Spellbound City 2 is a new citybuilding game from Oxylabs Networks. While mostly fairly predictable in its execution, the game offers an innovative approach to requests and help from friends, and it’s through this that the developer hopes to attract a healthy audience for the title.

The premise of Spellbound City 2 is nothing new: beginning with an overgrown, untamed plot of land festooned with crumbling buildings, it’s up to the player to restore this magical kingdom to its former glory. This is accomplished through restoring the existing buildings, constructing new ones and then setting up various simple supply chains in order to keep the income rolling and the people happy.

Spellbound City 2 features a stronger focus on resource management than some other titles of its ilk, with several steps required to construct various materials and structures. Crops produce food, which is used to feed houses, which produce life energy, which is used to power material-producing structures such as mines and lumbermills. These raw materials can then be used to cast various spells in order to create special items. These, in turn, are often required in the construction of new buildings.

Progression in Spellbound City 2 is directed through quests, which introduce these various production flows to players gradually. As always, players may choose to ignore these if they wish, though the generous energy and soft currency rewards on their completion make them worth pursuing. There are also several on offer at any one time, making the game feel less like a linear slog through a series of objectives.

The most noteworthy feature in Spellbound City 2, however, is its “Tribe” mechanic. By joining a Tribe, players gain access to a large number of other Facebook players to whom they may send requests and gifts without having to add them as friends. The only limitation on this functionality is that players are unable to visit Tribe players and earn the game’s social “Karma” currency — only Facebook friends may be directly visited.

The ability for players to get up and running with a predefined bank of friends from the very beginning helps the game feel much more social than the lonely experiences that other titles can be shortly after starting to play — though there is still no means of directly communicating between players in-game. The disadvantage to the system, however, is that the player is then constantly bombarded with Facebook notifications from members of their Tribe at all hours of the day, though this issue is somewhat mitigated by the social network’s collection of all similar notifications into a single item. The player may also choose to “opt out” of their Tribe at any time.

While the rest of Spellbound City 2 doesn’t do anything especially new or innovative, the Tribe mechanic alone makes it worthy of attention. It’s a system that makes the game very friendly to social game newcomers, those who do not wish to bother their friends with requests and notifications, or those who do not have many friends willing to join in on a new game. It’s a feature that future titles on the social network would surely be able to benefit from, and one that it would be very pleasing to see more of in the future.

Spellbound City 2 currently has 20,000 monthly active users and 3,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

While the game is merely “good” rather than “great,” the Tribe mechanic sets an interesting, laudable precedent for new ways in which social game players may work together.

6waves’ latest title Ravenshire Castle is a strange beast. Combining elements of citybuilding gameplay with tactical stealth action, it looks like being the final entry in the “Ravenworld” series, thanks at least in part to the dissolution of 6waves’ internal development teams. But does this series end with a proud lion’s roar, or simply a whimper?

Ravenshire Castle casts players in the role of a lion or lioness revealed to be the heir to the titular estate. The castle in question has fallen into disrepair over the years, and it’s up to the player to restore it to its former glory by building and expanding, harvesting resources and retrieving the lost Ravenshire treasures from a series of rival castles.

Gameplay unfolds in two main parts. While at their own castle, players may build new rooms, build new items (each of which is designed to go in a specific room or outdoors) and collect income of currency and resources from objects and crops. Quests are provided by a series of quirky animal characters who gradually move in to the player’s estate as story progress is made.

Gameplay in this first part breaks with very few genre conventions — there’s building, crop harvesting, collecting items and all the usual activities — though there is a noticeably stronger focus on gathering specific resources to complete building projects than some similar titles. Most resources can be collected either by asking friends or by harvesting from the appropriate items. Some may only be gathered from rival castles, which is where the second part of the game comes in.

In this second part, players invade another castle, either a predesigned computer-controlled one or a player-designed “rival” estate. While in the other castle, players have a limited amount of energy with which to score as many points as possible. This is primarily achieved by looting objects, but score multipliers can be applied by looting each room’s “heart” structure before searching everything else. In this way, larger castles have greater potential rewards on offer, but also generally have more chance of the player being caught by non-player characters and guards wandering the halls, which in turn causes their score to suffer. It’s a fun game system, though the pathfinding of the player character at times leaves a little to be desired, sometimes leading to inadvertently blundering in to a room full of guards.

