Township is a citybuilding game developed by Playrix and published by 6waves Lolapps. The game provides a twist on the genre’s tried-and-tested formula by not only requiring players to create buildings and supply businesses, but also to set up production lines of raw materials to create various products. In this sense, it has some similarities with G5 Entertainment’s Virtual City series on iOS, albeit with less of a focus on creating transportation networks and a stronger social angle.

Township has been available since July of last year. In August 2011 it enjoyed a small peak of just over 75,000 MAUs and about 13,000 DAUs, but then went into a long decline. In recent weeks, however, it has shown a strong upturn in popularity, presumably thanks to strong cross-promotional efforts by new publisher 6waves Lolapps. All 6L games feature a prominent scrolling banner at the top of their canvas inviting players to try other titles from the publisher, and Township is no exception. Renewed interest in the game has caused it to show up on our tracking service AppData as the 20th fastest growing Facebook game by MAU this week, with current figures showing 310,000 MAUs and 60,000 DAUs.

The game initially appears to be a relatively conventional city builder. Players build houses in order to add population to their town, and the upper limit is determined by the happiness of the residents. Residents are made happy by placing decorative items around the town, in turn allowing the player to add new housing. A higher population allows them to do more things, with the main consideration early in the game being the number of crop fields the player is allowed to plant. These crops can be used in several ways — they can simply be grown as cash crops to be sold on maturity, or they can be used to start up one of the game’s numerous supply chains.

These chains provide one of the most interesting aspects of Township’s gameplay, and a pleasing break from the norm. By placing “factory” buildings, players are able to process various materials into other products. Like crops, materials can be sold or passed on to the next factory in the chain. For example, the first chain the player is introduced to sees them growing wheat in their fields, sending wheat to be milled into flour, and sending flour to be baked into bread. Later in the game a wide variety of other products can be created, meaning the player must keep a careful eye on the resources they are producing and feeding into their various production lines. This adds a considerable amount of depth to gameplay which simply isn’t seen in a lot of other citybuilding titles.

The game’s presentation is also worthy of praise. While the short background music loop is rather annoying and best switched off immediately, the visuals are packed with detail and charm. Houses are all distinctive with little features like gardens and fences. The town’s residents wander the streets, giving it a sense of life. And any building, growing or production activity is accompanied by noticeable but unobtrusive animations which make it clear that something is going on there. The only slight shame about the visuals is that the maximum zoom level is still relatively far out, meaning that a lot of this fine detail is too small to truly appreciate, particularly on high resolution displays.

The game carries a strong focus on social play. Many major buildings require specific resources to build, most of which may only be acquired by visiting or receiving gifts from neighbors. Each town produces a single type of building resource from the start of the game, so players with enough friends may be able to acquire the materials they need simply by doing their daily visiting rounds — otherwise, it’s a case of either asking friends via notifications or purchasing using hard currency.

Hard currency may also be used to purchase premium buildings, which appear instantly and carry a significant boost to the town’s happiness rating. Many of these buildings are based on real-world landmarks, but there are also some structures which are simply for fun, such as a haunted mansion. Monetization is handled unobtrusively, however, with it simply being provided as an option for faster progress rather than it feeling like a necessity to get beyond a certain point in the game. The game does not explicitly walk the player through the payment process, though a small amount of hard currency is awarded on each level up, allowing the player scope to try out a few premium purchases and get a taste for them.

Township is a high quality citybuilding game which doesn’t rely on copying the mechanics of its rivals to produce a satisfying game. For that reason alone, it’s worthy of note, but when coupled with the high-quality presentation, well thought-out social features and unobtrusive monetization, we have a game that deserves to enjoy some success.

Follow Township’s progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

A well-presented citybuilder that is worthy of note purely for trying something a little different to the norm.

