the Internet age — something that was obviously not an issue in the 1980s. Even so, many of the original clues were at least a bit more vague, describing a landscape or a “striped flag of yellow and blue,” or some such. At least then, should players “cheat” with an almanac, some research — and by extension, they had to learn.

To further trivialize the game, players don’t even have to really worry about making mistakes. If they need an extra clue, they can purchase it with a marginal amount of virtual currency. If they are low on time, they can take a “fast” plane that consumes zero travel time. They can even post to their wall, asking friends for help. In truth, that’s not a bad idea, but because of the Google element, it’s pointless.

As for other social elements, these too feel a bit of a stretch. Other than some simple leaderboards (based on level), the only noticeable mechanics appear to be cases that require a set number of friends to unlock, and an apparent ability to gift cases. That said, we did learn about a much more interesting feature, and that is that friends will occassionally appear as criminals in the game, ripe for apprehension.

Yet another aspect of the game that feels lacking is that none of the criminals the player apprehends (when apprehended or when a warrant is being issued) ever looks unique. In fact, most of the characters in general don’t feel all that unique. No matter where the player goes, there is always the same handful of witnesses and two ACME characters (the chief and a robot named SAM). Yet if players visit the robot SAM, he has a database of all the criminals and there is actually unique artwork for them.

In the end, Carmen Sandiego on Facebook has all the parts that made the original game good, but but not as much style. Everything is just far to easy and obvious clue-wise, and the social mechanics feel more forced than anything. Additionally, if the Internet age didn’t trivialize the game enough, the ability to circumvent core game play mechanics (e.g. flight time) with virtual currency makes any remaining challenge moot. On a final note, the social translation of the game has altered the whole point of Carmen Sandiego! People played this game in the hopes that their next case would be to find Carmen herself, not to try and be the top of a leaderboard! Where is in the world Carmen Sandiego? Probably crying in a corner somewhere after this.

RockYou Restructures, Lays Off Employees

Deal United Introduces Offer Wall Converter — At the Virtual Goods Summit, Deal United announced the launch of its Offer Wall Converter, which will allow easy integration of Deal United’s pay.by.shopping platform alongside existing offer providers. Additionally, the company is offering a $50,000 sign up bonus for the first 10 online games to use the Offer Wall Converter.

i-Jet Media to Raise $20 Million — Russian social games publisher, i-Jet Media is seeking to raise $20 million in funding at a $100 million valuation, according to Vedomosti. I-Jet says that the funding will be used to further expand the company and enter new markets.

Virtual Greats Continues to Grow — Earlier this week, we noted the growth of virtual goods with Virtual Greats’ integration of branded goods within PageFad’s sports games. The company just announced another partnership, this time with Mentez, to bring branded Paris Hilton virtual goods to the Latin social network, Orkut.

App Genius to Reward Players for Losing Online — App Genius has announced the launch of their new title on Facebook, My Mad Millions, where users try to spend $300 million virtual dollars. As a reward, the top 20 percent of active players (chosen twice a month) will be rewarded with 50 percent of the game’s revenue.

Gossip & Ultima From EA — There’s been a huge among of gossip and ranting out of Electronic Arts recently about its problems producing successful MMOGs. Among the rants, the anonymous “EA Louse” alleged that the classic Ultima franchise is coming to Facebook as a pet project of an EA exec.

Bonfire Studios May Have Cost $6.3 Million — A form D SEC filing submitted by Zynga notes that the company paid at least $6.3 million for Bonfire Studios; the developer acquired by the company earlier this month.

Zynga Expands Further — In other Zynga news, VentureBeat noted a list of new job postings from the company, including positions at what appears to be a new Seattle office.

Save Energy With Social Games — After a round of angel funding, Formative Labs has said that they’re looking to teach people to save energy, says TechCrunch. While the company has not disclosed details on how, they will be using social gaming.

Microsoft Unveals Windows Phone 7 & App Hub — Microsoft announced this week the coming of a new series of Windows Phone 7 devices, as well as App Hub, where Windows Phone and Xbox Live game developers can find everything from development tools to support.

Scoreloop Partners with Samsung — Social, mobile gaming platform Scoreloop is partnering with Samsung this week, making the Scoreloop SDK available to developers of the smartphone platform.