Ravenshire Castle features some more serious issues that significantly impact the experience at this time, however. For starters, the frame rate is very inconsistent, even when the contents of the screen are not changing, and this problem only gets worse as castles expand. The game’s visuals look great in static screenshots, but to see them juddering around drunkenly even on a high-powered computer with a good graphics card is very disappointing, as is the amount of time it takes for walls, objects and characters to load when moving to a busier castle environment.

Perhaps the most serious issue is the completely broken “visit friends” system, however. Here, players are supposed to be given five energy points per friend per day to go and “help” at their respective castles, with the visiting player able to collect soft currency, experience and resources in the process. Unfortunately, a major bug means that by returning to their own castle and then re-visiting their friend, players can acquire five more energy points to spend, meaning that with patience they can essentially find themselves with an unlimited supply of experience, soft currency and basic resources such as wood and stone.

Beneath these flaws lies a potentially excellent game, albeit one where energy runs out a little too quickly for play sessions of a satisfying length. With a little rebalancing and work on the issues mentioned above, 6waves could have a fittingly triumphant finale to the “Ravenworld” series on its hands. As it stands, however, it’s difficult to recommend the game in its present state.

Ravenshire Castle currently has 7,000 monthly active users and 3,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our tracking service for social games and developers.

Wait

So close to greatness, but spoiled by technical issues and major bugs in the game’s mechanics. One to try in a month or two when these flaws have hopefully been cleaned up.

The Last Stand: Dead Zone is a Facebook-based hardcore strategy title themed around the concept of surviving a zombie apocalypse. It’s the fourth entry in the The Last Stand series from Con Artist Games, and an excellent example of how to design a quality experience for core players on the social network.

The Last Stand series has undergone considerable changes over the years. Beginning as a relatively simple defense shooter where players simply had to fend off ever-expanding waves of zombies, this newest entry has expanded the concept into a full-featured, complex and deep combination of strategy title and role-playing game.

Initially taking on the role of a lone survivor, players must build up their shelter, ensure it remains stocked with food, water and building resources, defend it from zombie attacks, attract new survivors and scavenge for additional materials. The game unfolds from an isometric perspective in real time, using realistic, gritty 3D visuals rather than the cartoonish aesthetic seen on many other Facebook titles.

By following an initial tutorial, players are introduced to building up their shelter, attracting survivors, scavenging materials from other locations and defending from attack. Once the tutorial is complete, they are then given a series of tasks to complete to direct their experience, but are free to play the game as they see fit if they so desire. There is no “energy” system limiting play, though certain actions, such as building and returning from missions, take periods of real time to complete. These may be sped up by using the game’s premium currency of fuel, though if there is less than 5 minutes remaining the “speed up” process may be performed for free.

When defending the base from zombies or exploring new locations, players take direct control of the survivors they have assigned to undertake the mission. Survivors will automatically defend themselves and attack zombies that enter the range of their weapon, meaning that micromanagement only becomes necessary if it looks like an individual survivor is going to get into trouble. Defending the base is a simple matter of killing all incoming zombies, while exploring locations gives players a time limit to scavenge as many supplies as possible from containers in the area while holding off the undead hordes.

The game largely focuses on the player’s own team of survivors, though it’s also possible to visit other players’ compounds and help out with tasks that need completing. Later, it also becomes possible to attack rival survivors, though low-level players are protected from attack for a period of six days or until they attack someone first. At the time of writing, my base was surrounded by level 1 players who seemingly had barely started on the game, making both help opportunities and attacks unlikely. This situation will likely change as the game’s population increases, though there is more than enough to do at present without having to worry about other players.

Besides this, social features are a little limited at present, as a chat system has not yet been implemented, though space has been reserved for it on the interface. In some ways, this works in the game’s favor, as it helps with the feelings of isolation, loneliness and fear, but it also makes collaboration difficult and makes it feel as if the player may as well be playing an offline solo title.