Aviator is a Facebook-based business simulation developed by LandShark Games. It originally launched on the social network back in September of last year, but was relaunched by 6waves Lolapps on February 8, 2012. The game has been showing strong growth thanks to the publisher’s promotion ever since. This week it was the 16th fastest-growing Facebook game by DAU, and the 18th fastest-growing title by MAU. Our earlier review is of the original version; this is for the current version on Facebook.

Aviator casts players in the role of either the eponymous Aviator or his female counterpart, the “Aviatrix.” The story begins in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the player is introduced to the basics of the game: picking up passengers and cargo, flying between cities and unlocking additional flight paths to other locations. Shortly after the tutorial is concluded, the player meets that ever-reliable social game cliché, the “long-lost uncle” character, who provides them with a series of additional tutorial missions that introduce them to playing the market, investing in cities to construct new facilities and upgrading their aircraft.

The game then proceeds through a series of quests usually provided by the aforementioned uncle, but between these there is a fair amount of downtime where the player is free to do as they please. During these periods, the player is often given a fairly generic objective such as “watch out for adventure” or a cash milestone to meet. Players may then pick up passengers at the local hotel and ferry them to their destination; pick up packages from the local depot to deliver them; purchase and sell goods at the market; upgrade and customize their aircraft in the workshop; purchase land in underdeveloped cities to add market and workshop facilities where there were previously none; and watch out for profitable “contract” jobs which often require the pickup and delivery of a rare resource.

In essence, the game is very similar to traditional “space trading” games such as Elite, albeit without any combat and taking place in the 1930s rather than the far future. The game’s interface is simple to understand and clearly-presented, with the market screen particularly worthy of note for quickly allowing players to see which cities will provide them with the best prices for their goods in a straightforward graphical format. There is very little to-ing and fro-ing between different screens, so the pace of the game is kept brisk.

The game monetizes via Facebook Credits in several ways. Firstly, players may purchase repair kits for their aircraft, which suffers wear and tear with each trip but gradually restores itself over time. Secondly, they may acquire “Advertising” kits, which guarantee a full stock of passengers and cargo at the hotel and depot. Thirdly, they may purchase goods normally available at the market, including rare goods often required to complete lucrative contract jobs. Fourthly, they may top up their bank balance if their cashflow is falling a bit short. Finally, they may purchase Flight Certificates, varying numbers of which are required to unlock flight paths to new destination — an absolute necessity to complete the quests.

Many of these monetized items may also be acquired through cooperation with friends. Players may set a “preferred” item on their profile, meaning that they will only receive gifts that they actually need rather than accumulating an inventory full of useless junk. Players may also leave short messages for each other on in-game profile pages. Having a good number of friends playing the game is essential to progress, since the larger, more efficient airplanes are friend-gated. Players will occasionally  discover special packages addressed to their friends in their depots, which they may either deliver for a reward or keep for themselves.

Aviator is a good, easy to understand (but deep) title that is pleasingly different from the types of game most developers are churning out for the Facebook platform, though this may see it finding a smaller, more “niche” audience than certain other more universally appealing genres. Its social features could do with a little expansion — the ability to buy and sell market goods between friends would be a good addition, for example — but otherwise it’s a solid game that deserves to see some success.

Aviator currently has 560,000 monthly active users and 70,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

A fun social take on the trading/business sim genre.

Idle Games’ god simulation game, Idle Worship, goes live today following an unheard of 29-month development cycle and extensive beta testing in Australia and the Philippines.

Idle Worship puts players in the role of a benevolent or evil deity tasked with creating and caring for a primitive race of island people called Mudlings. Players manage the Mudlings’ belief in a higher power using customizable statues called Moai, and a series of god powers that can either hurt or help the Mudlings go about their daily lives on the island — such as chopping down trees, fishing for food or procreating more Mudlings. A multiplayer mode allows players to interact with one another’s Mudlings by trading resources, casting god powers (both good and evil) and encountering synchronous events where online players are summoned to an island where they could potentially win more resources — if they can click on dropped resources faster than other players. Players can also compete or collaborate to gain more followers of their faith by using special powers that place shrines or missionaries on other player’s islands. Progress is tracked by an overall level, which determines what decorations and god powers the player can buy in the store.

