Two new YoVille collectibles have been added to the furniture store. The two new collectibles available are an Animated Train Ride for 32 Yocash and a Hollywood Lady With Glittering Lamp Statue for 17, 200 Coins. The Train ride allows you to ride into a dark tunnel. The Statue adds a nice Glamorous feel to a Hollywood home. Go ahead to the furniture store to purchase these fabulous new additions for your home!
What do you think?
This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.
Thứ Tư, 15 tháng 2, 2012
Game of the Day: Word Roundup Challenge
in fact, you should come back to Games.com every day for a new game.
Important side note: Just by playing The Game of the Day you will be entered into a monthly drawing to win a FlipCam HD. You don't need to do anything else, just play! The more you play, the more chances you have to win. For more information on the Game of Day check out the official New Game of the Day hub.
Play Word Roundup Challenge now -->
Important side note: Just by playing The Game of the Day you will be entered into a monthly drawing to win a FlipCam HD. You don't need to do anything else, just play! The more you play, the more chances you have to win. For more information on the Game of Day check out the official New Game of the Day hub.
Play Word Roundup Challenge now -->
YoVille Hollywood Bathroom Items added to furniture store
yoville hollywood bathroom
Bathroom items have been added to the YoVille Furniture Store. These items are a part of the Hollywood theme. Some of the new items include a Hollywood Black Shower for 6 Yocash, Hollywood Green Sink Cabinet for 2,995 coins, a Hollywood Red Toilet for 7 Yocash, and much more! These items would be great for you Hollywood home. Head on over to the furniture store to buy your glamorous bathroom items today!
Pictures after the link.
Do you like the new stuff?
yoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroom
Thanks to Spiralda for the pictures!
This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.
Bathroom items have been added to the YoVille Furniture Store. These items are a part of the Hollywood theme. Some of the new items include a Hollywood Black Shower for 6 Yocash, Hollywood Green Sink Cabinet for 2,995 coins, a Hollywood Red Toilet for 7 Yocash, and much more! These items would be great for you Hollywood home. Head on over to the furniture store to buy your glamorous bathroom items today!
Pictures after the link.
Do you like the new stuff?
yoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroomyoville hollywood bathroom
Thanks to Spiralda for the pictures!
This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.
Zynga & 7-Eleven event kicks off FarmVille, Mafia Wars & YoVille promotion
zynga 7 eleven event
With the epic kickoff event on June 1st, FarmVille, Mafia Wars and YoVille have invaded 7-Elevens all over the United States. The promotion includes game branded groceries, snacks, beverages and more. Once purchased, players can redeem the codes printed on the treats in return for valuable in-game cash and other limited edition items. Fans have been excited to get their hands on both the great looking snacks and the lucrative game rewards. Fortunately, yesterday, the kickoff event finally opened the flood gates.
Select 7-Elevens in New York, Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver and Los Angeles hosted the event which included tons of free give aways and fun. Those who were lucky enough to attend found the event to be full of games, free merchandise, amusement park tickets, carnival gift cards and of course, loads of FarmVille, Mafia Wars and YoVIlle themed goodies.
FarmVille fan and donkey, Backpacking Brighty, snapped a few pics from the event in Dallas. In addition, FarmVille Freak asked readers who attended to send in images.
Continue reading to check out all the awesome pictures from the Zynga 7-Eleven Kick Off Event.
Note: Send photos of your FamVille, YoVille and Mafia Wars 7-Eleven merchandise to editors@games.com and we'll post them up on the blog!
Dallas, Texas
zynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven event
Staten Island, New York
zynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven event
San Francisco, California
zynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven event
Denver, Colorado
zynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven event
Chicago, Illinois
zynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven event
If you're like us and missed the crazy kickoff event, try not to worry; there will be plenty of Zynga game themed goodies to go around. If you haven't already, head to 7-Eleven's store locater by clicking here and see if there is one in your area.
Although supplies are sure to last, rumor has it that a few jerks are going into stores and snapping pictures of all the codes, leaving few rewards to go around! So if you're interested in getting some FarmVille, YoVille and Mafia Wars themed 7-Eleven stuff, it may be in your best interest to act quickly!
Send photos of your FarmVille, YoVille and Mafia Wars 7-Eleven merchandise to editors@games.com and we'll post them up on the blog!
What do you think of the Zynga 7-Eleven kickoff event?
Sources:
Backpacking Brighty - Dallas, Texas
FarmVille Freak - San Francisco, California
FarmVille Freak - Denver, Colorado
FarmVille Freak - Staten Island, New York
FarmVille Freak - Chicago, Illinois
With the epic kickoff event on June 1st, FarmVille, Mafia Wars and YoVille have invaded 7-Elevens all over the United States. The promotion includes game branded groceries, snacks, beverages and more. Once purchased, players can redeem the codes printed on the treats in return for valuable in-game cash and other limited edition items. Fans have been excited to get their hands on both the great looking snacks and the lucrative game rewards. Fortunately, yesterday, the kickoff event finally opened the flood gates.
Select 7-Elevens in New York, Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver and Los Angeles hosted the event which included tons of free give aways and fun. Those who were lucky enough to attend found the event to be full of games, free merchandise, amusement park tickets, carnival gift cards and of course, loads of FarmVille, Mafia Wars and YoVIlle themed goodies.
FarmVille fan and donkey, Backpacking Brighty, snapped a few pics from the event in Dallas. In addition, FarmVille Freak asked readers who attended to send in images.
Continue reading to check out all the awesome pictures from the Zynga 7-Eleven Kick Off Event.
Note: Send photos of your FamVille, YoVille and Mafia Wars 7-Eleven merchandise to editors@games.com and we'll post them up on the blog!
Dallas, Texas
zynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven event
Staten Island, New York
zynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven event
San Francisco, California
zynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven event
Denver, Colorado
zynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven event
Chicago, Illinois
zynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven eventzynga 7 eleven event
If you're like us and missed the crazy kickoff event, try not to worry; there will be plenty of Zynga game themed goodies to go around. If you haven't already, head to 7-Eleven's store locater by clicking here and see if there is one in your area.
Although supplies are sure to last, rumor has it that a few jerks are going into stores and snapping pictures of all the codes, leaving few rewards to go around! So if you're interested in getting some FarmVille, YoVille and Mafia Wars themed 7-Eleven stuff, it may be in your best interest to act quickly!
Send photos of your FarmVille, YoVille and Mafia Wars 7-Eleven merchandise to editors@games.com and we'll post them up on the blog!
What do you think of the Zynga 7-Eleven kickoff event?
Sources:
Backpacking Brighty - Dallas, Texas
FarmVille Freak - San Francisco, California
FarmVille Freak - Denver, Colorado
FarmVille Freak - Staten Island, New York
FarmVille Freak - Chicago, Illinois
Happy Pets: More horses in more colors
heppy pets chestnut horse happy pets bluegrass horse happy pets butter horse
Happy Pets has been absolutely crazy about horses lately. Recently, they released limited edition horses in some seriously zany colors, then they rolled out new horse decor, and finally, they've released a new set of permanent horses in addition to the existing five. The new horses are as follows:
Dun Horse (41,795 Coins)
Chestnut Horse (39,795 Coins)
Bluegrass Horse (45,795 Coins)
Butter Horse (43,795 Coins)
While the horses are all rather expensive, we're relieved that they can be bought with coins. Also interesting is the selling price for the adult horses. An adult horse can be sold for about 20,000 Coins more than the price of the pony, allowing Happy Pets players to do a little ranching. Head to Happy Pets to perhaps consider a horse of a different color.
Click here to play Happy Pets>
Happy Pets has been absolutely crazy about horses lately. Recently, they released limited edition horses in some seriously zany colors, then they rolled out new horse decor, and finally, they've released a new set of permanent horses in addition to the existing five. The new horses are as follows:
Dun Horse (41,795 Coins)
Chestnut Horse (39,795 Coins)
Bluegrass Horse (45,795 Coins)
Butter Horse (43,795 Coins)
While the horses are all rather expensive, we're relieved that they can be bought with coins. Also interesting is the selling price for the adult horses. An adult horse can be sold for about 20,000 Coins more than the price of the pony, allowing Happy Pets players to do a little ranching. Head to Happy Pets to perhaps consider a horse of a different color.
Click here to play Happy Pets>
FIFA Superstars: Everything you need to know
Fifa superstars
EA Sports' FIFA Superstars has finally arrived, and just a week after going live, the soccer game already has 30,000 users. FIFA Superstars is accessible to all soccer fans whether they've played video games before or not. Like Gangster City, Playfish's other recent title, FIFA Superstars focuses on simple gameplay and fleshes it out with unique components and high production value. The result is a game that is deep, enjoyable and compelling.
Continue reading as we run through everything you need to know in order to successfully play FIFA Superstars.
fifa superstars
Start up FIFA Superstars and you'll hear music gnarly enough to get anyone ready to take on the gargantuan role of soccer team manager. After the brief load time, you'll be prompted to create your team and run through a tutorial. Finally, you'll come face to face with the home screen, the heart of FIFA Superstars. There is a ton of information on this screen, so we're going to break it down so you can begin training your team. Although the game may seem confusing at first, you'll see it is quite simple and you'll be winning matches and scoring goals with the professionals in no time.
fifa superstars crest
Home Screen
The first thing to do when you reach the screen pictured above is edit your team's crest. Click the crest at the top left of the screen and you'll be able to choose from a number of emblems, colors and nations.
Centered on the screen are the players currently selected to start in upcoming matches. Along the left hand side you have the options:
Play - Allows you to choose a league and play matches.
Manage - Where you can swap out players and change formations.
Trade - Mysterious feature that is coming soon.
Stadium - View the current training regiment, stadium facilities and coach. Make sure to buy stadium upgrades to earn more money, experience, and training from everything you do.
Training - Choose a training regiment to keep your team in top form.
Store - Purchase new players, coaches, stadium upgrades and match credits.
The bar along the top of the home screen also gives you important information such as your team's rating, your experience, your match credits and your current amount of coins.
fifa superstars buying players
Team Management
Your team's overall skill rating, shown in yellow at the top right of the home screen, is a combination of training and talent. Talent, shown at the top left of each player card and when rolled over, is predetermined and cannot be changed. To better your team's talent you must buy all new players. Click the store or manage button, then click players. Three tiers of player packs are available:
Bronze Transfers - 10,000 Coins or 8 Playfish Cash
Silver Transfers - 25,000 Coins or 20 Playfish Cash
Gold Transfers - Unlocks at level 10 or 60 Playfish Cash
The better the transfer pack the better players you'll receive. Each pack contains five random players from the tier you selected. After receiving new players, you can head to manage from the home screen and swap out players into their appropriate positions. Depending on the make up of your squad, you may want to change formations to reflect that. For example if you have a lot of great defenders, change your formation to 5 - 3 - 2 so more of your better players can play at once.
fifa superstars manage
Note that you can also sell players from this screen. Be careful, while you'll never need substitutes during a game, remember that if you switch formations in the future, you may end up needing a player you sold for a mere 200 Coins.
Training
Unlike talent, your training stat is not set in stone. Your training stat is left up to you and because training makes up your overall rating, it's important to keep your team in top form. If your team is well trained, you may have a higher overall rating than a team with more talent and as a result, be able to defeat them.
fifa superstars training
To begin training your team, click the training button on the home screen. Training is a combination of your Current Base Training (which increases every time a training regiment is completed), your Facilities (training equipment purchased at the store), and your Coach who can increase your training by 20 points.
To increase your base training, select one of the regiments. When the specified amount of time finishes counting down, you will gain that amount of training. Unlike FarmVille and its withering crops, FIFA Superstars will not penalize you for failing to see the training through. It will give you your training points whether you are playing or not.
It is possible to have up to 100 base training. However, don't think because you've maxed out you're training it's going to be smooth sailing all the way through the Barclays Premier League. Whenever your players are idle your training will begin to decrease, so it's important to sign in every day and have your team train to stay competitive.
fifa superstars match
Matches & Leagues
To earn money, gain experience and rank up in FIFA Superstars, you're going to have to play matches. To play matches, you're going to need match credits. Every time you play a game, a match credit is subtracted from you. There are several ways to refill your match credits. First, you are given a match credit every six hours, so you can just wait for them to refill. You also receive match credits when you level up. It is also possible to ask for and to send credits or mystery gifts to your friends (which may include match credits in addition to players and coins). Finally, you may purchase more match credits in the store for Playfish Cash.
fifa superstars leagues
To set up a game, click the play button from the home screen. You'll be prompted to select on of the following leagues:
fifa superstars barclays bremier league
2010 FIFA World Cup - Coming soon.
Premier League - Raise your overall rating enough and you'll be able to take on the teams of the Barclays Premier League such as Manchester United and Arsenal. (As you can see at the right, my mighty team defeated Blackpool.)
League Matches - This is what you'll select most often as you complete and advance through the various leagues until you reach the elite Superstar League.
Friendly Matches - This league lets you play with your friends. Select it then select a friend to challenge and play. You can only play each friend once every day. These matches don't cost match credits.
Once a league has been chosen, choose a team you wish to play. It's always a good idea to make sure your overall rating is higher than the opponents if you want to win. Instead of wasting your precious match credits when the odds are against you, either take on an easier team, train, or buy players and come back later. Once you've chosen a team, click play, a match credit is deducted, and the game is underway.
After a match has begun, the player has two options: watch a long series of cutscenes as the game plays out or skip straight to the final score. The way the game works is all based on stats and positioning. Throughout the game players will try to dribble other players, pass the ball, and shoot. FIFA Superstars compares the talent and training of the two interacting players and decides which one will be victorious.
fifa superstars
For example, my striker Hughes is on offense with the ball and encounters defender Maire. Because Hughes has higher stats and training, he was able to successfully leave "Amaud Maire standing!"
fifa superstars goalkeeping
Another example is shooting on goal. Enemy midfielder Toner, was able to break through my defense and get a shot on goal. Goalkeeping also works in a similar fashion to offense play. The match up this time is between my keeper Fejzic and Toner. Depending on the players' talent and training, the shot can either be saved or reach the back of the "potato sack."
fifa superstars goal
This continues until time is up and the final score is announced. Proportionate to the difficulty of the challenge and the outcome of the match, you will receive experience and money.
fifa superstars final score
Calling all Footie Fans
Whether you call it soccer or football, it makes no difference. FIFA Superstars revolves entirely around the sport we love. With the current scarcity of sports games on Facebook, we hoped the soccer simulator would begin to fill the hole in the social network's game lineup.
Despite our excitement, we would love to see more Facebook friend integration (perhaps in the trading feature coming soon). In addition we'd like some interactivity, especially in the matches themselves, allowing players to further influence the outcome. Finally, our last complaint is that we just can't get enough of it! The match credit system makes us wait for days just to get my team out on the pitch for just a few minutes!
However, in the end, beggars can't be choosers, and we're certainly relieved to finally see quality in a genre that has been struggling to produce a hit. Despite the game's relatively slow start, the FIFA World Cup is around the corner, and we're hoping to see FIFA Superstars catch on.