The game monetizes through its hard currency fuel, which may be used to purchase premium items as well as speed up time-consuming processes. Premium items range from more effective weaponry to further protection against attack from rival players. Players aren’t obliged to purchase fuel as it is possible to scavenge it from missions, though in many cases they’ll find it easier to afford items simply by paying up with Facebook Credits. It’s also possible to use fuel to fill the base’s resource stocks, allowing new survivors to be attracted and recruited considerably quicker.

Unlike many other Facebook titles that describe themselves as “hardcore,” The Last Stand: Dead Zone doesn’t feel like it makes any compromises for being a social network game. It feels like a standalone downloadable game, thanks in part to its excellent (if a little dark) 3D visuals and atmospheric sound effects. It also helps that the initial tasks players are given to do cover a wide variety of different activities rather than spending several hours doing nothing but building and upgrading, say, farms, cottages and barracks. Players are quickly given a taste of everything the game has to offer in the tutorial and are then invited to play their way. It’s proof that “hardcore” doesn’t have to mean “time-consuming” or “boring.”

It remains to be seen whether or not The Last Stand: Dead Zone will pick up a substantial audience, as its gameplay is more complex and demanding than many other Facebook titles, making it less universally appealing. That said, it is worth checking out purely for the fact that it is a highly polished, accessible but deep game that will likely appeal to those who play standalone PC and console games rather than those who simply do all their gaming on social networks. It’s an example of a good direction for the “hardcore” Facebook game field to move in, and it deserves to see some success.

The Last Stand: Dead Zone currently has 310,000 monthly active users and 60,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

Proof positive that you can make a game for “core” players on Facebook without compromising on quality, depth and complexity.

British studio Plumbee broke out of stealth mode back in March with $2.8 million in funding and the announcement of its first Facebook game: Mirrorball Slots. The team’s fairy-tale themed slot machine title is now freely available to all on the social network, and showed up as the No. 14 fastest-growing Facebook game by DAU earlier this week. But is it any more interesting than the numerous unimaginative, uninspired slot machine sims already available on Facebook?

Mirrorball Slots, like its numerous competitors, assumes that players know how to play a slot machine with multiple pay lines, and provides no tutorial whatsoever. Players may bet on up to 25 different pay lines at once, with their maximum bet increasing as they level up. Various combinations of symbols net different amounts of winnings, and “wild” cards may be substituted for any symbol. It’s possible for multiple lines to pay out at once, and particularly huge wins prompt a “share” dialog where players are invited to brag about their good fortune on their Timeline.

“Bonus Wilds” vary in functionality depending on the machine players are currently using — on the Three Bears-themed machine, they increase the winnings multiplier; on the Rapunzel-themed machine, they “stick” in place until the player wins something; on the Snow White-themed machine they can trigger a bonus round.

Alongside these symbols, there are also “Scatter” markings that allow players to trigger a “free spins” mode, the exact form of which again varies according to the machine players are using. The player is initially provided with ten free spins of the reels, and certain symbols provide particular bonuses. On the Three Bears-themed machine, collecting “Goldilocks” symbols in sufficient quantities turns the three different “bear” symbols into wild cards; on the Rapunzel machine, collecting bonus wilds allow a prince to climb a tower, earning bonus spins and increasing winnings in the process; on the Snow White machine, players simply get triple winnings for a brief period.

When playing each machine for the first time, players will receive a free “charm” after a few spins. This automatically triggers the “Scatter” free spins mode after the next spin, enabling players to try out each machine’s bonus game at least once — and potentially earn some big winnings in the process. The game promises that these “charms” will be purchasable using hard currency “soon” but the feature is not yet implemented, and neither is the ability to buy hard currency using Facebook Credits.

Social features include a leaderboard that ranks players according to their total winnings and a gift-exchange system. These “mystery gifts” often contain hearts, which players can collect and either exchange for coins to feed into the slot machines or save for an upcoming “bonus game” which is not yet in place.

Mirrorball Slots is extremely well-presented, with excellent visuals and high-quality sound. Music is used sparingly to highlight special events rather than provide constant background noise and it works very well, adding a good degree of tension to the game. Despite all this, though, there’s no getting away from the fact that Mirrorball Slots is clearly unfinished. The game’s hard currency and item shop is not yet implemented, the “hearts” acquired from gift exchanges cannot be used to their full potential and there is little incentive for players to level up beyond being able to place larger bets — there are no machines to unlock, for example. The Snow White “Magic Mirror” machine also feels like it was produced for a different game — its screen size is different and it does not feature a “bonus game” in the same way as the other two machines.