The main appeal of Idle Worship is the level of quality. Idle Games invested heavily in both the technology driving the game and the graphics coating it to create a richly animated, detailed environment unlike any other Facebook game we’ve ever seen. The game supports both synchronous and asynchronous player activity, with little clouds representing the areas other online players currently occupy and darkened islands representing offline players. The closer a player zooms into an island — their own, or another player’s — the more detail they see.

As an example, CEO Jeff Hyman took us on a tour of his main island, where decorative items — used to increase Mudling quality of life and faith in their god — were fully animated when viewed close-up, like a little theater that performed a creation myth story using cut-outs and silhouettes.

“It’s almost like we have a hidden object game within the game,” Hyman says, “with all these little hidden gems of animation.”

The level of detail in the game almost makes Idle Worship overwhelming to average Facebook game players. Unless said players have a background in PC gaming, where Idle Worship does have some kindred spirits in The Sims and Black & White, the concept of the god sim might be difficult to grasp — and an overlong tutorial is a death sentence for many social games.

Hyman says Idle Games experimented with multiple iterations on the tutorial during the closed beta tests. Going whole-hog on the god powers early on did produce between 80 and 90 percent completion on the tutorial; however, a more controlled guided tutorial bumped that up the mid 90s range. In Australia, Hyman says that the average player logged 3.7 sessions a day at 19 minutes per session. Conversion clocked in at 5.7 percent among 25- to 35-year-olds. Surprisingly, the game skews slightly more male — when, traditionally, “dollhouse” style games have netted more of a female audience.

Aside from communicating itself to players, Idle Worship also has the challenge of evangelizing itself to potential players through viral channels. With a game that pushes boundaries, there are easy ways to do this like shocking or humorous descriptions of in-game activities — something The Sims Social has used to great effect. Idle Games has also opted for more difficult ways, like playable mini-games that players can send to their friends or post in their News Feed. The picture at right shows one of these virals, called Stroke or Squish, where people can choose to pet or kill the unicorn. The number above each option shows you how many people picked which options. Though lightweight compared to the actual product, the mini-games effectively telegraph Idle Worship’s central theme, lush art style and high level of quality.

Now that the game is live, it’s a leap of faith from here to top of our AppData traffic tracking rankings. Idle Games has the technology to scale to millions of players — but will it be enough to unseat Zynga at the top of the charts, as Idle Games investor and Playdom co-founder Rick Thompson hopes.

“I believe in justice,” Thompson says. “These games deserve more virality — it’s proportionate to use experience. What’s dead is forced [friend] invites and spam [gift requests]. If this game inspires a dozen other indie developers [on Facebook], I would count that as a success, too.”

Funzio’s Kingdom Age is a hardcore strategy game that challenges its Google+ players to build up a kingdom, defend it from attacks by other players, loot and pillage rival fiefdoms, kill monsters, complete quests and, of course, find treasure. There are a lot of different aspects to the game, but this breadth of experience is what sets Kingdom Age apart from offerings by competitors Kabam and Kixeye rather than being a simple clone.

After designing a custom avatar — which the player may choose the gender but not the name of — players are thrown straight into the action with a tutorial which introduces PvE combat against monsters, PvP combat against rival kingdoms and the basics of the citybuilding gameplay. This tutorial moves at a brisk pace and sacrifices any sense of narrative to get players acquainted with the game systems as quickly as possible — for example, the PvE tutorial sees players rescuing a monk from monsters, but upon his liberation, said monk then immediately suggests that the player goes and attacks a rival kingdom with no explanation whatsoever. It’s a small yet noticeable issue, but the decision was presumably taken to provide a balance offering new players the chance to learn the basic mechanics while keeping the tutorial short enough for experienced strategy players to charge onward into the meat of the game as soon as possible.