Click here to play FIFA Superstars>
EA Sports' FIFA Superstars has finally arrived, and just a week after going live, the soccer game already has 30,000 users. FIFA Superstars is accessible to all soccer fans whether they've played video games before or not. Like Gangster City, Playfish's other recent title, FIFA Superstars focuses on simple gameplay and fleshes it out with unique components and high production value. The result is a game that is deep, enjoyable and compelling.
Continue reading as we run through everything you need to know in order to successfully play FIFA Superstars.
fifa superstars
Start up FIFA Superstars and you'll hear music gnarly enough to get anyone ready to take on the gargantuan role of soccer team manager. After the brief load time, you'll be prompted to create your team and run through a tutorial. Finally, you'll come face to face with the home screen, the heart of FIFA Superstars. There is a ton of information on this screen, so we're going to break it down so you can begin training your team. Although the game may seem confusing at first, you'll see it is quite simple and you'll be winning matches and scoring goals with the professionals in no time.
fifa superstars crest
Home Screen
The first thing to do when you reach the screen pictured above is edit your team's crest. Click the crest at the top left of the screen and you'll be able to choose from a number of emblems, colors and nations.
Centered on the screen are the players currently selected to start in upcoming matches. Along the left hand side you have the options:
Play - Allows you to choose a league and play matches.
Manage - Where you can swap out players and change formations.
Trade - Mysterious feature that is coming soon.
Stadium - View the current training regiment, stadium facilities and coach. Make sure to buy stadium upgrades to earn more money, experience, and training from everything you do.
Training - Choose a training regiment to keep your team in top form.
Store - Purchase new players, coaches, stadium upgrades and match credits.
The bar along the top of the home screen also gives you important information such as your team's rating, your experience, your match credits and your current amount of coins.
fifa superstars buying players
Team Management
Your team's overall skill rating, shown in yellow at the top right of the home screen, is a combination of training and talent. Talent, shown at the top left of each player card and when rolled over, is predetermined and cannot be changed. To better your team's talent you must buy all new players. Click the store or manage button, then click players. Three tiers of player packs are available:
Bronze Transfers - 10,000 Coins or 8 Playfish Cash
Silver Transfers - 25,000 Coins or 20 Playfish Cash
Gold Transfers - Unlocks at level 10 or 60 Playfish Cash
The better the transfer pack the better players you'll receive. Each pack contains five random players from the tier you selected. After receiving new players, you can head to manage from the home screen and swap out players into their appropriate positions. Depending on the make up of your squad, you may want to change formations to reflect that. For example if you have a lot of great defenders, change your formation to 5 - 3 - 2 so more of your better players can play at once.
fifa superstars manage
Note that you can also sell players from this screen. Be careful, while you'll never need substitutes during a game, remember that if you switch formations in the future, you may end up needing a player you sold for a mere 200 Coins.
Training
Unlike talent, your training stat is not set in stone. Your training stat is left up to you and because training makes up your overall rating, it's important to keep your team in top form. If your team is well trained, you may have a higher overall rating than a team with more talent and as a result, be able to defeat them.
fifa superstars training
To begin training your team, click the training button on the home screen. Training is a combination of your Current Base Training (which increases every time a training regiment is completed), your Facilities (training equipment purchased at the store), and your Coach who can increase your training by 20 points.
To increase your base training, select one of the regiments. When the specified amount of time finishes counting down, you will gain that amount of training. Unlike FarmVille and its withering crops, FIFA Superstars will not penalize you for failing to see the training through. It will give you your training points whether you are playing or not.
It is possible to have up to 100 base training. However, don't think because you've maxed out you're training it's going to be smooth sailing all the way through the Barclays Premier League. Whenever your players are idle your training will begin to decrease, so it's important to sign in every day and have your team train to stay competitive.
fifa superstars match
Matches & Leagues
To earn money, gain experience and rank up in FIFA Superstars, you're going to have to play matches. To play matches, you're going to need match credits. Every time you play a game, a match credit is subtracted from you. There are several ways to refill your match credits. First, you are given a match credit every six hours, so you can just wait for them to refill. You also receive match credits when you level up. It is also possible to ask for and to send credits or mystery gifts to your friends (which may include match credits in addition to players and coins). Finally, you may purchase more match credits in the store for Playfish Cash.
fifa superstars leagues
To set up a game, click the play button from the home screen. You'll be prompted to select on of the following leagues:
fifa superstars barclays bremier league
2010 FIFA World Cup - Coming soon.
Premier League - Raise your overall rating enough and you'll be able to take on the teams of the Barclays Premier League such as Manchester United and Arsenal. (As you can see at the right, my mighty team defeated Blackpool.)
League Matches - This is what you'll select most often as you complete and advance through the various leagues until you reach the elite Superstar League.
Friendly Matches - This league lets you play with your friends. Select it then select a friend to challenge and play. You can only play each friend once every day. These matches don't cost match credits.
Once a league has been chosen, choose a team you wish to play. It's always a good idea to make sure your overall rating is higher than the opponents if you want to win. Instead of wasting your precious match credits when the odds are against you, either take on an easier team, train, or buy players and come back later. Once you've chosen a team, click play, a match credit is deducted, and the game is underway.
After a match has begun, the player has two options: watch a long series of cutscenes as the game plays out or skip straight to the final score. The way the game works is all based on stats and positioning. Throughout the game players will try to dribble other players, pass the ball, and shoot. FIFA Superstars compares the talent and training of the two interacting players and decides which one will be victorious.
fifa superstars
For example, my striker Hughes is on offense with the ball and encounters defender Maire. Because Hughes has higher stats and training, he was able to successfully leave "Amaud Maire standing!"
fifa superstars goalkeeping
Another example is shooting on goal. Enemy midfielder Toner, was able to break through my defense and get a shot on goal. Goalkeeping also works in a similar fashion to offense play. The match up this time is between my keeper Fejzic and Toner. Depending on the players' talent and training, the shot can either be saved or reach the back of the "potato sack."
fifa superstars goal
This continues until time is up and the final score is announced. Proportionate to the difficulty of the challenge and the outcome of the match, you will receive experience and money.
fifa superstars final score
Calling all Footie Fans
Whether you call it soccer or football, it makes no difference. FIFA Superstars revolves entirely around the sport we love. With the current scarcity of sports games on Facebook, we hoped the soccer simulator would begin to fill the hole in the social network's game lineup.
Despite our excitement, we would love to see more Facebook friend integration (perhaps in the trading feature coming soon). In addition we'd like some interactivity, especially in the matches themselves, allowing players to further influence the outcome. Finally, our last complaint is that we just can't get enough of it! The match credit system makes us wait for days just to get my team out on the pitch for just a few minutes!
However, in the end, beggars can't be choosers, and we're certainly relieved to finally see quality in a genre that has been struggling to produce a hit. Despite the game's relatively slow start, the FIFA World Cup is around the corner, and we're hoping to see FIFA Superstars catch on.
Click here to play FIFA Superstars>
Cafe World Super Stove "disappear?" Here's how to find it
So you've finally finished your Cafe World Super Stove -- now what? Many complain that their stoves disappear when they're completed, but they're actually semi-hidden in the in-game store. To locate your stove, click on the 'Functional' icon at the bottom of the screen (the icon with orange and blue gears).
cafe world functional menu icon
Once you click the gears icon, you will open the list of functional items,and you'll see several rows of stoves. The Cafe World Super Stove is located on the top row, next to last stove. It has the word 'HOT!' next to it and if you have a stove ready to go, it will also have a x1 next to it as well.
cafe world menu
The next step is to place the Super Stove in your cafe. Click on the Super Stove image, hold and drag the stove into your restaurant, and place where desired. Then -- let the cooking commence.
If you want to start building another stove, click on the Super Stove icon (the one with the blue wrench), buy a new frame and start the process all over again. For more information on how you build your own stove, read this guide: Cafe World: How to build your own Super Stove. Better hurry though, the Super Stoves might not be around much longer, and you'll miss your chance for one-click cooking.
How many Super Stoves do you have in your cafe so far?
cafe world functional menu icon
Once you click the gears icon, you will open the list of functional items,and you'll see several rows of stoves. The Cafe World Super Stove is located on the top row, next to last stove. It has the word 'HOT!' next to it and if you have a stove ready to go, it will also have a x1 next to it as well.
cafe world menu
The next step is to place the Super Stove in your cafe. Click on the Super Stove image, hold and drag the stove into your restaurant, and place where desired. Then -- let the cooking commence.
If you want to start building another stove, click on the Super Stove icon (the one with the blue wrench), buy a new frame and start the process all over again. For more information on how you build your own stove, read this guide: Cafe World: How to build your own Super Stove. Better hurry though, the Super Stoves might not be around much longer, and you'll miss your chance for one-click cooking.
How many Super Stoves do you have in your cafe so far?
Chủ Nhật, 12 tháng 2, 2012
YoVille: The Ultimate Guide To Earning More Coins
With all the new items being released by Zynga every week, it is so important to have all the up to date information on making the most coins you can in YoVille. Here is an updated guide for you to follow in order to make that task a lot easier.
If we've missed anything, make sure to post about it in comments.
«Login Daily»
YoVille Daily Login Bonus
Make sure you log into Yoville at least once a day and each day you will get more coins, up to 300 coins a day.
«The Widget Factory»
YoVille Widget Factory
The Widget Factory was the place you once made a majority of your coins. However, sense the release of the new Yoville Jobs, that is no longer the case. The Widget factory is still a good source for making money in Yoville and should be visited as often as possible throughout the day. Currently you need 100 energy to complete your job at the Widget Factory and the payout is 200 to 350 coins depending on the amount of neighbors you currently have.
«Yoville Jobs»
The newest feature added to Yoville are the Yoville jobs! Here is a great article with all the details needed to succeed in this fun new feature in Yoville.
«Coin Runs»
YoVille Coin Runs
At the bottom of your screens, you will see a ladder of your neighbors in Yoville. By mousing over them you are then given choices to visit or gift each friend. This is what we call Coin Runs or "CR"...which some of you might have seen written in messages from friends in the game. Once a day you can visit up to 25 friends and make up to 20 coins each by choosing 1 of the 6 different interactions with your friends avatar... Dance, fight, kiss, tell a joke, leave a message, or send a gift.
«Take Photos»
YoVille Take Photos
In the bottom right side of your screen you will see your chat box...where you type to interact with other players, in this area you will see a camera icon. You are given up to 5 rolls of film once a day to take pictures. You earn up to 20 coins per photo depending on the quality of your photo.
«Maxing (Play Games)»
YoVille Maxing
In Yoville you can ask any of the other players to play a game of tic-tac-toe or rock-paper-scissors with you. Just click another player and ask him/her to play a game with you:
If you win, you'll get 10 coins. If it's a draw, you both get 5 coins. If you lose, you get nothing.
You can earn up to 200 coins per day by playing games. Fastest way to "max out" (= get all the coins possible per day from games) is to join an event made just for playing. Check the events-list and from there the section "games".
Rules:
Tictactoe (TTT) – try to get 3 symbols (X or O) in a row before the other player.
Rock-paper-scissors (RPS) – Choose either rock, paper or scissors, game starts when both players have made their choice. Paper wins rock, rock wins scissors, scissors wins paper. At least 2 rounds are played.
«Speedway»
YoVille Speedway Race
On bottom right corner of the map there is a speedway-arena.
Here you can choose from 3 options: Race, practice or bet.
By racing against your friends, you will earn 10 coins by winning a race against your friends avatars. It's possible to earn up to 200 coins per day this way. Unfortunately racing is connected to the games though (ttt and rps), so if you have already maxed out for the day with them, the wins in races won't give you any coins. They will be counted on the badgelist still.
- You race by clicking and holding the left mouse button. But don't hold too long or you will flip over, and also remember to watch those oil-slicks! Get a boost from the arrows on your lane.
By betting, only the sky is a limit or you can lose it all. Place a bet between 10-500 coins and choose from 3 friends which one you believe will win.
«Casino»
If you are feeling lucky...make your way over to the Yoville Casino! You have really good odds of winning considering all it takes to break even is 1 cherry!!! The payout can be as high as your luck will allow.
«Yoville Fishing»
YoVille Fishing
Yoville has a really fun fishing game that I still enjoy just playing because its a challenge!! You buy some bait and pick 3 friends you want to fish against...then try and catch the heaviest amount of fish before the 2 1/2 minutes is up. You win 10 coins a game and can win up to 200 coins a day playing this game.
«Buying and Trading»
YoVille Buying and TradingYou can buy and sell items with other YoVillians, this is called "trading". Step by step instructions how to trade, can be found in this topic:
http://yvlounge.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=1891&sid=8bf0f1b2abd54517ee34edeb570921b3
You can sell the items you don't need anymore, you can make art on whiteboard and sell them or you can invest in something, for example if you have yocash, you can buy yocash-items and sell them to other players for coins (you can't trade yocash) or buy some seasonal or collectible items and wait until they are out of store and starting to raise price. This is how many people in Yoville make their fortune.
You can also sell the items back to Yoville. That happens from top boxes:
Click "view inventory", browse the items in there and once you've found what you want to sell, click it and it will show how much you will get from it, you can choose either "sell" or "close". When you sell back to Yoville, you get approximately 1/3 of the store-value back. YoCash-items, starter-items, houses, teleport-doors and the things you've bought from yoville.com can't be sold back to Yoville, only "removed" from inventory which won't give you any coins.
«Mystery Gifts»
YoVille Mystery Gifts
These items are gifted to you by your neighbors and they should be returned. The amount of coins received in them varies but there is a chance at rare items in some and other have items needed to complete the Yoville collections.
Click the gifts to send your friends a free mystery gift.
--------
Hope this guide helps and thanks to SpiraldaWYID for doing the original post it helped in organizing this new one!!
If we've missed anything, make sure to post about it in comments.
«Login Daily»
YoVille Daily Login Bonus
Make sure you log into Yoville at least once a day and each day you will get more coins, up to 300 coins a day.
«The Widget Factory»
YoVille Widget Factory
The Widget Factory was the place you once made a majority of your coins. However, sense the release of the new Yoville Jobs, that is no longer the case. The Widget factory is still a good source for making money in Yoville and should be visited as often as possible throughout the day. Currently you need 100 energy to complete your job at the Widget Factory and the payout is 200 to 350 coins depending on the amount of neighbors you currently have.
«Yoville Jobs»
The newest feature added to Yoville are the Yoville jobs! Here is a great article with all the details needed to succeed in this fun new feature in Yoville.
«Coin Runs»
YoVille Coin Runs
At the bottom of your screens, you will see a ladder of your neighbors in Yoville. By mousing over them you are then given choices to visit or gift each friend. This is what we call Coin Runs or "CR"...which some of you might have seen written in messages from friends in the game. Once a day you can visit up to 25 friends and make up to 20 coins each by choosing 1 of the 6 different interactions with your friends avatar... Dance, fight, kiss, tell a joke, leave a message, or send a gift.
«Take Photos»
YoVille Take Photos
In the bottom right side of your screen you will see your chat box...where you type to interact with other players, in this area you will see a camera icon. You are given up to 5 rolls of film once a day to take pictures. You earn up to 20 coins per photo depending on the quality of your photo.