All this is a great shame, because the implementation of the “charms” and the free spin minigames help to elevate this title over the other numerous, predictable and rather dull slot machine sims that are proving so popular on Facebook at present. Mirrorball Slots, then, is one to check back on in a few months — namely, when it’s actually complete.

Mirrorball Slots currently has 970,000 monthly active users and 160,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Wait

Could be a great take on the stale slot machine genre, but too many features are listed as “coming soon” at the moment. Check back in a few months when more features have been implemented.

Update: Developer MindJolt recently re-branded itself as Social Gaming Network. This post has been updated to reflect that change.

Hidden Adventures: Shadows of London is a story-driven hidden object game from SGN. While the game is a relatively unimaginative example of the genre, it does seem to be gaining some traction at present — at the time of writing, it is showing up as the No. 13 top gainer by DAU.

Hidden Adventures casts players in the role of a rookie detective tasked with solving various crimes around the city of London in the 19th century. This is accomplished by repeatedly completing hidden object scenes and occasionally fulfilling special objectives. Unlike many other popular hidden object titles, there is no “citybuilding” aspect to the game — simply a map screen from which levels may be selected and the hidden object scenes themselves.

The hidden object gameplay itself is very conventional. Players peruse a scene, locate hidden objects from a list and attempt to click on them as quickly as possible. The shorter a period between successful clicks, the higher a combo meter goes and the more points the player scores. There is also a timer ticking down from the start of the scene, which provides players with a score bonus once all objects have been found.

Once all objects have been successfully located, the player receives bonuses according to the highest combo they reached and the amount of time they took. They are then shown their total score and given a star rating. This is cumulative from all attempts at the scene, so it is impossible to get the full three stars in a single play. Some quests require the player earn two or more stars in a particular scene, so each one must be played a number of times.

Certain quests require that the player locate certain specific objects in a scene — for example, an early task sees players locating six pieces of chalk in an apartment. These special objectives do not appear in the item list and must be accomplished alongside the standard hidden object gameplay. Unfortunately, the game does not explain this, meaning some players may find themselves waiting for “chalk” to come up in the item list and never succeeding — and wasting precious energy with each attempt.

The game monetizes through the sales of energy and soft currency, the latter of which may be used to purchase powerups to make the hidden object scenes easier. Certain objectives may also be skipped by spending Facebook Credits directly, and a special “hidden loot room” level may be played more than once per day for Facebook Credits, also. This latter level challenges players to simply find as many objects as they can in 60 seconds, and can be a good means of acquiring extra currency and experience while waiting for energy to refill.

Hidden Adventures is a competent hidden object game. Its visuals are good quality and clear, making the hidden objects challenging but fair to locate. Its sound is rather low in audio quality, but is made up of a number of catchy but unobtrusive background themes accompanied by satisfying sound effects that give the player feedback on how well they are doing.

The main issue is that the game is paced quite badly for free players. It’s easy to come to a screeching halt by running out of energy relatively soon after starting, and if this happens too early players won’t feel they’ve had a good enough run to make their mind up as to whether or not they want to pay to play more. Energy refills upon leveling up, but since the only means of gaining experience is through the hidden object scenes (which cost 10 energy apiece to play) it can be a challenge to reach the next milestone. Part of the reason for the “building” gameplay in other hidden object titles is to give players something to do while energy is refilling — and another means of experience point income.

Social features are also quite limited. Later levels are friend-gated, which may frustrate those who simply wish to play the game solo rather than competitively, and again the lack of a “building” component means there is no way for players to “visit” one another. Each scene does have its own leaderboard, however, allowing for some friendly competition.

With a little rebalancing, Hidden Adventures could be a good quality hidden object game that isn’t just trying to ape Gardens of Time and Hidden Chronicles. As it is, however, it’s simply one to watch for now. Perhaps it will be worth revisiting in a few months’ time.