Kiva’s Biggest Rival — Micro-lending startup Kiva attracted some attention this week by calling Zynga its biggest competitor. Why? Because Zynga games soak up attention and disposable income online, drawing those resources away from non-profits and other social causes. A video from TechCrunch explains Kiva’s plans to compete over the next five years.

Gravity Bear Rants About “Gamification” — Social developer Gravity Bear has written an amusing rant against gameification, the process of adding game elements to non-gaming media. While much of the digital media industry appears excited about the concept as a business model, Gravity Bear says the concept is just a fad.

The Settlers marks the latest sizeable intellectual property franchise to attempt to do something significant (game-wise) on Facebook — a trend we most recently saw with FIFA Superstars from Electronic Arts. It appears that The Settlers is still in early beta, so a number of features are still missing. Nevertheless, with a solid core set of mechanics, an exemplary style, and a tremendous amount of room for expansion, it’s a game that’s already pretty good now.

Players control a tiny avatar (that will supposedly do more than walk around eventually) in the world of Tandria. It falls on the player to run the kingdom the way they see fit. The basics are about the same as all other city-builders: construct a beautiful and thriving city by managing population and production.

Production is the most self-explanatory. Various buildings — such as a butchery or bakery — can be used to produce their respective products (up to five at a time), for a small fee, that you can later sell for profit. Like farming games, making these items can take anywhere from minutes to several hours, and spoilage is possible if the player fails to claim the product. Eventually, taxes can be collected to mitigate such losses.

As for the population, these fellows become the work force, in a matter of speaking. For each resident you have, you can produce something from one of the production buildings. Obviously, this means the greater your populace, the greater the potential income. This is where things start to get a bit interesting.

Many buildings cost more than just coin, also requiring resources such as lumber or stone, which are gathered from the sectors displayed on a rather expansive world map. In each sector, users can perform different tasks, one of which is sending out your residents to gather said resources. Sadly, the map section has not yet been opened, but it is here that the potential of the app shines.

Like the strategy game, these areas, dubbed the “Outer Rim,” can become a means of expanding your kingdom. Though it is not entirely clear how it will work in the Facebook version, players will be able to expand in many different ways, such as trade, diplomacy, or simply military muscle. What makes the expansion sound more unique, however, is a feature called “Event Locations.”

Beyond new land and potential resources, these Events appear to be special quests to grant equally special rewards (for the record, an entire section is a dragon — awesome). Additionally, friends will be able to join you in completing these quests, adding a fantastic social mechanic that enhances the basic existing concept of visiting friends’ towns to help and share gifts.

Beyond all of these features, The Settlers appears to have any number of other strategy aspects waiting to go live. For example, many buildings appear to have sub-functions such as the casino, church, and tavern, which will be used to gamble, research technology, and keep soldiers happy, respectively.

In truth, the only thing bad about The Settlers – My City, is that it’s not ready yet. It’s a very cool looking game, and probably worth the wait, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Filled with a wonderful, animated fantasy style, from visuals to music, The Settlers is easily the biggest social endeavor that Ubisoft has taken on yet. With about 4,700 monthly active users taking part in its beta, you can bet it’s going to be fun when it’s done — especially since it’s kind of fun already.

Six Flags Diving into Social Games Again – The theme park giant Six Flags has announced its upcoming new Six Flags Mascot Park — a social game. It will allow players to create various mascots that can virtually perform, with actions ranging from dancing to getting blown up, as they strive to become “the star of a virtual Six Flags theme park.” This is not the first social dance for Six Flags, however, as it had launched a simple collection of mini-games on Facebook back in November of 2008.

MySpace Redesign is Coming – Being second in social networks next to Facebook, MySpace evidently has a major redesign coming. At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, MySpace Co-President Jason Hirschhorn noted that new products would be coming this summer, with a massive overhaul of the overall site design following sometime during the fall.

Blur Features Facebook Integration – Mainstream racing game, Blur, from the developer Bizarre Creations and publisher Activision is doing more than racing sexy cars. Players of the game can actually connect Facebook, in both single and multiplayer modes, and send game challenges to friends as well as post in-game photos, racing stats, unlockable items, and more to their Facebook feeds.