«Maxing (Play Games)»
YoVille Maxing
In Yoville you can ask any of the other players to play a game of tic-tac-toe or rock-paper-scissors with you. Just click another player and ask him/her to play a game with you:
If you win, you'll get 10 coins. If it's a draw, you both get 5 coins. If you lose, you get nothing.
You can earn up to 200 coins per day by playing games. Fastest way to "max out" (= get all the coins possible per day from games) is to join an event made just for playing. Check the events-list and from there the section "games".
Rules:
Tictactoe (TTT) – try to get 3 symbols (X or O) in a row before the other player.
Rock-paper-scissors (RPS) – Choose either rock, paper or scissors, game starts when both players have made their choice. Paper wins rock, rock wins scissors, scissors wins paper. At least 2 rounds are played.
«Speedway»
YoVille Speedway Race
On bottom right corner of the map there is a speedway-arena.
Here you can choose from 3 options: Race, practice or bet.
By racing against your friends, you will earn 10 coins by winning a race against your friends avatars. It's possible to earn up to 200 coins per day this way. Unfortunately racing is connected to the games though (ttt and rps), so if you have already maxed out for the day with them, the wins in races won't give you any coins. They will be counted on the badgelist still.
- You race by clicking and holding the left mouse button. But don't hold too long or you will flip over, and also remember to watch those oil-slicks! Get a boost from the arrows on your lane.
By betting, only the sky is a limit or you can lose it all. Place a bet between 10-500 coins and choose from 3 friends which one you believe will win.
«Casino»
If you are feeling lucky...make your way over to the Yoville Casino! You have really good odds of winning considering all it takes to break even is 1 cherry!!! The payout can be as high as your luck will allow.
«Yoville Fishing»
YoVille Fishing
Yoville has a really fun fishing game that I still enjoy just playing because its a challenge!! You buy some bait and pick 3 friends you want to fish against...then try and catch the heaviest amount of fish before the 2 1/2 minutes is up. You win 10 coins a game and can win up to 200 coins a day playing this game.
«Buying and Trading»
YoVille Buying and TradingYou can buy and sell items with other YoVillians, this is called "trading". Step by step instructions how to trade, can be found in this topic:
http://yvlounge.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=1891&sid=8bf0f1b2abd54517ee34edeb570921b3
You can sell the items you don't need anymore, you can make art on whiteboard and sell them or you can invest in something, for example if you have yocash, you can buy yocash-items and sell them to other players for coins (you can't trade yocash) or buy some seasonal or collectible items and wait until they are out of store and starting to raise price. This is how many people in Yoville make their fortune.
You can also sell the items back to Yoville. That happens from top boxes:
Click "view inventory", browse the items in there and once you've found what you want to sell, click it and it will show how much you will get from it, you can choose either "sell" or "close". When you sell back to Yoville, you get approximately 1/3 of the store-value back. YoCash-items, starter-items, houses, teleport-doors and the things you've bought from yoville.com can't be sold back to Yoville, only "removed" from inventory which won't give you any coins.
«Mystery Gifts»
YoVille Mystery Gifts
These items are gifted to you by your neighbors and they should be returned. The amount of coins received in them varies but there is a chance at rare items in some and other have items needed to complete the Yoville collections.
Click the gifts to send your friends a free mystery gift.
--------
Hope this guide helps and thanks to SpiraldaWYID for doing the original post it helped in organizing this new one!!
FarmVille: Adobe Flash Plugin Loading Error and Solution
Official FarmVille Forum Community Manger Grimwell addressed the issue many farmers are experiencing today when trying to load FarmVille, a gray error screen. It seems this issue has to do with Adobe Flash Player crashing in Mozilla Firefox.
FarmVille Adoble Flash Plugin Error
We know a number of folks are experiencing a gray screen error when trying to play FarmVille and wanted to share some information that may help you resolve it.
The Mozilla support website has more details about the crash issue for Adobe Flash in FF and steps you can follow to resolve the issue and get back to your farms!
Source: Official FarmvVille Forum
Mozilla has assessed the flash player problem, providing this explanation:
"By default, if Flash is not responsive for 10 seconds, Firefox will terminate it and display The Adobe Flash plugin has crashed. However, some Flash-based games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars can take more time than to load, unnecessarily triggering this hang protection.
Source: Mozilla Support
You can, per usual, try updating your flash player. This plugin may be used to verify you have the most recent version. If that fix is an unsuccessful, Mozilla provided additional solutions here.
Update: Another source for solutions is Zynga, you can view their suggestions here.
Have you been having difficulties loading your farm? If so, did the solutions provided resolve the issues?
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
FarmVille Adoble Flash Plugin Error
We know a number of folks are experiencing a gray screen error when trying to play FarmVille and wanted to share some information that may help you resolve it.
The Mozilla support website has more details about the crash issue for Adobe Flash in FF and steps you can follow to resolve the issue and get back to your farms!
Source: Official FarmvVille Forum
Mozilla has assessed the flash player problem, providing this explanation:
"By default, if Flash is not responsive for 10 seconds, Firefox will terminate it and display The Adobe Flash plugin has crashed. However, some Flash-based games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars can take more time than to load, unnecessarily triggering this hang protection.
Source: Mozilla Support
You can, per usual, try updating your flash player. This plugin may be used to verify you have the most recent version. If that fix is an unsuccessful, Mozilla provided additional solutions here.
Update: Another source for solutions is Zynga, you can view their suggestions here.
Have you been having difficulties loading your farm? If so, did the solutions provided resolve the issues?
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
FarmVille Apple Application: In Review
Mobile farming was once a dream, made true this past week. The FarmVille App that debuted (for iPhone, iPod touch) was announced at the 2010 WWDC by Zynga Founder and CEO, Mark Pincus, along with the CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs. Little information was given at the time other than talk of exclusive items for Apple device users and a potential release date near the one-year birthday of FarmVille.
Farming is not exactly the same while using the App, most noticeably, there are no avatars. This may help the application run at a quicker pace, among other things. There is also ever-so-handy option to have push notifications for harvest time and free gifts.
As with playing FarmVille on a computer, you can gift neighbors, buy items from the market, decorate, have lost animals wander onto your farm, and share bonuses via Facebook. When tapping on or choosing an item you have three options: put in storage, sell, and move. Selling or storing items can be done through simple clicks; moving an item can be done by dragging and dropping (players have reported lag and difficulty when moving items).
All exclusive items -- Snow Leopard, Rainbow Apple Tree, and White Apple Tree -- are available for coins or as a gift, which is quite a treat along with the free download of the application. A Free Fuel Giveaway is now available, giving 1/5 of a tank each day for logging on the App.
There is also an option for Apple mobile device users to purchase $FV through the iTunes store. The exchange rate of real money to $FV is the same although these users now have the option to purchase FarmVille Cash through iTunes, or to buy/use iTunes gift cards instead of purchasing through Zynga or Facebook Credits.
The most noticeable difference of the application is how one plows, plants, and harvest. The feature that has true potential for topping gameplay on a computer is that one can click and drag across plots to quickly plow, plant, and harvest (if using vehicles). As shown during the announcement demonstration, check out the video here.
Farming may be twice as fast with this major boost but of course the App has some major draw backs.
As usual (with new features and functions) there are some bugs in the FarmVille App; many users have reported error messages stating "There seems to be an issue loading your farm" while others who are able to load the app are reporting that it crashes frequently. The fact that FarmVille Co-ops, Collections, Farmer's Market, and Storage Expansion are not available via mobile device, making them exclusive to computer game play, is a major drawback.
Hopefully Zynga will be updating the app soon, so farmers have more well-rounded and smoother experience.
Farming on an Apple device is not cheap with the iPod Touch starting at $199 USD and the iPhone4 at $199 USD. The iPhone 3gs has been reduced to $99 becoming the most affordable option now.
If you have used the app, what are your thoughts? If not, will you go out of your way to gain access to it?
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
Farming is not exactly the same while using the App, most noticeably, there are no avatars. This may help the application run at a quicker pace, among other things. There is also ever-so-handy option to have push notifications for harvest time and free gifts.
As with playing FarmVille on a computer, you can gift neighbors, buy items from the market, decorate, have lost animals wander onto your farm, and share bonuses via Facebook. When tapping on or choosing an item you have three options: put in storage, sell, and move. Selling or storing items can be done through simple clicks; moving an item can be done by dragging and dropping (players have reported lag and difficulty when moving items).
All exclusive items -- Snow Leopard, Rainbow Apple Tree, and White Apple Tree -- are available for coins or as a gift, which is quite a treat along with the free download of the application. A Free Fuel Giveaway is now available, giving 1/5 of a tank each day for logging on the App.
There is also an option for Apple mobile device users to purchase $FV through the iTunes store. The exchange rate of real money to $FV is the same although these users now have the option to purchase FarmVille Cash through iTunes, or to buy/use iTunes gift cards instead of purchasing through Zynga or Facebook Credits.
The most noticeable difference of the application is how one plows, plants, and harvest. The feature that has true potential for topping gameplay on a computer is that one can click and drag across plots to quickly plow, plant, and harvest (if using vehicles). As shown during the announcement demonstration, check out the video here.
Farming may be twice as fast with this major boost but of course the App has some major draw backs.
As usual (with new features and functions) there are some bugs in the FarmVille App; many users have reported error messages stating "There seems to be an issue loading your farm" while others who are able to load the app are reporting that it crashes frequently. The fact that FarmVille Co-ops, Collections, Farmer's Market, and Storage Expansion are not available via mobile device, making them exclusive to computer game play, is a major drawback.
Hopefully Zynga will be updating the app soon, so farmers have more well-rounded and smoother experience.
Farming on an Apple device is not cheap with the iPod Touch starting at $199 USD and the iPhone4 at $199 USD. The iPhone 3gs has been reduced to $99 becoming the most affordable option now.
If you have used the app, what are your thoughts? If not, will you go out of your way to gain access to it?
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
FarmVille Daikon crop now available in the Market
As part FarmVille's ongoing Japanese theme, a new Daikon crop has been introduced into the Market. The limited edition crop will be around for 11 days. Other stats for the Daikon crops are as follows:
Cost: 65 Coins
Sell for: 133 Coins
Harvest in: 8 Hours
XP Gained: 1 XP
Like other limited edition crops, there is no mastery available for Daikon crop, which is always a bit of a bummer. Would be great if Zynga would make that change so overachievers could get mastery for crops that are only around for a short amount of time. One can dream...
If you have never heard of a Daikon, it's a large, white radish (it kinda looks like a giant white carrot), and it tastes milder than red radishes we eat in the US. Fun fact about Daikon radish from Wikipedia: "Despite being known most commonly by its Japanese name, it did not originate in Japan, but rather in continental Asia."
Cost: 65 Coins
Sell for: 133 Coins
Harvest in: 8 Hours
XP Gained: 1 XP
Like other limited edition crops, there is no mastery available for Daikon crop, which is always a bit of a bummer. Would be great if Zynga would make that change so overachievers could get mastery for crops that are only around for a short amount of time. One can dream...
If you have never heard of a Daikon, it's a large, white radish (it kinda looks like a giant white carrot), and it tastes milder than red radishes we eat in the US. Fun fact about Daikon radish from Wikipedia: "Despite being known most commonly by its Japanese name, it did not originate in Japan, but rather in continental Asia."
FarmVille: More Japanese Limited Edition Garden Decorations
Today, Monday the 28th of June, new limited edition Japanese Garden themed decor was released. The new decoration can be purchased for both $FV and coins for the next 11 days.
FarmVille Japanese Garden
Available for coins:
Tiny Dragon 450 Xp – 45,000 coins
Sand & Stone 180 Xp- 18,000 coins
Yellow Dome 45 Xp – 4,500 coins
Available for $FV:
Moss Rock 20 Xp – 2$FV
Momiji Tree (Decor) 40 Xp – 4$FV
High Bridge Pond 1050 Xp – 42$FV
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
FarmVille Japanese Garden
Available for coins:
Tiny Dragon 450 Xp – 45,000 coins
Sand & Stone 180 Xp- 18,000 coins
Yellow Dome 45 Xp – 4,500 coins
Available for $FV:
Moss Rock 20 Xp – 2$FV
Momiji Tree (Decor) 40 Xp – 4$FV
High Bridge Pond 1050 Xp – 42$FV
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.
Thứ Năm, 9 tháng 2, 2012
Facebook stats glitch highlights need for independent stat reporting
Cafe World had been sitting comfortably at around 20 million monthly users for the entire month of July. So it was a bit of a surprise when Facebook's public statistics (as reported by AppData) showed the game's user base shooting up 75% over a period of three days, to a high of over 35 million monthly players at the end of the month. The change wasn't limited to Cafe World either -- dozens of games saw stratospheric increases in the same period.
Facebook eventually confirmed to Inside Social Games that the sudden increases were due to a bug in their reporting. But this temporary problem highlights the risk of trusting Facebook to report on the success of its own games without independent verification.
Facebook gaming stats aren't just a fun way to monitor the popularity of your favorite social games. For the companies that make the games, these stats provide an important public barometer of their success. As Gamezebo's Joel Brodie points out, "Game companies are trying to go public, sell out, and raise money based on these numbers. Many of the great financial minds on Wall Street and Sand Hill Road who are paid big bucks to analyze these numbers take them for face value."
But it's hard to rely on those numbers if they're going to be constantly buffeted by bugs and changes in methodology. Furthermore, it's a bit strange that we trust Facebook to self-report these important statistics when it's clearly in their self-interest to inflate the numbers. It's like letting NBC report how many people watched The Office last week, instead of trusting ratings agencies like Nielsen with that information."
Brodie suggests any "attempt by Facebook to change how game traffic is measured on their network without fixing the actual problem ... could grow into their very own private Antennagate." But that presumes we'd be able to notice and report on any such change. With Facebook in total control of the statistics, we're forced to take their statistics at face value. Absent some patently ridiculous trends (like those shown by this latest bug) Facebook could gently nudge their gaming numbers up and no one would be the wiser.
The solution, as I see it, is some sort of independent verification for these Facebook-reported numbers. I don't mean Facebook should open up their private database to some auditor. I simply mean some sort of third party company should estimate the popularity of individual Facebook games independently, either through surveys or through user tracking software. These estimates would theoretically be less precise than Facebook's own numbers (if Facebook is being truthful, that is) but they'd at least provide a point of comparison to establish trust in Facebook's publicly reported numbers.
There are plenty of companies well-positioned to take this important market role. Nielsen already conducts surveys on internet usage, and companies like Alexa already track usage of thousands of web users through their toolbar. It's time one of these companies stepped up and gave us the third-party statistics we need.
Facebook eventually confirmed to Inside Social Games that the sudden increases were due to a bug in their reporting. But this temporary problem highlights the risk of trusting Facebook to report on the success of its own games without independent verification.
Facebook gaming stats aren't just a fun way to monitor the popularity of your favorite social games. For the companies that make the games, these stats provide an important public barometer of their success. As Gamezebo's Joel Brodie points out, "Game companies are trying to go public, sell out, and raise money based on these numbers. Many of the great financial minds on Wall Street and Sand Hill Road who are paid big bucks to analyze these numbers take them for face value."