Hidden Adventures: Shadows of London currently has 280,000 monthly active users and 40,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Wait

There’s potential for a decent hidden object game here, but it’s held back by balancing and pacing issues.

Buggle from Cookapps is a Facebook-based bubble popping puzzle game. The game showed up as the No. 8 fastest-growing Facebook game by MAU this week, with a gain of 590,000 — an increase of 328%. It shares plenty of similarities with titles such as King.com’s immensely popular Bubble Witch Saga, but are its few twists on the formula enough to distinguish it from its rivals?

Buggle casts players in the role of a hungry bear who wants to steal honey from a colony of bees that live in a tree. Said bear is armed with a cannon that fires colored bubbles, a limited quantity of which are available on each level. Connecting groups of three or more bubbles at once causes them to pop and disappear. If this causes other bubbles to become disconnected from the top of the screen, they will fall to the bottom of the screen and into several honey pots, each of which is worth a particular number of points. If the player pops five or more bubbles in one shot, it starts a combo, which temporarily closes off the lids of the lower-scoring honey pots.

The objective of each level is to cause all “wasp” bubbles to fall off the screen, at which point the player will receive a bonus for all remaining bubbles in the cannon and a star rating according to their overall score for the level. Leaving aside the scientific inaccuracies of wasps cohabiting with bees, this mechanic is a good addition to the formula. It provides the game with a slower-paced, more cerebral “puzzle” feel that differentiates it from other titles that simply require players to destroy all bubbles on screen.

As players progress through the game, they earn the ability to use various “magic bubbles” that give them special abilities. These vary from the “bomb” bubble, which takes out a small area of bubbles at a time, to the “cure” bubble, which removes various “obstacle” bubbles that would otherwise make the player’s progress more difficult. These magic bubbles are acquired by spending soft currency, which is acquired through play or purchased using Facebook Credits. The player may also purchase premium “Magic Jars,” using Facebook Credits. These provide permanent enhancements to the player’s abilities such as a larger number of bubbles per level or a more accurate guideline for aiming.

Social features for the game include a leaderboard for each level’s score and an overall leaderboard showing how many stars the player and their friends have earned. The game also features the facility to brag about achievements on one’s Timeline. The game isn’t overly pushy about getting players to invite friends once play begins, but the first thing it does every time it loads is pick 50 people from the user’s friends list to send a request to. This may be easily cancelled, though it may be seen as an annoyance by people who just want to play for fun rather than competition.

Buggle is mostly a good, satisfying puzzle experience but would benefit from a couple of tweaks to be a little more player-friendly. For example, a player’s “lives” are expended whenever they start a level. This means that even if they have a run of completing levels perfectly, after a certain period of time they will be forced to either pay up or wait for them to regenerate. By comparison, King.com’s titles only reduce the player’s lives by one if they fail to complete a level, allowing skilled players to enjoy the game for longer sessions. Buggle players may purchase unlimited lives forever for 799 Facebook Credits ($79.90), though given that this is considerably more than an equivalent paid standalone game which may be played an unlimited amount on computer, console or mobile it’s doubtful how many users will take advantage of this option.

Buggle is a decent puzzle game with good production values, and it is off to a good start so far. It remains to be seen if players will stick with it, however. With the aforementioned player-friendly tweak to its “lives” system it has the potential to be a strong contender in the increasingly-crowded bubble shooter genre, but as is it’s one to keep an eye on for now.

Buggle currently has 770,000 monthly active users and 320,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

Wait

Some good potential here, but it remains to be seen if users will stick with it when there are slightly more player-friendly titles out there.

Pioneers from German publisher Plinga is a new frontier-themed building and farming game for Facebook that has been attracting some attention from players recently. In our last roundup of the top emerging titles on the social network, Pioneers showed up in the No. 9 spot with a gain of 15,000 monthly active users — an increase of 300%.

As the title suggests, Pioneers bears more than a passing resemblance to more well-established “frontier” games such as Zynga’s Pioneer Trail. The player is provided with a small tract of land and is then tasked with turning it into a successful frontier village by building structures, harvesting food and other resources, and ensuring that residents’ requests are met. As the game progresses and the settlement expands, the player gains the ability to trade with other settlements and expand their available land to make room for further development.