Mobile Flash Gaming Site Coming to Android – Earlier this week, Mochi Media, the Flash gaming portal that sold to Shanda Games earlier this year, announced the launch of a brand new Flash games site that will make use of Flash 10.1. Moreover, the site will actually be a mobile-oriented site, allowing users to play via the Android platform.

NoiseToys Helps Socialize Music – A new startup dubbed NoiseToys has launched a new iPhone app called HitMaker that takes a page out of the Fantasy Football playbook to socialize music. In a nutshell, players find music and “own” it, then attempt to boost how well it does by sharing it with your friends. If they like it, you get points.

Offerpal’s GamePoints.com Sees Early Successes – It’s been roughly three weeks since Offerpal Media launched GamePoints.com, the website that allows users to earn virtual currency for any number of games. In that time, the company has reported that the endeavor has garnered 500,000 users, whose favorite means of earning currency consists of watching videos, completing surveys, or earning shopping rewards.

MasterCard Opens Payment Platform to Developers – Long time online payments service PayPal is seeing some new competition this week as The New York Times reports MasterCard’s announcement of its plan to open its credit card payments platform to developers of both online and mobile applications.

Apple Gets Antitrust Inquiries, But Sees New Growth - According to The New York Times, Apple is getting antitrust inquiries regarding its supposed strategy for marketing its digital music. Supposedly, the company has used its dominance over the digital music market to dissuade music labels and internet music companies from giving online retailers, such as Amazon.com, any sort of exclusive access to music pending release.

Luckily, not all news for Apple is bad, as the continued success of the company’s iDevices (particularly the iPad) has pushed Apple’s market cap high enough to make it the most valuable technology company in the world, over Microsoft.

Zynga Invades 7-Eleven: Photo Evidence - Monday was the day that Zynga and 7-Eleven made their cross-promotion partnership, but Eric von Coelln took it upon himself to take a few photographs at just how much this entailed. From Slurpee machines, to sandwiches and fruits, the advertisements are everywhere.

IMVU Sees Significant Growth –

In addition to this, the future of the virtual world looks just as bright as the California-based company has also announced the hiring of David Fleck, former Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Second Life, as IMVU’s new Vice President of Marketing.

Second Life Also Grows – IMVU isn’t the only virtual world doing well as Linden Lab has also announced that its user-to-user transactions for March topped $57 million. Furthermore, user-to-user transactions for the quarter totaled a whopping $160 million – 30% higher than quarter one of last year. As far as users go, Second Life is reporting a peak of 826,000 unique monthly users in March; a number 13% higher than March of 2009.

Bungie on Social Networks and Mobile Platforms? – Bungie, creators of Halo, are teaming up with Activision-Blizzard to begin work on the developer’s next major game franchise. However, what is most curious is in an interview with VentureBeat, Bungie president Harold Ryan noted that the company is interested in more than just the core gaming platforms. According to the interview, the company is focused on fun, connecting players, and building communities. That in mind, they may be taking this new intellectual property beyond just core consoles to one or more of of the social platforms and genres, including the iPhone, iPad, Facebook, and MMOs.

AdMob Releases New Mobile Metrics – AdMob’s Mobile Metrics Report is out for March, and it focuses on the growth the growing Android mobile OS ecosystem. Evidently, 11 devices accounted for a staggering 96% of Android OS traffic; traffic that was made up from two devices back in September of last year. In terms of operating system versions, the majority of the traffic was still driven by Android 1.5, Android 2.0 and 2.1, and Android 1.6, garnering 38%, 35%, and 26% respectively.

Of course, the report would not be complete without iPhone data. As such, highlights include numbers regarding iPhone OS traffic as well. The 3GS made up 39% of the traffic, while the iPod Touch and 3G made up 25% and 20%. In total, the three devices made up 84% of total iPhone OS traffic. Furthermore, 3GS traffic was noted to have increased from its 30% number back in September, 2009.

SCORE:plug Offers New Services to Flash Web Games – Israeli company, SCORE:plug is offer a new means to help socialize Flash-based games on the web. Similar in concept to services like Heyzap and Kontagent, the company allows any destination site offering Flash games to make use of the service to power both leaderboards and social communities.

A little under half of its services are free, and namely consist of different types of leaderboards. However, for monthly fees, SCORE offers features such as a registration system, events, tournaments, personalized gamer pages, and a Facebook module to allow for friend challenging.