But it's hard to rely on those numbers if they're going to be constantly buffeted by bugs and changes in methodology. Furthermore, it's a bit strange that we trust Facebook to self-report these important statistics when it's clearly in their self-interest to inflate the numbers. It's like letting NBC report how many people watched The Office last week, instead of trusting ratings agencies like Nielsen with that information."
Brodie suggests any "attempt by Facebook to change how game traffic is measured on their network without fixing the actual problem ... could grow into their very own private Antennagate." But that presumes we'd be able to notice and report on any such change. With Facebook in total control of the statistics, we're forced to take their statistics at face value. Absent some patently ridiculous trends (like those shown by this latest bug) Facebook could gently nudge their gaming numbers up and no one would be the wiser.
The solution, as I see it, is some sort of independent verification for these Facebook-reported numbers. I don't mean Facebook should open up their private database to some auditor. I simply mean some sort of third party company should estimate the popularity of individual Facebook games independently, either through surveys or through user tracking software. These estimates would theoretically be less precise than Facebook's own numbers (if Facebook is being truthful, that is) but they'd at least provide a point of comparison to establish trust in Facebook's publicly reported numbers.
There are plenty of companies well-positioned to take this important market role. Nielsen already conducts surveys on internet usage, and companies like Alexa already track usage of thousands of web users through their toolbar. It's time one of these companies stepped up and gave us the third-party statistics we need.
YoVille: Moroccan Hair added to the Salon
YoVille Female Moroccan Hair
The YoVille Salon was updated with new permanent hairstyles. These hairstyles are a little bit expensive but will not expire like the regular ones. Get the black, blond and red hair ( both male and female) for 18 YoCash and the brown hair for 20,000 coins.
YoVille Male Moroccan Hair
This is supposed to be the last Moroccan update. Pics were gathered by Angie.
This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.
The YoVille Salon was updated with new permanent hairstyles. These hairstyles are a little bit expensive but will not expire like the regular ones. Get the black, blond and red hair ( both male and female) for 18 YoCash and the brown hair for 20,000 coins.
YoVille Male Moroccan Hair
This is supposed to be the last Moroccan update. Pics were gathered by Angie.
This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.
YoVille: Get the new Turtle Balloon for free
YoVille Turtle Balloon
A new pet is arriving to YoVille and a new balloon will be added, too. This green turtle balloon is yours for free! You will have to post a message on your Facebook Feed and 10 of your friends must click on it. After that, you will be able to find the balloon under accessories when you customize your avatar.
YoVille previously offered its players a blue balloon that got many positive reviews.
This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.
A new pet is arriving to YoVille and a new balloon will be added, too. This green turtle balloon is yours for free! You will have to post a message on your Facebook Feed and 10 of your friends must click on it. After that, you will be able to find the balloon under accessories when you customize your avatar.
YoVille previously offered its players a blue balloon that got many positive reviews.
This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.
Quote of the Moment: In the name of the progress bar
"Humans love progress bars, if you see a progress bar, you want to complete it."
-SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch summarizes the company's game design philosophy (and likely that of many other companies) at last week's Social Currency CrunchUp
Source
-SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch summarizes the company's game design philosophy (and likely that of many other companies) at last week's Social Currency CrunchUp
Source
FarmVille beehive glitch temporarily fixed, bees staying put for now
A few farmers have noticed that if you don't tend to your beehives on a regular basis, you'll be penalized by losing bees. However, a glitch this week sent bees flying even if hives were tended as required, which set farmers abuzz across the internet. Looks like the powers that be at FarmVille took note and bees will be staying put in the hives until the problem is permanently fixed. A notification located at the top of the FarmVille game screen also says that they're working on returning the bees that were lost.
farmville bees sticking around for now
Did you lose bees from your hive? If so, did you get 'em back yet?
farmville bees sticking around for now
Did you lose bees from your hive? If so, did you get 'em back yet?
Thứ Ba, 7 tháng 2, 2012
YoVille is giving away two Gold Mystery Boxes this week only
As Platinum Ninja told us before, September marks YoVille's Player Appreciation Month. And to kick off the festivities, Zynga will be randomly giving away Gold Mystery Boxes twice this week, but they're not telling when.
You'll have to log in to the game daily (a chore, we know) to find out exactly when these mysterious goodies will be given away. Obviously, the contents of the boxes are a mystery, but expect lots of coins and YoCash to fill those wallets again after the Labor Day Sale, according to the YoVille blog.
When looking at the success of Zynga's other social games, it's a surprise we haven't seen similar events in FarmVille, Mafia Wars or FrontierVille. Here's to hoping this is the start of a new trend for Zynga!
You'll have to log in to the game daily (a chore, we know) to find out exactly when these mysterious goodies will be given away. Obviously, the contents of the boxes are a mystery, but expect lots of coins and YoCash to fill those wallets again after the Labor Day Sale, according to the YoVille blog.
When looking at the success of Zynga's other social games, it's a surprise we haven't seen similar events in FarmVille, Mafia Wars or FrontierVille. Here's to hoping this is the start of a new trend for Zynga!
Robot Unicorn Attack: The most magical game of all time lands on Facebook
It's common knowledge that nothing inspires love and harmony like exploding robot unicorns and shimmering rainbows -- and Robot Unicorn Attack has both in spades. The online game first launched on AdultSwim.com in February 2010 and got one million plays in its first week. That was followed by an equally popular iPhone version in June, and, now, it has finally brought the magic to Facebook.
The main thing this game has going for it is the simple gameplay. It only requires two controls -- the jump and dash buttons -- which are the keyboard keys 'Z' and 'X', respectively. These buttons control a shiny unicorn flying through the sky like a shooting star, and you're responsible for piloting this pretty pony to safety, avoiding purple cliffsides and dashing your way through stars of white steel. All that is set to the game's hypnotic soundtrack, which features the 1994 hit "Always" by the UK band Erasure.
Robot Unicorn Attack in action
The Facebook version comes with a leaderboard, which gets reset weekly (something that Bejeweled Blitz fans are pretty familiar with). That means no more clicking on that "Post to Facebook" option to show the world how many hours of your life you've wasted. All your stats and those of your friends can be glimpse in one easy location.
Play Robot Unicorn Attack on Facebook >
The main thing this game has going for it is the simple gameplay. It only requires two controls -- the jump and dash buttons -- which are the keyboard keys 'Z' and 'X', respectively. These buttons control a shiny unicorn flying through the sky like a shooting star, and you're responsible for piloting this pretty pony to safety, avoiding purple cliffsides and dashing your way through stars of white steel. All that is set to the game's hypnotic soundtrack, which features the 1994 hit "Always" by the UK band Erasure.
Robot Unicorn Attack in action
The Facebook version comes with a leaderboard, which gets reset weekly (something that Bejeweled Blitz fans are pretty familiar with). That means no more clicking on that "Post to Facebook" option to show the world how many hours of your life you've wasted. All your stats and those of your friends can be glimpse in one easy location.
Play Robot Unicorn Attack on Facebook >
Quote of the Moment: End of the Golden Era
"There's going to be a lot of [game cloning]. The truth is that there's that in every industry. I mean, MMOs, there's no shortage of terrible World of WarCraft clones that didn't really work out, and you'll see the same thing I think here. A handful will survive, a bunch will fail. You're definitely in the stage right now in social games where there's a lot of bandwagon jumping, where everyone sees moneymoneymoney and suddenly all these new companies appear... It happened before in mobile, it happened before in casual – in the past it's tended to signal the beginning of the end.
"Not necessarily of the genre, but of the sort of golden era, where everything was a fresh blue ocean and all that stuff. It's getting into the era where it'll be a lot more hard-fought. It'll be tough. People will make money there, but there'll be a lot of competition and then margins will shrink and all that sort of stuff. That's my thought on where we're heading with social stuff. Facebook can't go that much faster, they're only going to tighten up their restrictions. Sooner or later they will raise their rates, do other things like that, margins will just get increasingly tough.
"You're already sort of seeing that, a lot of the viral growth of Facebook games is now shut down, they have to do it the old fashioned way, which is by buying ads or by having something that people are actually interested in playing and actually want to want to tell their friends about. From our point of view, we can live with that. That's an okay solution for us. So I'm fairly optimistic about the future – there's enough crazy stuff going on that you never know what's going to happen. I know Google are doing some sort of social network..."
-Popcap Chief Creative Officer Jason Kapalka talks to GamesIndustry.biz about what he sees as a fundamental shift in the social gaming market of late.
"Not necessarily of the genre, but of the sort of golden era, where everything was a fresh blue ocean and all that stuff. It's getting into the era where it'll be a lot more hard-fought. It'll be tough. People will make money there, but there'll be a lot of competition and then margins will shrink and all that sort of stuff. That's my thought on where we're heading with social stuff. Facebook can't go that much faster, they're only going to tighten up their restrictions. Sooner or later they will raise their rates, do other things like that, margins will just get increasingly tough.
"You're already sort of seeing that, a lot of the viral growth of Facebook games is now shut down, they have to do it the old fashioned way, which is by buying ads or by having something that people are actually interested in playing and actually want to want to tell their friends about. From our point of view, we can live with that. That's an okay solution for us. So I'm fairly optimistic about the future – there's enough crazy stuff going on that you never know what's going to happen. I know Google are doing some sort of social network..."
-Popcap Chief Creative Officer Jason Kapalka talks to GamesIndustry.biz about what he sees as a fundamental shift in the social gaming market of late.
Happy Pets: There's a new pet in town this week, but you have to guess
To add to your already massive collection of dogs, cats, birds and dinosaurs, Crowdstar is releasing yet another pet this week in Happy Pets. However, as of right now, the pet is a total mystery. Luckily for us, they've posted a silhouette of the pet in question on their Happy Aquarium page for you to drool over.
The only details we know so far about the mystery pet is that it will be available in eight colors. Fortunately, we can assume that if this mystery pet is coming in eight colors it will not be part of the Random Pets family. We all know how well those blow over.
In the meantime, let's guess what the pet might be. I was thinking a baby eagle, or maybe an owl? But what about that comb on its head (wink, wink)?
The only details we know so far about the mystery pet is that it will be available in eight colors. Fortunately, we can assume that if this mystery pet is coming in eight colors it will not be part of the Random Pets family. We all know how well those blow over.
In the meantime, let's guess what the pet might be. I was thinking a baby eagle, or maybe an owl? But what about that comb on its head (wink, wink)?
Tonight's Vampire Wars developer chat will answer your burning questions
If you have nagging questions concerning your favorite fang-filled Facebook game, Vampire Wars, then hang around Zynga's Vampire Wars forum today around 4 PM PDT (that's 7 PM EST for you East Coasters). Zynga's Vlad the Emailer (and hopefully more of the development team) will be answering your burning questions for one hour in a developer's chat.
The team is taking questions right now in preparation for the discussion, so head on over now to get your words in if you won't be able to make it. The forums are heating up with questions already concerning time limits on gameplay and their effect on balance, perceived flaws in the game's combat system and what the team is doing for new players.
All that's well and good, but we just want to know is when will Blade be making an appearance (this is a war, you know). Stay tuned for when we discuss the results of the live developer chat tomorrow.
The team is taking questions right now in preparation for the discussion, so head on over now to get your words in if you won't be able to make it. The forums are heating up with questions already concerning time limits on gameplay and their effect on balance, perceived flaws in the game's combat system and what the team is doing for new players.
All that's well and good, but we just want to know is when will Blade be making an appearance (this is a war, you know). Stay tuned for when we discuss the results of the live developer chat tomorrow.
Thứ Bảy, 4 tháng 2, 2012
Play Happy Pets on October 4 and get a Giant Blue Hamster
Happy Pets is having a large giveaway, and all you need to do in order to participate is play the game on October 4th. Everyone who logs into Happy Pets between 12 and 2pm Pacific Daylight Time that day will get a free Giant Blue Hamster. Unfortunately, this is right smack in the middle of the day, so those of you who will be at work will be sorely disappointed.
It's clear that Crowdstar is trying to do some load testing to see how many players they can support at one time. Either that, or they are really trying to boost their activity numbers for that day. We don't really care, so long as we benefit with free things!
Will you be logging in to Happy Pets on October 4th?
[via Happy Pets Giant Blue Hamster Giveaway event page]
It's clear that Crowdstar is trying to do some load testing to see how many players they can support at one time. Either that, or they are really trying to boost their activity numbers for that day. We don't really care, so long as we benefit with free things!
Will you be logging in to Happy Pets on October 4th?
[via Happy Pets Giant Blue Hamster Giveaway event page]
Restaurant City holds a Boo-Licious Cook-Off Contest
Want to win 500 Playfish Cash and show your Halloween spooky spirit at the same time? Restaurant City is holding a Boo-Licious Cook-Off contest that encourages you to design an "ultimate Halloween themed recipe" for the game. Two lucky winners will earn 500 Playfish Cash and have their recipe show up in the game! Neat isn't it?
All you need to do, is draw or cook and take a photo of your spooky Halloween recipe. It can be a drink, appetizer, main dish, or dessert - it doesn't matter as long as it's Halloween themed. There are two categories, one for Drink and one for Food. Your recipe has to use ingredients that are already in the game, and then you have to fill out the entry form and post them in the Halloween contest forum.
You only have until Sunday, October 10th to submit your recipe so that they have time to choose winners and then make the recipe show up in the game. 500 Playfish Cash is a lot of money, so you should probably start brainstorming for creative ways to use the Restaurant City ingredients to make fun and unique Halloween treats!
All you need to do, is draw or cook and take a photo of your spooky Halloween recipe. It can be a drink, appetizer, main dish, or dessert - it doesn't matter as long as it's Halloween themed. There are two categories, one for Drink and one for Food. Your recipe has to use ingredients that are already in the game, and then you have to fill out the entry form and post them in the Halloween contest forum.
You only have until Sunday, October 10th to submit your recipe so that they have time to choose winners and then make the recipe show up in the game. 500 Playfish Cash is a lot of money, so you should probably start brainstorming for creative ways to use the Restaurant City ingredients to make fun and unique Halloween treats!
FishVille: Galapagos items have arrived
We told you that this theme was coming, and now the first items in the new Galapagos theme in FishVille have arrived in the FishVille store. Nine new items are available, and we're sure this is just the beginning of another massive fishy theme in this popular aquarium title. Here is the full list of available items:
Sea Lion - 15 Sand Dollars, 6.1 days left
HMS Beagle - Buildable, 2 Sand Dollars
Bubbling Lava - 9 Sand Dolars
Igneous Rocks - 25,000 coins
Butterfly Jar - 30,000 coins
Lava Cactus - 8 Sand Dollars
Passion Flower - 4 Sand Dollars
We're not sure that the Lava Cactus is worth 8 Sand Dollars, but the rest of these items are pretty nifty. The HMS Beagle is buildable, but instead of collecting materials through wall postings, you have to send requests to your friends to ask for help. This means, of course, that it will take longer to build the item, so it's a bit unfair that you have to pay Sand Dollars to even get started. It looks like it will be a big gorgeous ship however, so it might be worth it!
What items do you think we'll see in the Galapagos theme?