Following the tutorial, gameplay is guided by a series of quests at the side of the screen. There are generally several quests at any given time, concentrating on each of the game’s three main areas: PvE combat against monsters; PvP combat against rival kingdoms; and building up the player’s own kingdom. This helps keep downtime to a minimum, as players can focus on another aspect of quests while waiting for their energy (used to battle monsters) or stamina (used to battle rival players) to refill.

PvE combat superficially resembles popular computer RPGs such as Diablo, but mechanics are kept very simple. Players simply click on a monster to attack them, an amount of energy according to the toughness of the monster is deducted from the player’s stock, the player character automatically chooses the best weapon available to use, damage is inflicted on the monster and then, finally, the monster usually inflicts a small amount of damage directly onto the player’s energy with their own attack. Certain monsters require prerequisite items in order to battle (antivenom for spiders, skinning knives for rats and so on) but otherwise there’s little depth to the combat, and while exploring PvE areas the player is safe from attack by creatures unless they are specifically clicking on one to battle it, meaning there’s little sense of “danger” during these adventures.

The kingdom building component requires players to manage their food stocks by building farms and silos to produce and store food; train troops (who consume food) and build structures that generate income. There’s also a research component which allows players to unlock various new buildings and troop types, and structures may be upgraded to increase their output. Unlike many of Kabam’s recent offerings, which see players spending several hours building and upgrading buildings before getting to any action whatsoever, Kingdom Age spreads its “build this, upgrade this” quests over a longer period of time, offering a welcome variety to the gameplay. As is usual for this type of game, buildings take varying amounts of real time to build and upgrade, though this wait can be negated by spending hard currency.

PvP combat uses the troops which players have trained to attack rival players, who are chosen from a list. Players see a map of their rival’s kingdom and must then choose a small area which they would like to attack. The rival’s defending troops then line up in this area and the player’s attackers charge through. The attackers’ strength is compared to the defenders’. The amount of units by which the attackers’ strength is greater than the defenders’ will then “break through” and attack randomly-chosen buildings in the area, potentially destroying them if enough damage is inflicted. It usually takes several battles to destroy a single building early in the game, more powerful units take the field later on — and paying players have the option of purchasing premium equipment using the game’s hard currency to give them a significant advantage. It’s a simple but effective system, though quests that require the player to destroy a specific building can prove infuriating at times, as attacking troops blindly charge forward and attack a cottage instead of the adjacent farm which they were supposed to be razing — and there’s no means of giving direct orders.

Kingdom Age’s three gameplay components work well together to produce a game with depth and variety. It still needs a little work, however. Art assets load slowly, for example, meaning the screen visibly redraws whenever transitioning to a different area — worse, the visuals are created using several “layers,” each of which refresh one at a time in a rather disconcerting manner. PvE combat lacks depth and a sense of danger; PvP combat lacks control. Sometimes health bars for buildings in PvP combat display inaccurate values. And full-screen mode occasionally refuses to register mouse clicks.

There’s a good game underneath, however, and some strong social and monetization features are already in place. Should Funzio be able to iron these issues out, it will have a strong offering for fantasy, RPG and strategy game fans on its hands. It’s just not quite there yet.

Wait

A deep, varied strategy game which needs a few gameplay tweaks and technical fixes before being ready for the primetime.

Wall Street Game is a new Facebook offering from Enders Fund, Inc. It’s a competitive business simulation that places players in the role of a wrongly-disgraced CEO who must work his way back up the business ladder and clear his name. This is primarily achieved by buying and selling stocks, with market data drawn from the real-world stock market in real time, but there is also a news quiz element to the game.

Upon starting the game, players are introduced to the scenario which forms the basis for the game’s story. The player character, an employee at his father’s company, was accused of fraud, and the judge at his trial was paid off by a member of the board who wanted to seize control of the company and its assets. After three years in prison, the player character is let loose and has to start again with practically nothing — nothing apart from the $10 million nest egg the character’s father left them “in case anything happened,” that is.