Gameplay in Pioneers is exactly what one would expect from this type of game. Players purchase buildings from the in-game shop and must then click them several times in order to complete their construction. Certain buildings require specific resources to construct, which may be gathered by harvesting materials, purchasing with hard currency or requesting from friends. These more complex buildings tend to have the capability to produce refined versions of resources — logs become planks, for example — and these are often necessary to create the later structures.

In a twist on the format seen in Pioneer Trail, the player does not control their own custom avatar. Rather, as the game progresses, various residents move into the village and each take on a specific role — one builds things, one chops down trees and cuts grass, another harvests crops. It’s a nice touch that gives the village a feeling of “life,” even if it is ultimately meaningless in gameplay terms.

Many tasks in Pioneers take a large number of real-time hours to complete, and in a curious move, there is seemingly no facility to “hurry” production using hard currency. Besides being inconvenient for players who would like to play for a little longer than a few minutes at a time, this is cutting off one potential avenue of monetization. The game’s hard currency is otherwise only used for the purchase of vanity items or the restoration of energy.

Pioneers feels unfinished. This is perhaps understandable this soon after its release, though the game does not carry any indication that it is still in early development or beta — at the time of writing, it is available for all to play on Facebook. There is no sound or music, for example, and tooltips presented in some of the game menus are written in Cyrillic. The “help” button at the top of the game canvas also leads to a blank page and the “forum” link simply leads to the game’s Facebook fan page, which is rather short on information at this early stage. This means that anyone looking for more information about game mechanics and things to aim for will be left wanting.

The main problem with Pioneers, however, is that everything it does has been done before elsewhere, multiple times over and often much better. That leaves little reason to check out this title, and as such it’s one to skip.

Pioneers currently has 30,000 monthly active users and 4,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Skip

Pioneers is somewhat ironically named, since we’ve been here many times before. As such, it’s a title which can be safely skipped by all but the most dedicated frontiersmen.

Top Shot: The Game is a Facebook adaptation of the firearms-themed History Channel reality show. Players acquire a selection of heavy-duty weaponry and then take on the world in a series of target-shooting challenges in an attempt to discover who is the best marksman. The game was developed by Fifth Column Games, who also created the Facebook adaptation of the History Channel’s Pawn Stars show.

The game tasks players with building up an impressive gun collection and then using these weapons to complete various challenges. Acquiring firearms and taking on challenges rewards players with experience points and soft currency. Certain firearms are level-locked, requiring players to gain a specific number of experience levels before they can use it. Others may only be purchased with hard currency, making it highly likely that players will need to reach for their Facebook Credits to see the game’s full content. Hard currency is awarded on every level up, but at a very slow rate.

The gun challenges are mouse-controlled and unfold from a first-person perspective. Specific requirements for completing a challenge vary; sometimes players must simply shoot several static targets as quickly as possible, others they must accurately pick off moving targets. At the end of each sequence of challenges for a particular weapon is a “contestant challenge,” where players must beat a computer-controlled player at accomplishing a specific objective. There’s a missed opportunity for a synchronous, live multiplayer mode here, but this is something which could potentially be added in a future update.

Top Shot takes a more realistic approach to gunplay than many other shooting games. Players must rely on their weapon’s “iron sights” to pick off targets — there are no crosshairs to help them. Reloading is also a manual, interactive process rather than simply pressing a button — players must lower their weapon by pulling the mouse down and then load the ammunition into the gun in a realistic manner according to what kind of weapon it is. Revolvers, for example, must be loaded one bullet at a time and then the safety catch taken off, while cartridge-loading rifles are faster to reload but must then be cocked before firing again. Certain challenges have more targets than the gun can hold projectiles, meaning the player must manage their time effectively and get the hang of reloading specific weapons as quickly as possible. The controls are simple and responsive, but they are a little fiddly to use with a trackpad rather than a mouse, making the game not especially friendly to laptop or Magic Trackpad-equipped Mac users.

There is plenty of content for players to work their way through. Each weapon has at least one set of challenges in which to compete, and each individual challenge has its own leaderboard where players can compete against friends. There is also an in-depth awards system where players can earn badges for using specific types of weapons or those which come from a particular country. The game is designed as a means of educating players about different types of firearms as much as it is a shooting gallery game.