Flash Not Coming to Apple Any Time Soon - The lack of Flash support on Apple mobile devices has been an on going issue for game developers (well, anyone using Flash on the web, really). To resolve the issue, Adobe had been working on a means of bringing Flash users’ creations to the iPhone via a compiler to be built into the upcoming Creative Suite 5. Unfortunately, Adobe claims that their plans have been stopped cold by Apple deciding to, once again, rewrite its developer agreements, thus blocking software tools such as Flash. This was followed up by a blistering, controversial letter from Steve Jobs about Adobe. See Techmeme for the full story.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Apple has made such changes that hinder development in some way, be they for software, games, or apps. What makes the change sting even more, though, is that according to Flash Project Manager Mike Chambers’ blog, “during the entire development cycle of Flash CS5, the feature complied with Apple’s licensing terms.” Well, at least until noted changes were made.

CrowdStar Sues WonderHill – One of the leading social developers, CrowdStar is filing suit against WonderHill for plagiarism this week, over the latter company’s title, Aquarium Life. Though the game does play similarly to CrowdStar’s top app, Happy Aquarium, it is hardly the first social game to follow a popular concept. In fact, the aquarium game genre got its start in China, before CrowdStar launched its version.

However, VentureBeat reports the federal lawsuit accuses WonderHill of directly copying very specific features and animations such as a “distinctive mating dance to a backdrop of hearts and romantic music.” Other claims include the deliberate copying of CrowdStar’s user interface for their 19.6 million MAU title, something that CrowdStar Chairman Peter Relan notes as unacceptable and stating that “it’s almost like you’re staring at our game.”

Playdom Cans Lil Green Patch – Way back in late 2008, Green Patch’s Lil Green Patch garden simulator Facebook app was the top game on Facebook. However, this week, roughly six months after Green Patch’s acquisition by Playdom, the title is going the way of the dodo. Along with the the app, Lil Eco Racer, and Lil Blue Cove will also be gone.  Of the Lil series, only Lil Farm Life will remain. As we noted back in November, the remaining app was and is intended as a direct move against Zynga’s FarmVille and the truckload of other farming apps that also exist.

Moblyng Adds Mobsters to Their Mob – In other Playdom-related news: the cross-platform mobile game publisher Moblyng announced today that social game developer Playdom is its latest partner. What does this mean exactly? In a nutshell, Moblyng is capable of republishing a game across multiple smartphone platforms such as the iPhone, Android, and Palm’s WebOS. As such, Playdom titles such as Mobsters will soon be available on various mobile platforms including, but not limited to WebOS, Symbian, BlackBerry, and Android.

Japanese Company DeNA Releases Annual Financial Results – The Japan-based entertainment company DeNA announced its financial results for both the quarter and the fiscal year today (for the period ending March 31, 2010). In short, the company’s fourth quarter revenue saw an 81% increase over the previous year (2008) with a revenue total of $205 million. As for the year of 2009, in total, reported revenues tallied $517 million – 20% higher than 2008.

Of course, regarding the upcoming year, DeNA plans to grow even further by launching a PC-based social gaming platform with Yahoo! Japan. Furthermore, DeNA is also planning on launching a social gaming platform in English-speaking countries as well as develop social games for Facebook and other similar platforms.

Despite what the title might suggest, this game has little to do with digging up buried treasure, like what other treasure-hunting Facebook games focus on. The app is actually a compilation of eight very well-designed, fun, and thought-provoking games. In fact, each is about as in-depth as most Facebook games are in and of themselves. Some mini-titles may be familiar to Big Fish fans, as the company has borrowed features and elements from past titles. Nevertheless, each still comes with a unique sort of brain teasing challenge and all play into the greater theme of unlocking treasure chests, earning gold, and leveling up.

Essentially, playing each game will get players in-game currency and experience. The idea is to exploit the prospect of virtual spaces, or in this case, a virtual avatar. As players play, they unlock new stores in which they can purchase better and fancier clothing. Of course, this is all purely aesthetic (except, perhaps the “Treasure Hunter Gear” section that has yet to be activated), and seems to be merely a visual way to display one’s prowess in the overall application.

