Inside Social Games

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gameplay: 8.5

Developers: 8

Nostalgia: 10

I wonder what a society would be like run by me. Would it be complete anarchy? Or would I rule with an iron fist and cruelly punish those who don’t abide by my strict “casual Fridays” edicts?

Nations on Facebook allows you to answer this question to a certain degree. Nations is a new game developed by Barbara Surgi, Zachary Morgan and “2 other people.” You get to pick your nation’s flag, its political policies, its name, and even its allies/enemies.

Setting up your country is a breeze. Pick a name, upload a flag or choose one of the thirty or so provided, and then answer the nine political questions about your county’s policies. These will help determine how your country is structured politically and what its strengths and weaknesses will be. There are no wrong answers to these questions, for every society has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, uf you’re all about the free market, expect poverty to be a problem.

You can then choose how many issues you get asked to resolve throughout the week. This screen is essentially asking you how involved you’d like to be in the game. Your citizens can have a problem every day or once a week, depending on the level of involvement you want. Your choices on resolving issues will shape how the society progresses, but you can always choose to not answer issues if you see there are no good solutions.

The game is still in its development phase, so the lack of visual stimuli, abilities, and well-laid out guide is understandable. There are some promising elements of the game, however. You can earn points for resolving issues and inviting friends, but these won’t help you beat the game. Instead, it allows more customizations for your country. As an example, you can unlock different titles for yourself.

Room for improvement is apparent, however. The ability to change the number of issues you receive while in game needs to be added. More abilities to control your population are also a must. The stats they provide don’t mean much to the user right now, and some kind of visual representation of poverty, a weak military, etc would go a long way to create an immersive experience. It’s a solid start, but needs some meat on the solid game play skeleton. Playing dictator should be fun, and a representation in text of your cruelty doesn’t spell “excitement” to me.

Game play: 6

Development: 6

How cruel of a dictator I would be: 9

Ever wanted to have a vassal? Perhaps some squires to do your bidding? How about the ability to raid other people’s castles? With Knighthood, you can do all of these things, and more.

Knighthood is a strategy/social game with a medieval theme. Currently in beta, the game promises to be a deep and challenging experience for both casual and experienced gamers. The object of Knighthood is to expand your territory and your wealth. If you added the application due to a friend’s invite, you become their vassal (unless you become more powerful than them, in which case, you can rebel). You have a set amount of money, skills, and land. In order to gain more buildings for your land and expand your other abilities, you need to invite friends.

The initial approach to the game can be daunting, and that’s why there is a very in-depth wiki page detailing how to approach the first stages. The confusion over how to get started may turn off some of the more casual gamers. But once you get beyond this initial threshold, there lies a lot to do and a pretty rich environment.

You need to make your friends your vassals so you can use them to build your buildings and expand your power. Once established and having built a decent little kingdom, you can try your hand at warfare. But beware! You can end up losing your vassals to other barons and lords. There is a great deal of strategy to when it’s politically astute to swear allegiance to a bigger lord, when it’s a good time to rebel, and when you should employ your vassals to build that barracks.

This is the first game to have incorporated the resource management features of RTS games into a social/texting game, and for that the developers deserve credit. That said, a better interface that would allow you to see a visual representation of your kingdom, vassals, and their work would be appreciated. Waiting several hours until you can do battle properly will also deter many casual gamers.

The developers do a good job of creating a deep gaming experience and integrating it beautifully with the social networking capabilities of Facebook. The pieces are all in place and it is clear they’ve put a lot of time into this application.

If I had to knock the developers on something, I’d say the art is rather rudimentary and could be more uniform and professional. Combat could be rendered in Flash, and the interface could be sleeker. These are common problems to social games like Armies and Vampires, but Knighthood makes up for the name recognition of these larger games by depth of gameplay and strategy.

Simply, despite the popularity of these other games, this is a much richer experience. The real challenge for this game will be making the sell to casual gamers.

Gameplay: 8

Developers: 7

Depth: 10

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

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

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

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

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

Gameplay: 7

Developers: 4

Difficulty: 7

PackRat offers a unique blend of puzzle, memory, and social elements to create a thoroughly enjoyable Facebook game.

Developed by Alamofire, the goal of PackRat is simple: gain as many cards as possible. You can acquire them through purchase at the market, through invitations to your friends, or by stealing from your friends (or Rat bots). Your friends can prevent thefts by putting locks on their cards or by storing them in their vault. In order to place something in a vault, you must have acquired five of the same card or collection.

When you steal something, you must place something in its place, so there is a high degree of strategy to the game. It’s plenty addictive and has many layers of game play. In addition to stealing and buying cards, you can also create new cards by combining existing cards or spending time perfecting your locking and lock-picking techniques.

Locks are cards as well, but can be set and broken by various Flash mini-games. The mini-games themselves are plenty addictive and are well animated. They also provide an element of reflexive skill to a game that already rewards strategy.

The developers get similarly positive marks for not only creating a unique gaming experience, but integrating it fully into the Facebook Platform. The introduction is casual and approachable, and asks you to invite friends but says up front that it wants you to be able to enjoy the game without having to do so. The game is much better with lots of friends, but you’ll figure that out quick enough and want to help the creators spread the word.