Social features include the aforementioned leaderboards and the ability to compare statistics with friends. As players level up and unlock awards, they also gain various different “titles” which they may choose to publicly display on their profile. Players are also given the opportunity to share the news of new firearm acquisitions and other achievements on their Timeline.

Top Shot is a great game. It looks and sounds good — though the background music is a little repetitive — and is accessible to those who haven’t seen the show as much as its most dedicated fans. Although the game is simply about shooting targets and balloons for the most part, there is enough variety in its challenges to keep players busy for a very long time. A generous amount of content is available for free, with monetization largely coming from a combination of an energy system and premium content. The Top Shot TV show team is also likely counting on the game to maintain interest in the show and get it the ratings it needs to secure a fifth season.

Top Shot: The Game currently has 260,000 monthly active users and 80,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

An excellent use of a TV show license, and a fun shooting gallery game in its own right.

Jewel Journey is a match-3 puzzle title for Facebook. The developer’s name is conspicuously absent from the game canvas and its fan page, making it hard to pin down exactly who created it. Judging from the fan page in question, however, it’s possible to see that the game has been available from around January 2012, and it is also currently showing up in the “Newest” list on Facebook’s Games page.

Jewel Journey is a competent but unremarkable example of the match-3 genre, bringing no real innovations to the table. It even goes so far as to use the clichéd premise of the player being an archaeologist, but does not force this with intrusive, badly-written dialog scenes. Instead, it serves as the justification for the titular “journey” through a series of stages, beginning in the Grand Canyon and later moving on to an army base, a frozen wasteland, the lost city of Atlantis and some Mayan ruins.

The basic gameplay is conventional match-3: by swapping pairs of gems and making groups of 3 of the same color either horizontally or vertically, the player scores points. Making a row of 4 or 5 or a L/T-shaped group produces special gems which explode, remove all of a particular color or clear an entire row and column when matched. The ultimate aim of each timed level is to cause one or more fragments of a “key” to fall down to the bottom of the screen. When this is accomplished, the level ends and the player receives a bonus according to how many gems they matched and how much time remained. Levels are distinct from one another according to their shape — some have holes in the middle into which gems may not be moves, others have awkward, irregular sides.

On some levels, special gems appear to hinder the player. Locked gems may not be moved by the player until they are unlocked by matching them with the appropriate color, but they are affected by gravity if matches are made beneath them. Frozen gems, meanwhile, are fixed solidly in place until they are matched. In order to help counter these obstacles, the player has a number of items which can be purchased using in-game currency. These tend to help with clearing areas of gems in several ways or shuffling the board. There are also four powerups only available via gifts from friends — these directly help with clearing locked and frozen gems and also provide the possibility to earn more points and time for a level.

Players are nagged to add friends after every single level. Later stages are also friend-gated, making it essential to recruit other players in order to continue progression. Players also have the opportunity to share news of achievements and high scores on their Timelines as a means of viral promotion, and each level has its own leaderboard.

The game’s currency is earned through play, mostly through a timer which rewards players with free coins for every 10 minutes of continuous play. There is no energy system in place and this counter continues even when simply sitting on the map screen, so there’s nothing to stop players from leaving the game running in the background and racking up the coins for free — the only input required is to click “Collect” on the popup that appears every ten minutes. This is quite a player-friendly move but may hurt the game’s monetization in the long run, especially as the developers also host regular coin giveaways at least once per day on the game’s fan page.

Ultimately, though, Jewel Journey simply doesn’t have enough unique features to distinguish it from the numerous other archaeology-themed match-3 games available on Facebook. While it’s a competent example of the genre, its long-term success on the social network will likely be dwarfed by big-hitting rivals such as King.com’s new release Candy Crush Saga, making it one to skip for all but those who simply can’t get enough of swapping colored gems around.

Facebook reports that Jewel Journey currently enjoys 1,100,000 monthly users. The game does not currently appear to be listed on our traffic tracking service AppData, but check back shortly to follow its progress and usage trends in detail.

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There’s nothing wrong with Jewel Journey’s match-3 gameplay, but there’s also nothing particularly worthy of note, either.