This larger meta-game is Big Fish’s way of making the title social. You can invite friends, show off high scores, and other features, all the while building up your avatar. It can become more meaningful to you the more you play, which in turn gets you coming back, more interested in inviting friends, etc. The meta game means Big Fish has a framework for introducing more mini-games in Treasure Quest, as well as extending the currency and avatar out to other games it has or might launch on Facebook — although the company isn’t saying much about either at this point.

Here’s our initial review of the app. We’ll be following up with more analysis later today, including how the features of the app fit into into Big Fish’s larger plans.

The mini-games take a range of time to do, which means advancing through getting more gold can also take awhile. Some of the games can be played through in a single five-minute session while others can last up to 30 minutes or more. You also often don’t receive experience and currency until you finish the game. This is mitigated to some degree by random, daily, “Treasure Quests,” in which users are tasked with completing random criteria within the conclave of games.

There’s also a quick slots mini-game, called “Gold Spin” you can do after completion of each larger game, which also lets you get more Gold.

Frankly, slow or not, the avatar reward element feels more like an added bonus. The real beauty is in the eight games themselves, and frankly, most people will come to play for those more than the avatar or sharing accomplishments.

Since each game is quite strong in its own right, the full breakdown of Treasure Quest would be a bit lengthy without a bowl of popcorn and a couple sodas, so here’s our in-depth look at the first three. In addition to doing more analysis, we’ll be looking at the other games in a separate article:

The Daily Detective

Have you ever wanted to be one of those private detectives in those old black and white films? Well, that’s the premise of The Daily Detective game. Presented in an film noire fashion (complete with distinctive, detective-music), players are given a daily mystery to solve. Should they choose to accept it, they will be taken to an in-color scene, in which many come from another Big Fish title, Mystery Case Files: Prime Suspects, where they are tasked with the finding of clues.

This first part of the game is more or less a glorified game of Where’s Waldo? as players attempt to find specific pieces of evidence, listed in their notes, within the picture. Since the image is a garbled mess of clutter, it can prove most difficult; so Big Fish does toss a small bone with hints. These come in the form of blurry, black and white photographs. As they locate each item, another clue may be discovered next to, or around it.

This is where the game becomes a real brain teaser, as once you have all your clues, its time to solve the case. Truth be told, it’s actually pretty tough. Clues in hand, the game gives you the summary of the case and the goal. Here is an example from our first one:

Case Summary: A soap star who is a regular on “The Old and the Breathless” must buy a gift for Martha Steward.

Goal: The clues point to the perfect gift. Name it. (Yes, you must type the word in).

Clues: Ivory Chip, Hammer, Key, Musical Note, Steinway.

Upon completion of the case, players get the Gold Spin mini-game, some coin and experience for their troubles, as well as some points towards a detective’esque title. Furthermore, if users are looking for more mysteries to unravel, then they can use their gold in order to buy more puzzles for about 200 a pop.

L.O.B.E

The next game on the list is L.O.B.E. or “the Laboratory of Brain Enhancement.” In order to “finish” this game (meaning earn your Gold Spin), players must earn X amount of gold stars by completing a myriad of mini-games in a similar fashion to Who Has The Biggest Brain? Thankfully, the games are nothing like those found within the Playfish title. In fact, there are a lot more than the predecessor, and while they aren’t quite as visually appealing, they do tend to make the brain work.

Guided by robot that sounds oddly like Doctor Ludwing von Strangeduck from Duck Tales, users must solve a set of seven brain teasers. Each of these will test a different element of the mind, ranging from math, to logic, to memory, to visual acuity, to… well, you get the idea. Also, each time the games one moves on to a new game, they must first be “scrambled,” which generates a new set of random games to pick from.

As a quick example of just some of the mini-games within L.O.B.E., one includes placing letters within a grid to spell out every single word on a list. However, every letter must be used (think sudoku). Another game involves guiding a mouse to its hole, while picking up all the cheese, Lemmings style. And yet another is sort of like Wheel of Fortune, but you have to place the letters yourself to figure out the phrase. Oh, and each letter given to the player can only be used once.

Each mini-game comes with a maximum number of points the player can earn. This is determined by elements such as accuracy and speed. Moreover, as players play and score higher, they will slowly fill progress bars corresponding to unlocking higher difficulties of puzzles as well as ranks and titles within L.O.B.E. itself.