Players are then provided with a dilapidated-looking office building to explore, and have a number of possible actions they can take. Viewing the News channel on the television provides players with a series of headlines with the pertinent company names removed, and players must choose the correct company to fill in the blank in order to receive experience point rewards. Leveling up, in turn, unlocks a wider variety of avatar customization options.

Players also have the option of engaging in trades. It’s possible to invest in publicly-traded stocks as well as private funds held by the player’s friends. Players can either purchase when the market opens, or use a Power Trade token (available via Facebook Credits) to automatically purchase stock when the price reaches a certain lower boundary.

A wealth of financial information is provided for the player to make their decision, but the game does assume a working knowledge of how the stock exchange operates — to anyone not well-versed in life on the trading floor, the array of information available will likely seem somewhat bewildering. Players initially choose a single “field” in which to focus their trading, such as technology, basic materials or consumer products, and further fields are unlocked through continued play. Players may also level up their “mastery” of a field by answering trivia questions about companies in that field after seeing three facts presented to them. Increasing mastery of a field causes the room in the player’s office building representing that field to become decorated more elaborately.

Once players complete certain objectives, they are able to battle the bosses of the story. These battles take the form of a time-limited competition to see whether the player or the boss will make the biggest percentage return on their investment. Victory in these battles allows the storyline to proceed, while failure requires that the battle be repeated.

The game makes use of an energy system, but unfortunately the flawed implementation of this at the time of writing makes the game practically unplayable. It’s not made clear to the player that every single action — including making trades, answering news quiz questions, engaging in meetings and battling bosses — requires at least one point of energy, and the pool of energy available to players is just 8 points. This would not be so bad were it not for the fact that no indication is given of how much energy certain tasks require, leading to the situation depicted in the screenshot below, where the player appears to have energy in their bar but is still locked out of being able to perform an action. In the scenario shown below, the “meeting” action the player is trying to perform costs 3 energy — more than the 2 they currently have available — but this is not indicated anywhere on the interface.

The game is also riddled with technical issues — some graphics simply don’t load at times, while on other occasions performance is very sluggish. Characters frequently also walk into walls and present ugly clipping issues.

It’s a shame that there are so many problems with this title, as there’s a good game struggling to get out underneath, and the use of real-life market data and business news gives players the opportunity to learn more about the stock market and how world events affect share prices. Not only this, but there’s a huge amount of scope for social competition between friends.

At this time, though, the flawed, miserly energy system combined with the lack of interface feedback on energy costs and the technical problems the game suffers make it hard to recommend. There’s potential here, and it’s an original concept, but it needs a lot of work before being ready for the primetime.

Wall Street Game currently has 7,000 monthly active users and 800 daily active users. You can follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Wait

There’s a good, original concept for a game in there somewhere, but flawed implementation and technical issues hide it a little too well at the moment.

Astro Garden, a new Facebook game published by 6waves Lolapps, is a farming game with a twist. Players start with an impressive-looking farm that already has growing crops, healthy animals and a variety of curious buildings, but within a few moments a thunderstorm rolls in and destroys everything, wiping out the player character’s memories in the process. Thus begins a quest to rebuild whatever it was the player was doing prior to the game’s opening — a quest which culminates with the discovery of the elixir of eternal life.

Note that Astro Garden is actually the exact same game The Big Farm Theory, which Red Spell developed prior to signing a publishing agreement with 6waves Lolapps. A spokesperson for the publisher tells us the original game is still live as a favor to players that don’t want to restart the game from scratch. That version, however, will not be marketed.

Astro Garden sees players attempting to regain their lost memories through rebuilding their garden. For the most part, this process takes the form of fairly conventional farming gameplay — planting crops, clearing debris, feeding animals, creating meandering paths and building special structures. The game features a number of twists on the formula, however, making it a worthwhile experience to explore even for veterans of the genre.