Armies of Magic, Playdom’s new Facebook game, is a combination of fantasy role-playing, citybuilding and real-time strategy. It casts players in the role of a human, elven or dwarven army commander and tasks them with following an episodic storyline while bolstering their own offensive and defensive capabilities.

Players begin the game by choosing which of the three fantasy races they would like to represent. This choice affects the aesthetics of the player’s city, the units they will have available in combat and the storyline that the game’s main PvE component will follow. Players can choose between being male or female in their selected race, and may then choose between three different appearances for their character, with the differences being mostly in skin color. After an initial tutorial, players may then name their avatar whatever they please — though this name must be unique among the game’s worldwide player community.

There are three main components to gameplay in Armies of Magic: citybuilding, exploration and combat. In the citybuilding phase, players construct buildings for their race’s capital which then produce income, combat units and research. Players must balance their amount of production buildings with their “culture” value, which is an abstract representation of how happy the populace is. If the culture value drops into the negative, no new units or research may be constructed, and the player must build decorative items to build it back up again. All buildings take time to construct and may be hurried along by the expenditure of hard currency.

The citybuilding section is competent with a few minor interface flaws marring the experience. While in “Build” mode, for example, it is impossible to see the time remaining for other structures to be completed. Also, some popup windows feature a prominent “close” button while others do not, making it appear as if it is compulsory to press the “Share” button. It usually isn’t, but the inconsistency in the interface is a little frustrating at times.

Exploration occurs on a node-based world map, and this is where the majority of the game’s PvE story takes place. Players move from node to node (at an excruciatingly slow pace) by clicking on them, and are then presented with a dialog scene between the story’s characters. Depending on the situation, they are often then thrown into combat.

Combat itself takes the form of a strategic defense game. The player’s avatar and the opposing “hero” square off against each other from opposite sides of a side-scrolling battlefield. Both sides then expend “crystals” — a temporary currency only available in battle and not carried over between encounters — to summon various units, which continuously walk forwards until they reach an enemy unit. They will then attack the enemy unit until either they or the enemy lies dead. The exception to this rule is the “miner” unit, which is very weak defensively but is also the only means of acquiring additional crystals during combat. Combat continues until either the player or the enemy hero has been downed, at which point the player receives a score rating based on their performance in battle. They also have the opportunity to revive fallen units by expending a special currency expressly for this purpose. Alternatively, players may simply produce new units back at their capital, which takes time and costs soft currency.

Battles are simple to understand but fun to take part in, with the only niggle in the formula being the player’s inability to order their units to attack a specific enemy. This often leads to the computer-controlled opponent making rather “cheap” attacks by placing a ranged unit behind the powerful enemy “hero” character. It’s a relatively small issue, but it is frustrating when it happens — particularly as there is nothing that can be done about it.

Upon completing a story mission, the player unlocks “challenge mode” for that particular battle, allowing them to take it on again in an attempt to achieve a higher score. Players may challenge three difficulty levels of the battle and compare their performance against friends, with rewards on offer for beating difficult score milestones.

After reaching experience level 8, the player gains the ability to attack other players or defend their friends’ cities from attack. These battles unfold in a similar manner to the PvE battles, with the difference being that the armies involved are those built up by other players. This feature is asynchronous at this time, but a live combat arena, where players can compete directly against each other in real-time, is coming soon.

Players also have the facility to join guilds and chat in real-time with up to 39 other members at once. There is a guild leaderboard that ranks these groups by their player vs player battle victory rate, and guild leaders have the facility to either make their group open for anyone to join, or require players to submit an “application letter” first. Players may not create their own guild until they have reached experience level 10.

Armies of Magic is a deep game aimed at the more “hardcore” end of the social gaming spectrum, though it remains easy to pick up for more casual players. It features good production values in its audio, visuals and writing and provides strong social features with which players may enjoy the game together. The game’s few minor flaws, discussed above, aren’t enough to spoil what is a good-quality role-playing/strategy experience that has the potential to appeal to a wide audience.

Armies of Magic currently has 480,000 monthly active users and 170,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

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A deep yet newbie-friendly take on role-playing and real-time strategy.