Sea Lion - 15 Sand Dollars, 6.1 days left
HMS Beagle - Buildable, 2 Sand Dollars
Bubbling Lava - 9 Sand Dolars
Igneous Rocks - 25,000 coins
Butterfly Jar - 30,000 coins
Lava Cactus - 8 Sand Dollars
Passion Flower - 4 Sand Dollars
We're not sure that the Lava Cactus is worth 8 Sand Dollars, but the rest of these items are pretty nifty. The HMS Beagle is buildable, but instead of collecting materials through wall postings, you have to send requests to your friends to ask for help. This means, of course, that it will take longer to build the item, so it's a bit unfair that you have to pay Sand Dollars to even get started. It looks like it will be a big gorgeous ship however, so it might be worth it!
What items do you think we'll see in the Galapagos theme?
Expensive hot-dog shaped Dachshund puppy wanders into FarmVille
FarmVille dachshund
Tonight's update in FarmVille brought us a special German companion for the Oktoberfest event - a precious little Dachshund puppy. This puppy comes in three different colors, black, red, and cream, and comes with two weeks of free kibble like most Farm Cash dogs. At a whopping 65 Farm Cash, this little wiener dog might be the most expensive pet we have seen yet. It's only available for the duration of the Oktoberfest theme, which is about 12 days as of this writing.
This brings the total number of dog breeds to 7, and we think this is the cutest one out of the bunch. Will you be shelling out the cash for this expensive premium pooch?
Tonight's update in FarmVille brought us a special German companion for the Oktoberfest event - a precious little Dachshund puppy. This puppy comes in three different colors, black, red, and cream, and comes with two weeks of free kibble like most Farm Cash dogs. At a whopping 65 Farm Cash, this little wiener dog might be the most expensive pet we have seen yet. It's only available for the duration of the Oktoberfest theme, which is about 12 days as of this writing.
This brings the total number of dog breeds to 7, and we think this is the cutest one out of the bunch. Will you be shelling out the cash for this expensive premium pooch?
Oktoberfest continues in FarmVille with more limited items
Oktoberfest is marching on in FarmVille, and tonight we're seeing two new buildings and four new decorations. These items are all available for another 12 days, and four of them are for Farm Cash and three are for coins. Some of these pieces are really quite unique, unlike anything we have seen in FarmVille. This means that they might not fit in with your overall cohesive vision for your farm. Without further ado, here are the new items:
Ruins - 200,000 coins
Lamp Post - 5,500 coins
Castle Fence - 5,000 coins
Swan Lake - 30 Farm Cash
Falcon - 18 Farm Cash
German Castle - 50 Farm Cash
Monopteros - 30 Farm Cash
The Falcon is not an animal in that it gives out coins for harvesting it. It is simply a decorative item. What do you think of these new Oktoberfest items? Do any of them appeal to you? Let us know in the comments!
Ruins - 200,000 coins
Lamp Post - 5,500 coins
Castle Fence - 5,000 coins
Swan Lake - 30 Farm Cash
Falcon - 18 Farm Cash
German Castle - 50 Farm Cash
Monopteros - 30 Farm Cash
The Falcon is not an animal in that it gives out coins for harvesting it. It is simply a decorative item. What do you think of these new Oktoberfest items? Do any of them appeal to you? Let us know in the comments!
Zynga was responsible for 12% of Facebook's revenue in 2011
While it's no secret that Zynga pulls in quite a bit of cash for Facebook, we now know exactly what those figures look like for the year 2011. As reported by VentureBeat, Facebook's IPO filing has revealed that Zynga accounted for 12% of the company's revenue in 2011, or $445 million.
That number comes from both the 30% transaction fee Facebook takes for all Facebook Credit purchases, and also from the direct purchase of advertising on the site by Zynga itself. According to the filing, this number is up from both 2010 and 2009, where Zynga accounted for 10% and 9% of Facebook's total revenue, respectively.
Where Facebook is dependent on Zynga for profits, so too is Zynga dependent on Facebook for its established user base and therefore possibilities for viral growth. However, with the continued development of Zynga Direct (the company's attempt at an "instant social" platform outside of Facebook), we could finally see the Big Z pull farther away from the social network, even to the point of freedom. Will we ever get to that point, where we can play Zynga's games without Facebook? Only time will tell.
That number comes from both the 30% transaction fee Facebook takes for all Facebook Credit purchases, and also from the direct purchase of advertising on the site by Zynga itself. According to the filing, this number is up from both 2010 and 2009, where Zynga accounted for 10% and 9% of Facebook's total revenue, respectively.
Where Facebook is dependent on Zynga for profits, so too is Zynga dependent on Facebook for its established user base and therefore possibilities for viral growth. However, with the continued development of Zynga Direct (the company's attempt at an "instant social" platform outside of Facebook), we could finally see the Big Z pull farther away from the social network, even to the point of freedom. Will we ever get to that point, where we can play Zynga's games without Facebook? Only time will tell.
FrontierVille maker joins AIAS, or 'People Who Make Cool Things', board
Even if you've no idea what the word "Civilization" capitalized implies, you probably know Brian Reynolds. The lot of you have played one of his more recent games, FrontierVille by Zynga. Now, the iconic game designer has joined the board overseeing The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), an organization seeking to advance the artistic value of interactive entertainment (i.e. video games).
Reynolds is chief game designer at Zynga, and was key to the creation of FrontierVille, now known as Pioneer Trail to its 4.5 million monthly players. "Their awards program has always been a gold standard of recognition and career advancement for game makers and I'm honored to have a chance to help advance it," Reynolds said in a statement. "Likewise, the D.I.C.E. Summit blows me away every year with the quality and caliber of developers they bring together. I believe this opportunity is an important step in the continuing assimilation of social games into the broader game community."
AIAS, which represents over 22,000 members of the largest game creators from Nintendo to EA, Sony and Microsoft, hosts the D.I.C.E. Summit annually. This conference honoring all things high brow in gaming culminates with the Interactive Achievement Awards, recognizing the past year's gaming achievements. This year, Zynga's CastleVille is up for the "Social Networking Game of the Year" award, along with The Sims Social, Triple Town, Army Attack and Gardens of Time.
This is quite an achievement for Reynolds, whose history in the games goes far beyond Facebook's Wild West to genre-defining games like Civilization II, Alpha Centauri and Rise of Nations. Alas, the FrontierVille maker did have to weather the recent storm of copycat claims lobbied against Zynga, to which he denied it was an issue. In the grand scheme of things, we seriously doubt that's going to change his image as one of the greats in gaming.
Reynolds is chief game designer at Zynga, and was key to the creation of FrontierVille, now known as Pioneer Trail to its 4.5 million monthly players. "Their awards program has always been a gold standard of recognition and career advancement for game makers and I'm honored to have a chance to help advance it," Reynolds said in a statement. "Likewise, the D.I.C.E. Summit blows me away every year with the quality and caliber of developers they bring together. I believe this opportunity is an important step in the continuing assimilation of social games into the broader game community."
AIAS, which represents over 22,000 members of the largest game creators from Nintendo to EA, Sony and Microsoft, hosts the D.I.C.E. Summit annually. This conference honoring all things high brow in gaming culminates with the Interactive Achievement Awards, recognizing the past year's gaming achievements. This year, Zynga's CastleVille is up for the "Social Networking Game of the Year" award, along with The Sims Social, Triple Town, Army Attack and Gardens of Time.
This is quite an achievement for Reynolds, whose history in the games goes far beyond Facebook's Wild West to genre-defining games like Civilization II, Alpha Centauri and Rise of Nations. Alas, the FrontierVille maker did have to weather the recent storm of copycat claims lobbied against Zynga, to which he denied it was an issue. In the grand scheme of things, we seriously doubt that's going to change his image as one of the greats in gaming.
Monstermind maker: Facebook games 'will be like the Atari Eighties crash'
If you have agreed to receive the occasional email from Zynga, you might have received a new survey in your inbox this week, asking for your opinions on a few Zynga games, and also giving you a chance to rate the potential of some new game ideas. While the majority of the questions are fairly basic (how often do you play a specific game, etc.), the survey quickly turns to the heart of the matter, detailing what could possibly be a new game in the company's lineup. Of course, Zynga wants to know what you think of the game concept first.
"Cook delicious food! Craft over 200 recipes in your world-class kitchen using fresh, exotic ingredients collected from local merchants, your garden, and your friends. Use top appliances to whip up amazing dishes that delight your customers and friends, and build the restaurant of your dreams."
From there, we're allowed to rate various features that could potentially be in this as-of-now unconfirmed game. We might be able to visit restaurants owned by real world celebrity chefs (Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray, etc.), cook dishes using ingredients from real world brands, or cook dishes on state of the art kitchen equipment. All in all, there are tons of options here surrounding the use of real world brands or celebrities in this game concept. Could Zynga be planning to create a cooking game with direct involvement from some of these chefs, or even the Food Network as a whole? Or, is this all really just a large brain-storming session looking for fan feedback?
Either way, it's definitely easy to say that this game concept is incredibly familiar to Cafe World (in fact, the ingredient collection feature was already released in the game's Signature Dish event), so it will be interesting to see if anything actually comes from it (perhaps this could be Cafe World 2?). If you wish to take the survey yourself, you can do so by clicking right here.
If you're lucky enough to get FarmVille to work this evening, and have 10 Farm Cash or more to spend, you can now make one of your neighbors' day, week or even month by purchasing them a Mini Rose Horse as part of the Valentine's Presents event.
Similar to the Holiday Presents event that allowed us to give our friends Present Trees, this Valentine's Present event gives you a chance to send Mini Rose Horses to up to six friends at a time, from a fairly random selection of your neighbors. For sending a single Mini Rose Horse, you'll be charged 10 Farm Cash, but will receive an exclusive Romeo Bear for being so generous.
If you don't find the friend you'd like to send a gift to the first time you load this window, simply close it and open it back up by clicking on the box of candy in the top right corner of the FarmVille gameplay area. This will, in theory, show you six new friends. If you still can't find the person you're looking for, post a few item requests on your wall and then make sure they come and respond to them. This, according to the game, will make them a more "helpful" neighbor, and will likely make them show up.
Remember, if you want a horse for yourself, and you have a trustworthy friend, you can always swap items with each other. That is, you purchase a horse for them, and they purchase a horse for you. In that way, you'll both receive horses and bears for the equivalent of 5 Farm Cash each. Just remember to do that soon, as this feature won't be around forever.
Check out the rest of our Valentine's Day coverage right here.
Now, this is just getting out of hand. Bossa Studios co-founder Henrique Olifiers seems to think that, if the copycatting practices in social games persist, then the industry is doomed. In so many words, that's what Olifiers told GamesIndustry.biz in an interview. The Monstermind creator likened the path social games are headed down to the Atari crash in the '80s, when several blatantly similar iterations of the same games flooded the console.
"Social games for me were always on the cutting-edge until they became copycat, and after they became copycat I said, 'Well, this is not going anywhere,'" Olifiers told GI.biz. "This will be like the Atari Eighties crash. Everybody and their grandmother had a version of Space Invaders, and these guys are going to do the same thing."
The issue of copycatting, from accusations thrown at Zynga to lawsuits flung 6waves Lolapps' way, has come to a head in early 2012. While this issue isn't necessarily unique to social or mobile games--it's plagued the game industry for years--it's nevertheless an issue. That said, it's unlikely that copycatting will drive social games into the ground, given their instantly-global distribution and rapid release schedule.
But that's not to say game makers and gamers should be any less wary of it. And Bossa seems to have the right idea for how to make sure, regardless of whether it's likely, stop the social games world from crumbling. "[Our games] should look and feel like nothing else on Facebook," Bossa lead designer Mike Bithell said. "We're working really hard top use these amazing tools, because there are so many things in Facebook that, if used right, make it better than Xbox Live."
"Cook delicious food! Craft over 200 recipes in your world-class kitchen using fresh, exotic ingredients collected from local merchants, your garden, and your friends. Use top appliances to whip up amazing dishes that delight your customers and friends, and build the restaurant of your dreams."
From there, we're allowed to rate various features that could potentially be in this as-of-now unconfirmed game. We might be able to visit restaurants owned by real world celebrity chefs (Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray, etc.), cook dishes using ingredients from real world brands, or cook dishes on state of the art kitchen equipment. All in all, there are tons of options here surrounding the use of real world brands or celebrities in this game concept. Could Zynga be planning to create a cooking game with direct involvement from some of these chefs, or even the Food Network as a whole? Or, is this all really just a large brain-storming session looking for fan feedback?
Either way, it's definitely easy to say that this game concept is incredibly familiar to Cafe World (in fact, the ingredient collection feature was already released in the game's Signature Dish event), so it will be interesting to see if anything actually comes from it (perhaps this could be Cafe World 2?). If you wish to take the survey yourself, you can do so by clicking right here.
If you're lucky enough to get FarmVille to work this evening, and have 10 Farm Cash or more to spend, you can now make one of your neighbors' day, week or even month by purchasing them a Mini Rose Horse as part of the Valentine's Presents event.
Similar to the Holiday Presents event that allowed us to give our friends Present Trees, this Valentine's Present event gives you a chance to send Mini Rose Horses to up to six friends at a time, from a fairly random selection of your neighbors. For sending a single Mini Rose Horse, you'll be charged 10 Farm Cash, but will receive an exclusive Romeo Bear for being so generous.
If you don't find the friend you'd like to send a gift to the first time you load this window, simply close it and open it back up by clicking on the box of candy in the top right corner of the FarmVille gameplay area. This will, in theory, show you six new friends. If you still can't find the person you're looking for, post a few item requests on your wall and then make sure they come and respond to them. This, according to the game, will make them a more "helpful" neighbor, and will likely make them show up.
Remember, if you want a horse for yourself, and you have a trustworthy friend, you can always swap items with each other. That is, you purchase a horse for them, and they purchase a horse for you. In that way, you'll both receive horses and bears for the equivalent of 5 Farm Cash each. Just remember to do that soon, as this feature won't be around forever.
Check out the rest of our Valentine's Day coverage right here.
Now, this is just getting out of hand. Bossa Studios co-founder Henrique Olifiers seems to think that, if the copycatting practices in social games persist, then the industry is doomed. In so many words, that's what Olifiers told GamesIndustry.biz in an interview. The Monstermind creator likened the path social games are headed down to the Atari crash in the '80s, when several blatantly similar iterations of the same games flooded the console.
"Social games for me were always on the cutting-edge until they became copycat, and after they became copycat I said, 'Well, this is not going anywhere,'" Olifiers told GI.biz. "This will be like the Atari Eighties crash. Everybody and their grandmother had a version of Space Invaders, and these guys are going to do the same thing."
The issue of copycatting, from accusations thrown at Zynga to lawsuits flung 6waves Lolapps' way, has come to a head in early 2012. While this issue isn't necessarily unique to social or mobile games--it's plagued the game industry for years--it's nevertheless an issue. That said, it's unlikely that copycatting will drive social games into the ground, given their instantly-global distribution and rapid release schedule.
But that's not to say game makers and gamers should be any less wary of it. And Bossa seems to have the right idea for how to make sure, regardless of whether it's likely, stop the social games world from crumbling. "[Our games] should look and feel like nothing else on Facebook," Bossa lead designer Mike Bithell said. "We're working really hard top use these amazing tools, because there are so many things in Facebook that, if used right, make it better than Xbox Live."