The most obvious addition to the basic mechanics comes in the form of the “hybrids” system. Once the player has constructed a Laboratory building, they are able to research new forms of crops, resources and special items by spending combinations of components collected through exploration and debris-clearing. Rather than providing a linear research path, the “tech tree” approach taken (where later research is dependent on one or more prerequisite technologies) is strongly reminiscent of more complex strategy titles such as Sid Meier’s popular Civilization series. The eventual goal of the game is to complete the tech tree and construct the Elixir of Eternal Life, but along the way the player gains the ability to grow a wide range of mutated crops in their garden, which can subsequently be sold for considerably more profit than their naturally-occurring brethren.

Alongside this, the game incorporates a “Combo” system similar to that seen in Familiar Ville, which we reviewed last week. Collecting reward items in rapid succession adds to a meter at the top of the screen, and filling this meter provides the player with soft currency, resources and a temporary multiplier to subsequent rewards. The amount of time players have to build their combo before it expires is considerably more generous than that seen in Familiar Ville, though the timer doesn’t stop when popup windows appear on screen, meaning players can easily lose an impressive combo when dismissing quest completion dialogs. To assist with building up a combo when the on-screen action becomes hectic, however, the player has the opportunity to acquire “pet” characters who will automatically wander around and collect any dropped reward items quickly without the player having to roll the mouse over them.

Another welcome addition is the opportunity for players to use collected “food” resources to generate energy-restoring items rather than being obliged to spend hard currency on extended play sessions. The latter option is still available, of course, but this catering to non-paying players will likely be gratefully received.

Astro Garden is mostly polished with high-quality sounds, speech and music presented alongside distinctive 3D prerendered visuals. There are a few spelling and grammatical errors in the game’s text, however, and one of the music tracks used in the game persistently cuts off early. These little flaws take the “professional” edge off the game slightly, but despite this it does an eminently good job of adding some very welcome new ideas to the somewhat tired farming genre.

Astro Garden currently has 300,000 monthly active users and 60,000 daily active users. Its identical twin The Big Farm Theory currently has 140,000 monthly active users and 40,000 daily active users. You can follow their progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

Despite being a relaunch of a six-month old game, Astro Garden feels like a breath of fresh air in a tired genre.

Speaking today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, EA Playfish Creative Director Ray Mazza revealed that Facebook’s now-deactivated games ticker drove 93 percent of the early referral traffic for The Sims Social.

Mazza’s point about the ticker was that players are tuning out all the feed posts about friends’ activities in games (or just can’t see them). Now that the ticker’s gone, Mazza argued that social games will move from being in “competition for eyeballs” to competing for players’ interest by only sharing posts that are genuinely interesting. An example of this is players like to share when their sims have sex (“WooHoo”), and how this has  become the “the strongest Wall post we have.”

“We want to see drama between players, we want to see amazing creations, and we want to hear what’s really on players’ minds when they’re making these posts,” said Mazza.

Familiar Ville is a new Facebook-based pet care game from Korean developer Iustice, Inc. Despite its generic name, it’s worth checking out if only to see the striking difference made by deviating from the common, simple cartoon visual style which many Facebook games favor. Featuring lush, detailed backgrounds and a cast of memorable, quirky characters, the game makes a bold effort to set itself apart from its many competitors — at least in its aesthetic.

Familiar Ville puts players in control of a small house which will eventually become populated with a variety of pets and things for them to do. After choosing and naming a pet with which to start their collection, the player is led through a brief tutorial explaining the basic concepts of the game, which include how to generate food for pets and batteries to power the toys which entertain them. The training of pets to perform increasingly-complex tricks is also introduced, and within a few minutes the player is let loose in the house to begin managing their fledgling pet empire.

Familiar Ville requires players to keep track of quite a few things at once in order to be as successful as possible. Pets have both hunger and cleanliness statistics, which can be managed by feeding and bathing them. Feeding pets requires the production of food using food creator machines, while toys — the game’s primary source of income — require batteries in order to work. When pets play with a toy, the item becomes “charged” with coins which can then be collected, but at this point it must be recharged with additional batteries.