After all seven mini-games are completed, the player will be presented with another gambling mini-game in which they spend the stars they earned (one star earned for winning a normal difficulty puzzle, three for hard). The stars are used to open seven brains, each costing X amount of stars, and within them are an unknown number of points that range from 20 or less to over 2000.

Fairway Solitaire

The last game, for now, to take a look at is Fairway Solitaire, and so far, it’s a personal favorite. Perhaps it is because of simplicity, but the game is, at its core, like the mobile game Jewel Quest Solitaire. The objective is to play a round of “golf” in the form of solitaire.

Now, this isn’t like the solitaire you play when you’re bored at work. Players are granted a deck of cards, with one card turned face-up. At each “hole,” as it were, are other piles of cards, with on upturned card atop them. The idea is to take a card from these piles that is sequentially above or below the face-up card by your deck. If it is, then it is moved on top of the face-up, deck card.

Following basic solitaire rules, meaning the face down cards on the field do not turn over until the cards atop them are removed, players continue stacking cards sequentially until they have either all been removed, or they have turned over everything in their deck. Granted, the rules are a mouthful, but its actually quite simple, and there’s something about the visual and audio effects for each successful click (represented by a golf swing) that is strangely satisfying.

Each “hole” has a par set to it (and there are nine per course/level), that is represented by the number of cards you should have left that remain uncovered. This is how score is kept. However, it is modified by both streaks of card removal, complete removal of an entire pile, as well as a few elements of randomness.

This is represented by wild cards. Luckily, players do not have to use them, as they can have negative effects such as costing points, but can also have very positive ones. As an example, Fairway Solitaire has both water hazards and sand traps which are depicted by the back face of the cards. The former blocks off all cards to the right of it until all water cards are removed, and the sand trap ones cannot be removed until a card with a sand wedge card is turned over. Of course, if you’re feeling lucky, the wild cards could “evaporate” all the water… just as an example (yes, this can happen).

Additionally, other random cards include various golf clubs that are representative of a number value (i.e. a 9-Iron can be used as a 9-Card). What makes these useful, is that they can be played at any time, the user sees fit, and can be held on to for any hole on the course. Couple this with other random cards, events, and different card layouts on each course, and Fairway Solitaire quickly goes from deceptively simple to rather thought-provoking. Moreover, as players finish sets of course, they not only unlock new ranks and titles for Fairway, but new, and more challenging courses as well (they can also purchase courses with gold in the form of bonus packs).

Conclusion

As you can see by now, Treasure Quest has brought a significant level of both quality and quantity to Facebook. Of course, game portal apps like this are hardly uncommon. Then again, game portal apps in which all the games are extremely fun and well made… that’s a rarity. And ones that effectively tie together a metagame like this one does, are even more so.

Regardless, the tremendous quality of each game belies the overall social features. Yes, each game is a ton of fun, with a type of puzzler for just about everyone. Even the ones that have yet to be looked at include Bejeweled style puzzles, more slots, and daily riddles.  More than anything, though, the games themselves make the overarching catalyst that contains them feel arbitrary and tacked on. That isn’t to say that it is, but it simply cannot compete. Likely, they are just a means to enhance the viral reach into the player’s social graph, which is hardly negative (especially considering that the game never once spams users to invite friends). Nevertheless, it will be curious to see just what new social features will come in the future and whether or not they can hold a candle to the games they contain.

Located out of the San Francisco Bay area, the company consists of individuals with well over 16 years in visual effects experience. According to the company’s new website, team members include CEO and Creative Director Euan Macdonald, COO and Creative Director Nathaniel Hunter, VP of Business Development Mary Butler, VP of Technology Chris Wilson, and CFO Sherry Wangenheim.

The team’s experience stems from such places such as Electronic Arts, Nokia, Disney’s ImageMovers Digital, Lucasfilm Animation, Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar, Mondo Media, Motorola, and 3DO. Some examples of past work include The Mask, The Matrix Reloaded, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Monsters Inc., Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace – there are many more.

Unfortunately, SiXiTS has yet to announce what their first social game will be. However, the company says it will be launching into public beta sometime this spring. Hopefully, we will catch a glimpse of what this creation will turn into before then, but considering the visual merits of the mentioned movies, you can bet it will at least look good.