Zynga under fire (again) for copycatting: This time, it's Bingo Blitz
January has been a rather warm month in Zynga HQ. Between living with the doubts and expectations of analysts (and investors) and now the second copycatting allegation this month alone, the multibillion dollar social maker is in the hot seat. This time, Santa Monica, Calif.-based Buffalo Studios has lashed out at Zynga for allegedly copying its first social game, Bingo Blitz, one of Facebook's most recommended games of 2011.
The developer sent Zynga a letter in the same vein of NimbleBit's address regarding Tiny Tower, pointing out clear similarities between its game and Zynga Bingo, which currently is in a closed beta test. In fact, the letter is near identical to NimbleBit's, which Buffalo Studios does point out. (Though, we're not sure whether that exactly helps the developer's case. Just sayin'.)
The letter positions pictures of Bingo Blitz, which has garnered nearly 1 million daily players in the past year, according to AppData, next to Zynga Bingo. While it's admittedly tough to call Zynga out on its use of a Bingo board, the similarities between both games' mechanics like keys to open chests and boxes for power-ups as well as collection items are clear.
"We are moved that your new game was so inspired by our innovative product, Bingo Blitz," the snark-filled letter reads. "You've obviously played our game Bingo Blitz ... along with over 1 million other daily active users. Please tell your thousands of employees and shareholders that we hope they enjoy the games we're cooking up next." Ouch, and what if we told you that this is far from the first time?
The developer sent Zynga a letter in the same vein of NimbleBit's address regarding Tiny Tower, pointing out clear similarities between its game and Zynga Bingo, which currently is in a closed beta test. In fact, the letter is near identical to NimbleBit's, which Buffalo Studios does point out. (Though, we're not sure whether that exactly helps the developer's case. Just sayin'.)
The letter positions pictures of Bingo Blitz, which has garnered nearly 1 million daily players in the past year, according to AppData, next to Zynga Bingo. While it's admittedly tough to call Zynga out on its use of a Bingo board, the similarities between both games' mechanics like keys to open chests and boxes for power-ups as well as collection items are clear.
"We are moved that your new game was so inspired by our innovative product, Bingo Blitz," the snark-filled letter reads. "You've obviously played our game Bingo Blitz ... along with over 1 million other daily active users. Please tell your thousands of employees and shareholders that we hope they enjoy the games we're cooking up next." Ouch, and what if we told you that this is far from the first time?
Pioneer Trail Monumental Homestead Goals: Everything you need to know
Let's face it: with all of the goals, buildings, crops, animals, trees and more available in Pioneer Trail, there just isn't enough land space to go around. If your Homestead is feeling a little cramped, you'll be happy to know that you can now finish a series of goals to unlock the 43 x 43 Monumental Homestead expansion for your game (before now, this was only available via a Horseshoe purchase).
Note: if you purchased the Homestead Expansion with Horseshoes and still receive these goals in your game, you'll need to contact Zynga Customer Support to have them removed, since you obviously can't expand to the same size twice.
Frontier Mint
The School Rucksacks are crafted using 16 Wax Canvases and nine Leather Straps each. These two items can be earned by asking your friends to send them to you. For finishing this first goal, you'll receive 250 XP, 250 coins and 50 Super Potato Seeds.
Warm up the Clobberin Arm
Rewards: 500 XP, 500 coins, two Plum Trees
Get Frontier Tough
A Loyal Pioneer is crafted using 10 Fire Water and 10 Fruit Punch. You can ask your friends to send you both of these, but of course, you'll need 70 of each to actually craft seven Loyal Pioneers in all. When you finish this goal, you'll receive 750 XP, 750 coins and a Crazy Cake.
Monumental Snakes
Trees can be purchased from the store, and while you'll only get one chop out of a single sapling, it will still help you in the likely event that you don't have enough trees just sitting on your Homestead waiting to be chopped down. For finishing this goal, you'll receive 1,000 XP, 1,000 coins and three Cocoa Trees.
Savor the Moment
Ganache is crafted using eight Garnishes and seven Cocoa Powders each. Both of these items can be earned by asking your friends to send them to you. When you finish this final mission, you'll receive 1,500 XP, 1,500 coins and a Cream Cow. You'll also be able to go into the Land Office and purchase the Monumental Homestead expansion. It costs seven Land Grants to unlock, but those can be crafted inside the Land Office using coins and Cloth.
As usual, when you expand, you'll find that the outskirts of your Homestead are now filled with debris and mystery crates for you to open, so get right on it to claim your rewards as quickly as possible!
Note: if you purchased the Homestead Expansion with Horseshoes and still receive these goals in your game, you'll need to contact Zynga Customer Support to have them removed, since you obviously can't expand to the same size twice.
Frontier Mint
- Collect 20 Frontier Mint from Peppermint
- Craft 5 School Rucksacks in the Upgraded School House
- Collect 15 Expansion Permits
The School Rucksacks are crafted using 16 Wax Canvases and nine Leather Straps each. These two items can be earned by asking your friends to send them to you. For finishing this first goal, you'll receive 250 XP, 250 coins and 50 Super Potato Seeds.
Warm up the Clobberin Arm
- Clobber 10 Groundhogs
- Harvest 150 Vanilla Orchids
- Collect 15 Snares
Rewards: 500 XP, 500 coins, two Plum Trees
Get Frontier Tough
- Harvest 40 Melons
- Sell 35 Adult Moose
- Craft 7 Loyal Pioneers in the Saloon
A Loyal Pioneer is crafted using 10 Fire Water and 10 Fruit Punch. You can ask your friends to send you both of these, but of course, you'll need 70 of each to actually craft seven Loyal Pioneers in all. When you finish this goal, you'll receive 750 XP, 750 coins and a Crazy Cake.
Monumental Snakes
- Fire the Snake Cannon 10 Times
- Chop Lumber Trees 200 times on your homestead
- Collect 20 Neighbor Signatures
Trees can be purchased from the store, and while you'll only get one chop out of a single sapling, it will still help you in the likely event that you don't have enough trees just sitting on your Homestead waiting to be chopped down. For finishing this goal, you'll receive 1,000 XP, 1,000 coins and three Cocoa Trees.
Savor the Moment
- Craft 7 Ganache in the Brick Oven
- Collect 4 Daily Bonuses in the Land Office
- Collect 125 Sweet Cabbage by harvesting Cabbage
Ganache is crafted using eight Garnishes and seven Cocoa Powders each. Both of these items can be earned by asking your friends to send them to you. When you finish this final mission, you'll receive 1,500 XP, 1,500 coins and a Cream Cow. You'll also be able to go into the Land Office and purchase the Monumental Homestead expansion. It costs seven Land Grants to unlock, but those can be crafted inside the Land Office using coins and Cloth.
As usual, when you expand, you'll find that the outskirts of your Homestead are now filled with debris and mystery crates for you to open, so get right on it to claim your rewards as quickly as possible!
Pioneer Trail: Horseshoe bundles offer free prizes with each purchase
One look at the monthly active users in Pioneer Trail shows that the game isn't doing so hot (at least when compared to Zynga's other major Facebook properties). Currently sitting at 4.2 million monthly active users (1.4 million of those being daily users), the game has been losing users pretty consistently over the past few months, but if you're a loyal veteran, you can now receive some free items by pouring some real world cash back into the game.
There are three bundles that are now available via a in-game pop-up that will likely appear the next few times you login to the game. Ranging in price from $20 to $100, these bundles come with bulk Horseshoe bundles, along with various other prizes. Here's a complete rundown, so that you can decide if any of them are actually worth your hard-earned cash.
$20 Bundle - 170 Horseshoes and five Poker Cards
$50 Bundle - 465 Horseshoes, 10 Speedy Hands Boosts, Green Lightning Drink
$100 Bundle - 1,000 Horseshoes, 12 Hour Triple Mastery Boost, Beef Jerky, Polar Bear
Like many Horses, your avatar can ride this Polar Bear, which was originally released back during the Christmas holiday season. Personally, I'm not sure $100 is worth it, even if you do receive 1,000 Horseshoes in the process, but that will ultimately be up to each user to decide.
This promotion doesn't come clearly marked with any sort of expiration date, but wouldn't expect it to last forever. Make sure to check out the game sooner, rather than later, if you're interested in taking advantage of any of these bundle offers.
There are three bundles that are now available via a in-game pop-up that will likely appear the next few times you login to the game. Ranging in price from $20 to $100, these bundles come with bulk Horseshoe bundles, along with various other prizes. Here's a complete rundown, so that you can decide if any of them are actually worth your hard-earned cash.
$20 Bundle - 170 Horseshoes and five Poker Cards
$50 Bundle - 465 Horseshoes, 10 Speedy Hands Boosts, Green Lightning Drink
$100 Bundle - 1,000 Horseshoes, 12 Hour Triple Mastery Boost, Beef Jerky, Polar Bear
Like many Horses, your avatar can ride this Polar Bear, which was originally released back during the Christmas holiday season. Personally, I'm not sure $100 is worth it, even if you do receive 1,000 Horseshoes in the process, but that will ultimately be up to each user to decide.
This promotion doesn't come clearly marked with any sort of expiration date, but wouldn't expect it to last forever. Make sure to check out the game sooner, rather than later, if you're interested in taking advantage of any of these bundle offers.
FarmVille: Wither's off while Zynga fixes slew of bugs
Throughout the day, FarmVille has been suffering from a number of annoying, or even game-breaking bugs. From the inability to travel between farms to not being able to open our Gift Boxes, you can say that FarmVille has seen better days.
While these issues (including other bugs that have simply made it impossible to play the game in some cases) may have been allowed to go on longer than most users would have liked, Zynga has now openly acknowledged the many issues on Facebook.
"FarmVille has been experiencing some technical difficulties that have been resulting in some users being unable to travel, open their gift boxes & play the game. We are working on resolving these issues as quickly as possible and we would like to thank you for your continued patience and understanding."
Unfortunately, the only thing we know for sure at this point is that wither has been turned off in the game, saving all of our crops from withering or bringing them back to life if they already had, no Unwither Ring needed. With all of the goals that are available in the game though, it will be interesting to see if their timers are increased to make up for the downtime we've all received. Personally, I won't hold my breath, but if we are so pleasantly surprised by the Big Z, we'll make sure to let you know.
Have you been experiencing any issues with FarmVille today? Have you lost Farm Cash or in-game progress as a result of them?
While these issues (including other bugs that have simply made it impossible to play the game in some cases) may have been allowed to go on longer than most users would have liked, Zynga has now openly acknowledged the many issues on Facebook.
"FarmVille has been experiencing some technical difficulties that have been resulting in some users being unable to travel, open their gift boxes & play the game. We are working on resolving these issues as quickly as possible and we would like to thank you for your continued patience and understanding."
Unfortunately, the only thing we know for sure at this point is that wither has been turned off in the game, saving all of our crops from withering or bringing them back to life if they already had, no Unwither Ring needed. With all of the goals that are available in the game though, it will be interesting to see if their timers are increased to make up for the downtime we've all received. Personally, I won't hold my breath, but if we are so pleasantly surprised by the Big Z, we'll make sure to let you know.
Have you been experiencing any issues with FarmVille today? Have you lost Farm Cash or in-game progress as a result of them?
FarmVille: Send your helpful neighbors a Mini Rose Horse
If you have agreed to receive the occasional email from Zynga, you might have received a new survey in your inbox this week, asking for your opinions on a few Zynga games, and also giving you a chance to rate the potential of some new game ideas. While the majority of the questions are fairly basic (how often do you play a specific game, etc.), the survey quickly turns to the heart of the matter, detailing what could possibly be a new game in the company's lineup. Of course, Zynga wants to know what you think of the game concept first.
"Cook delicious food! Craft over 200 recipes in your world-class kitchen using fresh, exotic ingredients collected from local merchants, your garden, and your friends. Use top appliances to whip up amazing dishes that delight your customers and friends, and build the restaurant of your dreams."
From there, we're allowed to rate various features that could potentially be in this as-of-now unconfirmed game. We might be able to visit restaurants owned by real world celebrity chefs (Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray, etc.), cook dishes using ingredients from real world brands, or cook dishes on state of the art kitchen equipment. All in all, there are tons of options here surrounding the use of real world brands or celebrities in this game concept. Could Zynga be planning to create a cooking game with direct involvement from some of these chefs, or even the Food Network as a whole? Or, is this all really just a large brain-storming session looking for fan feedback?
Either way, it's definitely easy to say that this game concept is incredibly familiar to Cafe World (in fact, the ingredient collection feature was already released in the game's Signature Dish event), so it will be interesting to see if anything actually comes from it (perhaps this could be Cafe World 2?). If you wish to take the survey yourself, you can do so by clicking right here.
If you're lucky enough to get FarmVille to work this evening, and have 10 Farm Cash or more to spend, you can now make one of your neighbors' day, week or even month by purchasing them a Mini Rose Horse as part of the Valentine's Presents event.
Similar to the Holiday Presents event that allowed us to give our friends Present Trees, this Valentine's Present event gives you a chance to send Mini Rose Horses to up to six friends at a time, from a fairly random selection of your neighbors. For sending a single Mini Rose Horse, you'll be charged 10 Farm Cash, but will receive an exclusive Romeo Bear for being so generous.
If you don't find the friend you'd like to send a gift to the first time you load this window, simply close it and open it back up by clicking on the box of candy in the top right corner of the FarmVille gameplay area. This will, in theory, show you six new friends. If you still can't find the person you're looking for, post a few item requests on your wall and then make sure they come and respond to them. This, according to the game, will make them a more "helpful" neighbor, and will likely make them show up.
Remember, if you want a horse for yourself, and you have a trustworthy friend, you can always swap items with each other. That is, you purchase a horse for them, and they purchase a horse for you. In that way, you'll both receive horses and bears for the equivalent of 5 Farm Cash each. Just remember to do that soon, as this feature won't be around forever.
Check out the rest of our Valentine's Day coverage right here.
"Cook delicious food! Craft over 200 recipes in your world-class kitchen using fresh, exotic ingredients collected from local merchants, your garden, and your friends. Use top appliances to whip up amazing dishes that delight your customers and friends, and build the restaurant of your dreams."
From there, we're allowed to rate various features that could potentially be in this as-of-now unconfirmed game. We might be able to visit restaurants owned by real world celebrity chefs (Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray, etc.), cook dishes using ingredients from real world brands, or cook dishes on state of the art kitchen equipment. All in all, there are tons of options here surrounding the use of real world brands or celebrities in this game concept. Could Zynga be planning to create a cooking game with direct involvement from some of these chefs, or even the Food Network as a whole? Or, is this all really just a large brain-storming session looking for fan feedback?
Either way, it's definitely easy to say that this game concept is incredibly familiar to Cafe World (in fact, the ingredient collection feature was already released in the game's Signature Dish event), so it will be interesting to see if anything actually comes from it (perhaps this could be Cafe World 2?). If you wish to take the survey yourself, you can do so by clicking right here.
If you're lucky enough to get FarmVille to work this evening, and have 10 Farm Cash or more to spend, you can now make one of your neighbors' day, week or even month by purchasing them a Mini Rose Horse as part of the Valentine's Presents event.