The game incorporates an unusual “combo” system to encourage players to time their collections carefully — collecting items which drop to the floor gradually fills a meter as the number collected in rapid succession increases. Upon reaching certain milestones, the player receives a bonus to the rewards they have collected, meaning that players with a wide variety of pets and income-producing items in their virtual home will be able to rack up some massive bonuses easily. The simple addition of this arcade-style feature adds an element of light strategy and timing to the game which is not seen in many other similar examples of the genre.

Where Familiar Ville really stands out is in the art and presentation. The game features detailed backdrops, animations and an unusual cast of characters delivering the various quests and challenges the player is presented with. Rather than the generic, dull characters seen in many other Facebook games, Iustice has taken the time to infuse each of these characters with visual distinctiveness and their own personality quirks. A likeable cast and good writing can be a strongly contributing factor in encouraging users to return after an initial “trial run” of the game.

The pet genre may be one of the most over-saturated categories on Facebook, but Familiar Ville is a solid game. At this time, there are not many items for players to purchase with hard currency, though players may also top up their soft currency reserves using Facebook Credits if they want to make quicker progress. With a wider variety of monetization strategies coupled with a strong drive for user acquisition through various channels, Familiar Ville has a lot of potential for success despite a slow start so far.

Familiar Ville has picked up just 600 monthly active users and 200 daily active users since its launch on February 20. To follow its progress, check out AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Wait

A good game that features some lovely presentation and gameplay innovations, but which is yet to prove it has the “legs” for long-term success.

Ubisoft’s Rabbids series — originally a spinoff from the company’s Rayman franchise — is well-known for its irreverent, lavatorial humor and has invaded a wide variety of platforms over the course of the last few years. The small, insane, rabbit-like creatures have finally hit Facebook this month in the form of Rabbids Invasion.

Rabbids Invasion offers a twist on standard citybuilding gameplay: the city is already there. However, the city in question was built by humans and as such, the Rabbids are unable to avail themselves of all its facilities. In order to do so, the Rabbids must “invade” the existing buildings and take them over. In doing so, the drab, brown art becomes wildly colorful and often takes on humorous, surreal characteristics. Invading a house, for example, might cover it in toilet paper. Invading a farmhouse might redesign it to look like a giant cow. And invading a log cabin simply burns it down and turns it into an enormous bonfire.

Progress in the game is determined by a number of factors: the number of Rabbids available to invade buildings, the soft currency the player has on hand to purchase and invade buildings and cans of food that are required to supply businesses. Additional Rabbids can be acquired by invading public buildings such as post offices, and this then allows for more structures to be acquired, in turn leading to greater income of soft currency and experience points. Food, meanwhile, comes from harvesting strange crops such as roast chickens from fields.

The player is led through the basics of invading and building through a series of quests, all of which are presented in a somewhat sarcastic manner with numerous pop culture references. Early gameplay revolves around taking over buildings, building up stockpiles of food and currency and then expanding the borders of the Rabbids’ invasion by using a sausage so spicy it causes a Rabbid to explode, taking a boundary fence with it.

Social features are fairly standard for the citybuilding genre. The public buildings used to acquire additional Rabbids must be staffed by friends (or “Fake Friends” purchased through the game’s hard currency) and a number of quests require the procurement of items through the assistance of friends. Players are also able to visit their friends’ territories and send tourist groups of Rabbids in order to collect coins and experience. It’s also possible to set fire to friends’ Rabbids that are wandering around the map.

Once the novelty of the irreverent humor and the invasion mechanic wears off, there’s a fairly predictable citybuilding game underneath. It’s competently handled, though, and progression is rarely halted due to friend-gating. It feels like the Rabbids license is somewhat underused, however — in its previous incarnations, the Rabbids found themselves in a variety of ludicrous situations and it was generally up to the player to either help them out or punish them in one way or another through a series of very silly minigames. There’s nothing like that in Rabbids Invasion at this time, which feels like a missed opportunity. There’s nothing stopping Ubisoft adding something like this at a later date, however.