The addition of bots in the form of funny rat names (usually puns on famous celebrities like Shakirat) is a clever feature that allows people to still play the game without friends. All of the cards are uniform and adorable. They’re attractive enough to want people to capture them, which is essential for the game’s success.

The only criticism I have is that the rules of the game can be better laid out early in the game. I figured things out for myself pretty quickly, but initially the locking ability was a bit counterintuitive. Still, it’s a solid game that is perhaps one of the top social games out there that combines strategy, socializing, and action into an attractive package.

Gameplay: 8.5

Developers: 8

Adorability: 9

Armies by Frozenbear is a game that takes full advantage of the social networking context offered by Facebook. The game asks you to raise your armed forces from a trainee to a full fledged army. In order to get credits to upgrade your unit (more on this later) and purchase better units.

Players are offered a variety of options to accrue credits. The most obvious route is to get credits by going to war. You can compete against players with similar strengths in the World War tab (a smart move as this ensures the really strong players won’t bully the noobs). Or you can fight the Army Kid, a computer bot. After you click “fight,” the computer determines who wins based on your respective strength. Even if you have less overall strength, there is still a chance you can win so there is little incentive not to try. You can also challenge your friends.

By winning, you are given a certain number of credits that you can use to buy weapons upgrades (like knives, artillery pieces, and M-16s) or better units (like grunts, battalions, or fire squads). The big units cost thousands upon thousands of credits, so you either need to spend a lot of time fighting or use alternative means of procuring credits.

Inviting your friends (”drafting” them in the game’s language) helps, and the game does a good job of enticing you to invite your friends to build up your forces. But even without them, this game can be fun by simply challenging the bot, challenging random people in the World War, or playing the “Build Morale” mini-game which allows you to risk credits to gain credits - a pseudo-gambling feature.

The game also has several partnerships with other applications and outside companies. By giving their partners business, you get a lot of credits (some are worth a couple thousand). It’s a great business strategy - Frozenbear gets strong marks for pushing you to help further the game’s interests.

There is also a strong social component to the game. Aside from the friend invitations, there are a number of larger armies players can join (or you can start your own). People really get into their armies and try to take on opposing armies, so that opens up a group mentality and shared cause dynamic. You don’t need other people to enjoy the game, but having friends to challenge and join your ranks makes it a much richer experience.

On the gaming side, the lack of animation and strange slowdowns at points can be frustrating. None of the artwork to depict your armies is original, and the language is oddly colloquial, so it doesn’t maintain the “military” motif very well. The game is well developed, but still obviously very cheaply made. Hiring a staff artist to depict uniform pictures and inserting some flash animation for the battles wouldn’t take much time or resources these days.

The game also doesn’t require any skills - just time - which can be a deterrent for some gamers. And by time, I mean eons. Unless you plan on inviting everyone you know and taking a lot of the partner offers, getting the really big stuff is like trying to win a stuffed animal at a fair - it’s there for show but almost no one actually wins it.

Still, many people will be drawn to the social aspects and the openness of the experience. Even on a basic level, playing “soldier” is fun.

Developer’s Score: 9/10
Gameplay Score: 6/10
Days it will take you to amass credits to buy a bomber: 1,984

Snowraft is a snowball fight action/strategy game by Matt Burton and Amir Amini. Employing adorable flash animation and an annoyingly catchy soundtrack, the game is simple: command your little army of red kids to throw snowballs at the blue kids. When you get hit with a snow ball, you freeze and can’t move. Too many hits and you’re dead. Last team standing wins.

In order to get bigger snowballs and better health, you need to invite your friends. Once it becomes obvious that you’re dead in this adolescent frozen arms race without proper armament, you decide to invite everyone you know.

Developers could learn a lot from this game because it incorporates simple flash animation, an easy-control system (click, drag, click), and an economy that is tied to perpetuating itself through invites.

Yet, this is also one of the more player-friendly games I’ve played. You don’t have to rely on your vast army of friend invites to move beyond stage one. The challenging AI makes it so the initial two stages are enticing enough to get players to want to keep playing. There’s a chance that players could quit before getting upgrades (and inviting friends), but it’s a worthy risk by the developers. If the game is any good (Snowraft is), players will invite their friends not only to keep playing it, but also because they want to share it. Once they’ve added the application, you can challenge your friends to earn more points and bragging rights.

While the gameplay isn’t difficult - you essentially move your characters as close to theirs as possible and then click repeatedly - it’s both fun and addictive enough to keep playing. There’s a certain element of strategy too in terms of how much you want to micromanage your team.

I found it really easy to keep dodging with one and then attacking the enemy while they reloaded. This often left my other two guys as sitting ducks, which meant the game was more strategy-intensive than I had initially thought. Still, even with the upgrades this game isn’t going to become an addiction that is going to get you fired at work and lead you to living a life in a box. So, it’s not the next Snood, but it is worth a chance for a couple hours.

It’s a solid little game that is simplistic in its formula but is unobtrusive in its requests to perpetuate. In other words, the game doesn’t sacrifice self-perpetuation for gameplay.

Developer’s Score: 7/10

Gameplay: 7/10

Odds soundtrack will get stuck in head: 8/10