Similar to the Holiday Presents event that allowed us to give our friends Present Trees, this Valentine's Present event gives you a chance to send Mini Rose Horses to up to six friends at a time, from a fairly random selection of your neighbors. For sending a single Mini Rose Horse, you'll be charged 10 Farm Cash, but will receive an exclusive Romeo Bear for being so generous.
If you don't find the friend you'd like to send a gift to the first time you load this window, simply close it and open it back up by clicking on the box of candy in the top right corner of the FarmVille gameplay area. This will, in theory, show you six new friends. If you still can't find the person you're looking for, post a few item requests on your wall and then make sure they come and respond to them. This, according to the game, will make them a more "helpful" neighbor, and will likely make them show up.
Remember, if you want a horse for yourself, and you have a trustworthy friend, you can always swap items with each other. That is, you purchase a horse for them, and they purchase a horse for you. In that way, you'll both receive horses and bears for the equivalent of 5 Farm Cash each. Just remember to do that soon, as this feature won't be around forever.
Check out the rest of our Valentine's Day coverage right here.
Zynga survey hints at possible new cooking game
If you have agreed to receive the occasional email from Zynga, you might have received a new survey in your inbox this week, asking for your opinions on a few Zynga games, and also giving you a chance to rate the potential of some new game ideas. While the majority of the questions are fairly basic (how often do you play a specific game, etc.), the survey quickly turns to the heart of the matter, detailing what could possibly be a new game in the company's lineup. Of course, Zynga wants to know what you think of the game concept first.
"Cook delicious food! Craft over 200 recipes in your world-class kitchen using fresh, exotic ingredients collected from local merchants, your garden, and your friends. Use top appliances to whip up amazing dishes that delight your customers and friends, and build the restaurant of your dreams."
From there, we're allowed to rate various features that could potentially be in this as-of-now unconfirmed game. We might be able to visit restaurants owned by real world celebrity chefs (Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray, etc.), cook dishes using ingredients from real world brands, or cook dishes on state of the art kitchen equipment. All in all, there are tons of options here surrounding the use of real world brands or celebrities in this game concept. Could Zynga be planning to create a cooking game with direct involvement from some of these chefs, or even the Food Network as a whole? Or, is this all really just a large brain-storming session looking for fan feedback?
Either way, it's definitely easy to say that this game concept is incredibly familiar to Cafe World (in fact, the ingredient collection feature was already released in the game's Signature Dish event), so it will be interesting to see if anything actually comes from it (perhaps this could be Cafe World 2?). If you wish to take the survey yourself, you can do so by clicking right here.
"Cook delicious food! Craft over 200 recipes in your world-class kitchen using fresh, exotic ingredients collected from local merchants, your garden, and your friends. Use top appliances to whip up amazing dishes that delight your customers and friends, and build the restaurant of your dreams."
From there, we're allowed to rate various features that could potentially be in this as-of-now unconfirmed game. We might be able to visit restaurants owned by real world celebrity chefs (Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray, etc.), cook dishes using ingredients from real world brands, or cook dishes on state of the art kitchen equipment. All in all, there are tons of options here surrounding the use of real world brands or celebrities in this game concept. Could Zynga be planning to create a cooking game with direct involvement from some of these chefs, or even the Food Network as a whole? Or, is this all really just a large brain-storming session looking for fan feedback?
Either way, it's definitely easy to say that this game concept is incredibly familiar to Cafe World (in fact, the ingredient collection feature was already released in the game's Signature Dish event), so it will be interesting to see if anything actually comes from it (perhaps this could be Cafe World 2?). If you wish to take the survey yourself, you can do so by clicking right here.
Thứ Năm, 2 tháng 2, 2012
Ravenwood Fair's Halloween costumes are too cute to pass up
Ravenwood Fair is one the fastest growing games on Facebook, with over a million players joining this cute and cuddly game since it launched earlier this month. While we've already brought you news concerning its Halloween themed decorations, games and buildings, today new costumes have been added to the mix, allowing you to give your in-game avatar a spooky touch to fit right in with the rest of the theme!
The costumes available are the Ghost, Mummy and Skeleton, and each is available for both girl or boy avatars. The costumes range in price from 19 to 59 Facebook Credits, or from around $2.00 to $6.00 US.
To change the look of your forest critter, simply click on them and click on the "Makeover" button, but do it fast! We're assuming these costumes won't be around for much longer.
The costumes available are the Ghost, Mummy and Skeleton, and each is available for both girl or boy avatars. The costumes range in price from 19 to 59 Facebook Credits, or from around $2.00 to $6.00 US.
To change the look of your forest critter, simply click on them and click on the "Makeover" button, but do it fast! We're assuming these costumes won't be around for much longer.
Beware! PetVille brings back Midnight Crypt collection
PetVille Midnight Crypt
PetVille is on a roll with bringing back old themes and giving them a new twist for the Halloween season. First it was the Haunted Mansion theme, and now we're seeing a triumphant return of the Midnight Crypt collection. One of the cooler themes that PetVille has done, these items are great ones to snag while they're around. Here is a list of the new items:
Skullcraft II Collector's Rug - 23 Pet Cash
Wolf Cub, Lil' Kentetsu - 68 Pet Cash
Mystery Crate - 20 Pet Cash (contains 5 items)
Mace and Chain - 3,600 coins
Petrified Perch - 6,150 coins
Shimmering Twins - 36 Pet Cash
Bride of Frank - 39 Pet Cash
Rita Morris - 41 Pet Cash
Midnight Chandelier - 6,750 coins
Possessed Pipe Organ - 32 Pet Cash
Baron Noir Waistcoat - 8,400 coins
Dark Stripe Trousers - 2,925 coins
Baroness Noir Gown - 21 Pet Cash
Mini Malign Top Hat - 3,450 coins
Lucid Lioness Throne - 17 Pet Cash
The Keeper's Cabinet - 21,000 coins
Skullelabra - 20 Pet Cash
Mystery Eyed Painting - 29 Pet Cash
Eternal Sleep Bed - 21 Pet Cash
Double Wall Candle - 3,600 coins
Devilish Nightstand - 3,150 coins
Nu:Blud Type O Drink - 6 Pet Cash
Countess' Candelabra - 4,350 coins
Haunted Stained Glass Window - 8,250 coins
Antique Vampire Slayer Kit - 11,250 coins
Poltergeist Programmed TV - 27 Pet Cash
Three Wolves Painting - 14 Pet Cash
Haunted Piano - 40 Pet Cash
Gothic Table - 8,000 coins
Jar of Eyes - 5 Pet Cash
Reaching Hand - 4,000 coins
Trick-or-Treater Window - 29 Pet Cash
This massive set of decorations will all be gone in less than 5 days, so if you want a piece of the action you'll want to buy some of it soon. There are some expensive pieces in this collection, but they're also very elaborate. Who says having a permanent haunted room after Halloween ends is a bad thing? Everyone needs a little spookiness now and then.
PetVille is on a roll with bringing back old themes and giving them a new twist for the Halloween season. First it was the Haunted Mansion theme, and now we're seeing a triumphant return of the Midnight Crypt collection. One of the cooler themes that PetVille has done, these items are great ones to snag while they're around. Here is a list of the new items:
Skullcraft II Collector's Rug - 23 Pet Cash
Wolf Cub, Lil' Kentetsu - 68 Pet Cash
Mystery Crate - 20 Pet Cash (contains 5 items)
Mace and Chain - 3,600 coins
Petrified Perch - 6,150 coins
Shimmering Twins - 36 Pet Cash
Bride of Frank - 39 Pet Cash
Rita Morris - 41 Pet Cash
Midnight Chandelier - 6,750 coins
Possessed Pipe Organ - 32 Pet Cash
Baron Noir Waistcoat - 8,400 coins
Dark Stripe Trousers - 2,925 coins
Baroness Noir Gown - 21 Pet Cash
Mini Malign Top Hat - 3,450 coins
Lucid Lioness Throne - 17 Pet Cash
The Keeper's Cabinet - 21,000 coins
Skullelabra - 20 Pet Cash
Mystery Eyed Painting - 29 Pet Cash
Eternal Sleep Bed - 21 Pet Cash
Double Wall Candle - 3,600 coins
Devilish Nightstand - 3,150 coins
Nu:Blud Type O Drink - 6 Pet Cash
Countess' Candelabra - 4,350 coins
Haunted Stained Glass Window - 8,250 coins
Antique Vampire Slayer Kit - 11,250 coins
Poltergeist Programmed TV - 27 Pet Cash
Three Wolves Painting - 14 Pet Cash
Haunted Piano - 40 Pet Cash
Gothic Table - 8,000 coins
Jar of Eyes - 5 Pet Cash
Reaching Hand - 4,000 coins
Trick-or-Treater Window - 29 Pet Cash
This massive set of decorations will all be gone in less than 5 days, so if you want a piece of the action you'll want to buy some of it soon. There are some expensive pieces in this collection, but they're also very elaborate. Who says having a permanent haunted room after Halloween ends is a bad thing? Everyone needs a little spookiness now and then.
Island Paradise: Dress for a zombie invasion or vampire attack
Island Paradise Vampire and Zombie costumes
Yesterday, Island Paradise rolled out the beginning of their new Halloween theme. Tonight the tropical game has just launched two Halloween costumes, giving players the last-minute chance to buy outfits to dress up in for the creepy holiday on Sunday. The two available costumes are the Vampire and the Zombie, and there are matching outfits for both males and females. There are also many other outfits that would work great for Halloween costumes, including the pumpkin shirt, pirate outfits, skeleton shirts, Egyptian garb, and other tattered clothing. Some of these costumes may not actually be intended for Halloween, but they will still make a good fit.
The price for the Zombie and Vampire costumes comes out to be about 15,000 coins total. The costumes come in more than one piece though, so they can be mixed and matched. Want a vampire head and a zombie body? No problem! Head into Island Paradise to see these new costumes and get your hands on some festive fare.
Yesterday, Island Paradise rolled out the beginning of their new Halloween theme. Tonight the tropical game has just launched two Halloween costumes, giving players the last-minute chance to buy outfits to dress up in for the creepy holiday on Sunday. The two available costumes are the Vampire and the Zombie, and there are matching outfits for both males and females. There are also many other outfits that would work great for Halloween costumes, including the pumpkin shirt, pirate outfits, skeleton shirts, Egyptian garb, and other tattered clothing. Some of these costumes may not actually be intended for Halloween, but they will still make a good fit.
The price for the Zombie and Vampire costumes comes out to be about 15,000 coins total. The costumes come in more than one piece though, so they can be mixed and matched. Want a vampire head and a zombie body? No problem! Head into Island Paradise to see these new costumes and get your hands on some festive fare.
FarmVille Halloween Animals: Robot Cow & Witch Cat
Tonight's FarmVille update brings with it two new Halloween themed animals, that you might recognize from one of the game's newest loading screens.
The animals are the Robot Cow and the Witch Cat, which are both available for Farm Cash (22 and 12 Farm Cash, respectively). It's interesting to see the Witch Cat being offered as a store item, seeing as how Zynga has advertised the item as a free gift with purchase of Farm Cash (see our article written earlier this evening), but we'll take the additional chance to purchase one without complaints.
With just three days left until Halloween, you'll need to reach into those virtual (or perhaps real world) pocketbooks soon to make sure you add these spooky animals to your farm while they are still available.
The animals are the Robot Cow and the Witch Cat, which are both available for Farm Cash (22 and 12 Farm Cash, respectively). It's interesting to see the Witch Cat being offered as a store item, seeing as how Zynga has advertised the item as a free gift with purchase of Farm Cash (see our article written earlier this evening), but we'll take the additional chance to purchase one without complaints.
With just three days left until Halloween, you'll need to reach into those virtual (or perhaps real world) pocketbooks soon to make sure you add these spooky animals to your farm while they are still available.
FarmVille Halloween Decorations: Ravens, Wizards, Black Roses, Pumpkins, & More
While Halloween is now just a few days away, that hasn't stopped Zynga from adding even more Halloween items to the FarmVille marketplace, with tonight's update offering up one new building and a new decorative item.
Follow us behind the break for full details about these new items.
For starters, there is one new building available to purchase, and it continues in the black and blue theme seen in other Halloween themed buildings released this year. The new offering is the Haunted Castle (it resembles the Beast's castle from Beauty and the Beast, if you ask us), which costs 50 Farm Cash.
Meanwhile, the new decorative items come in the form of a Raven perched atop a spooky branch, a Gargoyle Gate, a Wizard Gnome (because you can never have too many lawn gnomes), a tree made of pumpkins, a trio of lanterns made from purple pumpkins, a Spooky Bats tombstone, and even a Thorny Hedge and Black Rose Arch that match perfectly with the Black Rose crop released earlier today.
The coin items in this set are actually incredibly affordable, with the most expensive item being 10,000 coins. If you've been saving every single coin to get in on the Halloween decorating fun, now is definitely the time (better late than never, I always say).
Follow us behind the break for full details about these new items.
For starters, there is one new building available to purchase, and it continues in the black and blue theme seen in other Halloween themed buildings released this year. The new offering is the Haunted Castle (it resembles the Beast's castle from Beauty and the Beast, if you ask us), which costs 50 Farm Cash.
Meanwhile, the new decorative items come in the form of a Raven perched atop a spooky branch, a Gargoyle Gate, a Wizard Gnome (because you can never have too many lawn gnomes), a tree made of pumpkins, a trio of lanterns made from purple pumpkins, a Spooky Bats tombstone, and even a Thorny Hedge and Black Rose Arch that match perfectly with the Black Rose crop released earlier today.
The coin items in this set are actually incredibly affordable, with the most expensive item being 10,000 coins. If you've been saving every single coin to get in on the Halloween decorating fun, now is definitely the time (better late than never, I always say).
Thứ Tư, 1 tháng 2, 2012
Old Navy brings It Girl affordable fashion sans talking mannequins
Old Navy
And the next brand to take a seat under the Facebook games money tree is--drum roll, please--Old Navy? Yes, ladies, Old Navy fashion has arrived in It Girl. CrowdStar has brought in the Old Navy store to the game with a new mission for you shopaholics. To access the new content, just click on the button on the right-hand side of the screen and you'll be transported right to the Old Navy store.
Then, all you need to do is find and buy all 20 basic items in the store, though there is a wide selection of Couture clothing to buy for Facebook Credits as well. It appears that a lot of the items are actually inspired by clothing you can find in Old Navy today, which is more than clever on the company's part. You won't be able to find and buy all the items at once, however. The racks and shelves will restock over time with the rest of the outfits you'll need to uncover.
Furthermore, there is a new party for you to attend called the Old Navy Gobblepalooza Party, which has almost nothing to do with Thanksgiving outside of its title. In this Nightlife Event, you'll have to defeat two girls in Showdowns ranked at Very hard difficulty and pay a 10 Dollar cover charge for 36 experience. If this event gets a good enough turn out, it looks like It Girl could be a hotbed for retailer-branded events in the future.
And the next brand to take a seat under the Facebook games money tree is--drum roll, please--Old Navy? Yes, ladies, Old Navy fashion has arrived in It Girl. CrowdStar has brought in the Old Navy store to the game with a new mission for you shopaholics. To access the new content, just click on the button on the right-hand side of the screen and you'll be transported right to the Old Navy store.