The game is solidly monetized, offering a wide range of premium items  for players to purchase using hard currency. The most expensive of these costs an equivalent of almost $100 and provides a significant gameplay benefit, doubling the soft currency payout of all nearby buildings. There are plenty of smaller items available for purchase, however, and in the early stages the game is quite generous with the provision of hard currency to help speed up early progress.

Rabbids Invasion currently has 10,000 monthly active users and 5,000 daily active users, but has only been available for less than a week at the time of writing. The Rabbids series is a well known brand among casual gamers, and Ubisoft is likely counting on this to assist with user acquisition, along with the game’s frictionless wall posting facility for virality. To follow the game’s progress, check out AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

Play

Strong brand recognition, good design and an irreverent sense of humor will help make this relatively straightforward citybuilder a big success.

Prom Week, a game developed by a team of students and faculty at the University of California Santa Cruz, is now available on Facebook. The game is a simulation of social interactions between high school students based on a sophisticated artificial intelligence system. None of the stories which the player can experience in the game are pre-scripted, leading to a wide variety of potential outcomes.

Prom Week’s gameplay initially seems very similar to The Sims Social, with players choosing various actions for the on-screen characters to perform and then watching the outcome. Unlike The Sims Social, however, all available activities involve interactions between two characters, and rather than simply playing a short animation, a short scene — complete with procedurally-generated text-based dialog — is played out in front of the player. The player is then given a summary of the outcome of the action, which may affect three “relationship” statistics tracking how characters feel about one another as well as providing more short term feelings.

The structured part of the game revolves around selecting a character and having to fulfill a series of goals by the end of the school’s prom night. The player has a limited number of “turns” in which to accomplish these goals, but they can be completed by taking command of any characters present in the scene, not just the one who is ostensibly the “protagonist” of the story. In fact, many characters’ goals require the subtle social manipulation of other characters in order to accomplish tasks — in the story where the “geek” character wants to become Prom King, for example, he doesn’t stand a chance of befriending the head of the Prom Royalty Committee unless he shows he is enemies with her big rival.

Prom Week is based on a set of 5,000 social considerations or “rules” that govern the characters’ behavior in various situations. The team at UC Santa Cruz studied social interactions in movies and television shows, so the game’s social model is skewed towards popular media’s depiction of what high school life is like, not necessarily reality. This does, however, mean that most players who have seen movies and TV shows such as “Mean Girls” or “Sex and the City” will be familiar with the way these situations work — and the game also includes an “energy” mechanic for predicting and manipulating characters’ responses to various interactions, allowing for scenes to play out in wildly different ways with a bit of nudging from the player.

The game is a fascinating demonstration of what is possible with the use of artificial intelligence. Despite being Facebook-based and revolving around the concept of social interactions, however, the game features no viral social features outside of posting to the Games news ticker when players are playing, and nor does it feature any monetization. It does, however, serve as a bold advertisement for the possibilities on offer at UC Santa Cruz’s Games and Playable Media and Expressive Intelligence Studio departments, both of whom display prominent logos on the game’s canvas.

Prom Week is unlikely to enjoy widespread, mainstream success or profitability for the reasons outlined above. However, what it does show is the exciting possibilities artificial intelligence provides to online games. There’s no reason why elements of Prom Week’s innovative mechanics couldn’t be incorporated into a properly monetized, virally promoted social game, and for that reason alone, it’s very much worth the time it takes to explore.

At the time of writing, Prom Week has just 200 monthly active users and 200 daily active users. It only launched on February 16, however, so it will be interesting to see how the general community takes to it. To follow the game’s progress and observe its usage trends, be sure to check out our AppData traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

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A lack of monetization and social features mean Prom Week is unlikely to be profitable or find a wide audience, but it demonstrates some highly intriguing possibilities for possible implementation in future games.