Then, all you need to do is find and buy all 20 basic items in the store, though there is a wide selection of Couture clothing to buy for Facebook Credits as well. It appears that a lot of the items are actually inspired by clothing you can find in Old Navy today, which is more than clever on the company's part. You won't be able to find and buy all the items at once, however. The racks and shelves will restock over time with the rest of the outfits you'll need to uncover.
Furthermore, there is a new party for you to attend called the Old Navy Gobblepalooza Party, which has almost nothing to do with Thanksgiving outside of its title. In this Nightlife Event, you'll have to defeat two girls in Showdowns ranked at Very hard difficulty and pay a 10 Dollar cover charge for 36 experience. If this event gets a good enough turn out, it looks like It Girl could be a hotbed for retailer-branded events in the future.
Facebook FPS: UberStrike brings gunslinging action to social networks
UberStrike
While browser first-person shooters (FPS) like Quake Live and Battlefield Heroes have been around for a while now, we've patiently awaited the day for our favorite modern American past time to come to Facebook: shooting things. South Korean developer Cmune has brought its browser FPS game, UberStrike, to Facebook. And it is, for lack of a better a word, awesome. Playing much like commonly known games such as Quake, UberStrike brings the traditional online FPS to the world of social games in a huge way.
Take a look behind the break for more about this shooter on Facebook.
Character Creation
For those familiar with how FPS games work, there won't be much different here than the novelty of having one on Facebook. But those new to genre will learn best through trial and error. Installing UberStrike requires players to download a one-time Java program to help run the game. Once inside the game, you'll find yourself in Character Creation where you're given a few options to customize your avatar such as skin tone, clothing color and hair color. (But only male avatars are available, what gives?) After that's through, the lobby awaits, which serves as the game's live chat room as well. This is where players can organize games together and buy Credits (the game's paid currency) bundles.
More importantly, this is also where you'll access games to play. Clicking the "Play" button will take you to a list of servers that are located in various parts of the world by region. It's best to choose a server closest to where you live to ensure the best play experience. For instance, I live on the East Coast, so choosing a West Coast server would still be playable, though I might suffer from serious lag and control issues. After choosing a server, you'll be presented with a list of games currently playing on that server.
Gameplay
Fortunately, the games are separated by map, player number and gameplay mode. There are currently only two gameplay modes available: Death Match and Team Death Match. In other words, you can kill everyone around you or kill everyone on opposing teams. Choose a game (or create your own) and you'll assume control of your character and get to the meat and potatoes of UberStrike.
Gameplay is simple enough, control movement using a combination of the WASD keys and the mouse to aim. Clicking the left mouse button fires and keys 1 through 5 cycle through weapons. The aim of the game is rack up as many kills as possible while staying alive, so be sure to pick up as many armor and health packs as possible. The balance between attacking other players and staying alive by collecting armor and health makes for a Facebook gaming experience that is sure to keep you on your toes.
Death Scene
As for visuals, this game looks impressive for being on a platform that normally only runs Flash games and not much else. Uberstrike operates in full, though minimally detailed, 3D with even a physics engine that affects the flight of projectiles and, how should we say, bodies. The graphics can be scaled for performance or looks through the Options menu where you can also remap controls and even sync a game controller for the console FPS crowd.
However, we're put off by just one thing: The Shop. Acquiring new weapons is far different than in other FPS games where they're found on the ground. Using Credits, players can buy licenses for more advanced weapons. The keyword here is "license." Buying a weapon or other enhancement only grants access to the item for a certain time period. This wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so expensive. To paint a better picture, buying, say, a Force Cannon for one week's use costs 2,184 Credits currently. However, that's about $4 for an item that's only going to last you a week as opposed to other games where that would be a one-time purchase.
While there are items and weapons available for coins, they'll never be as powerful as the paid items. Unfortunately, that's the current state of social gaming and it's unlikely to change for some time. That being said, UberStrike is a game that could get FPS fans hooked almost instantly and might even make some FPS players out of you.
Play UberStrike on Facebook Now >
While browser first-person shooters (FPS) like Quake Live and Battlefield Heroes have been around for a while now, we've patiently awaited the day for our favorite modern American past time to come to Facebook: shooting things. South Korean developer Cmune has brought its browser FPS game, UberStrike, to Facebook. And it is, for lack of a better a word, awesome. Playing much like commonly known games such as Quake, UberStrike brings the traditional online FPS to the world of social games in a huge way.
Take a look behind the break for more about this shooter on Facebook.
Character Creation
For those familiar with how FPS games work, there won't be much different here than the novelty of having one on Facebook. But those new to genre will learn best through trial and error. Installing UberStrike requires players to download a one-time Java program to help run the game. Once inside the game, you'll find yourself in Character Creation where you're given a few options to customize your avatar such as skin tone, clothing color and hair color. (But only male avatars are available, what gives?) After that's through, the lobby awaits, which serves as the game's live chat room as well. This is where players can organize games together and buy Credits (the game's paid currency) bundles.
More importantly, this is also where you'll access games to play. Clicking the "Play" button will take you to a list of servers that are located in various parts of the world by region. It's best to choose a server closest to where you live to ensure the best play experience. For instance, I live on the East Coast, so choosing a West Coast server would still be playable, though I might suffer from serious lag and control issues. After choosing a server, you'll be presented with a list of games currently playing on that server.
Gameplay
Fortunately, the games are separated by map, player number and gameplay mode. There are currently only two gameplay modes available: Death Match and Team Death Match. In other words, you can kill everyone around you or kill everyone on opposing teams. Choose a game (or create your own) and you'll assume control of your character and get to the meat and potatoes of UberStrike.
Gameplay is simple enough, control movement using a combination of the WASD keys and the mouse to aim. Clicking the left mouse button fires and keys 1 through 5 cycle through weapons. The aim of the game is rack up as many kills as possible while staying alive, so be sure to pick up as many armor and health packs as possible. The balance between attacking other players and staying alive by collecting armor and health makes for a Facebook gaming experience that is sure to keep you on your toes.
Death Scene
As for visuals, this game looks impressive for being on a platform that normally only runs Flash games and not much else. Uberstrike operates in full, though minimally detailed, 3D with even a physics engine that affects the flight of projectiles and, how should we say, bodies. The graphics can be scaled for performance or looks through the Options menu where you can also remap controls and even sync a game controller for the console FPS crowd.
However, we're put off by just one thing: The Shop. Acquiring new weapons is far different than in other FPS games where they're found on the ground. Using Credits, players can buy licenses for more advanced weapons. The keyword here is "license." Buying a weapon or other enhancement only grants access to the item for a certain time period. This wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so expensive. To paint a better picture, buying, say, a Force Cannon for one week's use costs 2,184 Credits currently. However, that's about $4 for an item that's only going to last you a week as opposed to other games where that would be a one-time purchase.
While there are items and weapons available for coins, they'll never be as powerful as the paid items. Unfortunately, that's the current state of social gaming and it's unlikely to change for some time. That being said, UberStrike is a game that could get FPS fans hooked almost instantly and might even make some FPS players out of you.
Play UberStrike on Facebook Now >
Game of the Day: Bomboozle 2
The game of the day is back for a Friday evening. The great flash game maker Megadev and released it's latest game Bomboozle 2. Bomboozle 2 is a match three masterpiece!
A sequel to the immensely popular Bomboozle, which has garnered over 50 million plays to date, Bomboozle 2 is a frantic step up on every level! Group like-coloured blobs together in threes or more for oodles of points, and use bombs to create carnage on a massive scale! Run out of possible moves though, and your Bomboozling time is over...
Click here to play Bomboozle 2 -->
A sequel to the immensely popular Bomboozle, which has garnered over 50 million plays to date, Bomboozle 2 is a frantic step up on every level! Group like-coloured blobs together in threes or more for oodles of points, and use bombs to create carnage on a massive scale! Run out of possible moves though, and your Bomboozling time is over...
Click here to play Bomboozle 2 -->
Ravenwood Fair Strongbug's Big Top: A skittering, slimy circus
Strongbug's Big Top
What's a forest fair without circus freaks? Well, nothing really, which is exactly why LOLapps has introduced Strongbug's Big Top to Ravenwood Fair. This new theme of circus items ranges from the cool to the downright creepy and crawling. If you hadn't guessed already, this circus is run by a bunch of insect. Just about every game, decoration and building revolves around the not-so-little buggers. Here's what you'll find to bring the crawly circus to your fair:
Fettucine Bros. Cannon (1,900 coins, 10 Wood): 150 uses, 8 coins, 830 Fun
Mystic Wagon (2,100 coins, 12 Wood): 250 uses, 9 coins, 920 Fun
Big Tent (3,000 coins, 14 Wood): 300 uses, 13 coins, 1,300 Fun
Popcorn Cart (600 coins, 4 Wood): 100 uses, 3 coins, 260 Fun
Splattapillar (2,100 coins, 9 Wood): 100 uses, 9 coins, 920 Fun
Skee Ball (2,400 coins, 10 Wood): 200 uses, 11 coins, 1,080 Fun
Break-a-Plate (2,800 coins, 11 Wood: 150 uses, 13 coins, 1,210 Fun
Cattercoaster (3,000 coins, 15 Wood): 250 uses, 14 coins, 1,350 Fun
Purple Flag (9 FB Credits): 60 Fun
Orange and Maroon Flag (240 coins each): 40 Fun
Small Green Tent (900 coins): 150 Fun
Small Red and Blue Tent (25 FB Credits): 200 Fun
Fortunately, only a few of those items cost Facebook Credits and they're decorations at that. That makes it even easier to create your very own forest circus with Strongbug.
What's a forest fair without circus freaks? Well, nothing really, which is exactly why LOLapps has introduced Strongbug's Big Top to Ravenwood Fair. This new theme of circus items ranges from the cool to the downright creepy and crawling. If you hadn't guessed already, this circus is run by a bunch of insect. Just about every game, decoration and building revolves around the not-so-little buggers. Here's what you'll find to bring the crawly circus to your fair:
Fettucine Bros. Cannon (1,900 coins, 10 Wood): 150 uses, 8 coins, 830 Fun
Mystic Wagon (2,100 coins, 12 Wood): 250 uses, 9 coins, 920 Fun
Big Tent (3,000 coins, 14 Wood): 300 uses, 13 coins, 1,300 Fun
Popcorn Cart (600 coins, 4 Wood): 100 uses, 3 coins, 260 Fun
Splattapillar (2,100 coins, 9 Wood): 100 uses, 9 coins, 920 Fun
Skee Ball (2,400 coins, 10 Wood): 200 uses, 11 coins, 1,080 Fun
Break-a-Plate (2,800 coins, 11 Wood: 150 uses, 13 coins, 1,210 Fun
Cattercoaster (3,000 coins, 15 Wood): 250 uses, 14 coins, 1,350 Fun
Purple Flag (9 FB Credits): 60 Fun
Orange and Maroon Flag (240 coins each): 40 Fun
Small Green Tent (900 coins): 150 Fun
Small Red and Blue Tent (25 FB Credits): 200 Fun
Fortunately, only a few of those items cost Facebook Credits and they're decorations at that. That makes it even easier to create your very own forest circus with Strongbug.
Happy Pets Multi-Glow Pets are pretty in pink (and blue)!
The newest round of limited edition pets has been released in Happy Pets, with CrowdStar offering some new glowing pets to users. These aren't just any glow pets, however, as this new set of six limited edition animals are "multi-glow" pets, meaning that their glowing feature is bigger and better than those seen in previous themes of glowing pets. Basically, each pet now has an outer glowing ring of purple/lavender light, in addition to the color glow you choose to purchase specifically.
The six new available options are split evenly between those that are either blue or pink. The blue Multi-Glow pets are the Chicken, Pegazebra (a Pegasus and Zebra combined), and a Cat. For the Chicken and Pegazebra, remember that you'll need to have completed the respective animal holding building before you can purchase them. In this case, you'll need to have completed construction on the Chicken Coop before purchasing the chicken, and the Stable before purchasing the Pegazebra.
The pink versions are just as complicated, but offer different choices. In addition to another cat, you can pick up a couple of different animals in the form of a Dragon and a Unicorn. The Unicorn, again, will require the completed construction of a Horse Stable, while the Dragon needs a Dino Den to be built before you can purchase him/her.
Depending on the pet you choose, the cost varies, ranging anywhere from 58 Facebook Credits for the Blue Multi-Glow Chicken ($5.80 US) to 66 Facebook Credits for the Dragon, Pegazebra and Unicorn.
All of these pets are limited in their quantity in the store, with all of them being available to at least the next 500 users. Still, you'll want to shop fast to get your hands on one of these unique new pets.
The six new available options are split evenly between those that are either blue or pink. The blue Multi-Glow pets are the Chicken, Pegazebra (a Pegasus and Zebra combined), and a Cat. For the Chicken and Pegazebra, remember that you'll need to have completed the respective animal holding building before you can purchase them. In this case, you'll need to have completed construction on the Chicken Coop before purchasing the chicken, and the Stable before purchasing the Pegazebra.
The pink versions are just as complicated, but offer different choices. In addition to another cat, you can pick up a couple of different animals in the form of a Dragon and a Unicorn. The Unicorn, again, will require the completed construction of a Horse Stable, while the Dragon needs a Dino Den to be built before you can purchase him/her.
Depending on the pet you choose, the cost varies, ranging anywhere from 58 Facebook Credits for the Blue Multi-Glow Chicken ($5.80 US) to 66 Facebook Credits for the Dragon, Pegazebra and Unicorn.
All of these pets are limited in their quantity in the store, with all of them being available to at least the next 500 users. Still, you'll want to shop fast to get your hands on one of these unique new pets.
Thứ Ba, 31 tháng 1, 2012
CityVille Cheats and Tips: How Decorations Earn You More Coins
CityVille decorations increase bonus to 231%
While efficient Goods management and mastering your Franchises in CityVille will certainly make you a far more successful mayor, one player has pointed out an extremely important aspect of the game that has the potential to send your profits sky high by implementing some hardcore decorating methods.
You can see in the image above, Josh Morlan (a.k.a. morlanjo) has done his math, using the Pool Hall as his example, he calculated that:
Normal Pool Hall output: 420 coins
Output with bonus: 1391 coins
1 energy = 1391 coins
Each Charlieville train I send out for more goods nets me 991 coins (that's
-400 coins for the 100 production)
Basically, collecting money from businesses will always cost 1 Energy (Note: Resupplying businesses with goods doesn't use up Energy!). So he decided to choose a business that will pay him the most money and raise its profits by surrounding it with decorations that offer the biggest boosts. For most folks, that big boost decoration would be the Arboretum, which offers +16% and costs 4,000 Coins. In the top image, you can see he's also using the Bronze Statue (+2%) and Flower Patch (+1%) to plug any leftover space. Why is there space leftover? Well, your business needs to connect to the Asphalt Roads in order to make money. Between his Bronze Statues, you can see the small strip of Sidewalk that lets the Pool Hall connect to the street.
After all these changes, each Energy Josh spends on the Pool Hall will now nab him 1,391 Coins instead of 420 Coins. The great thing about this setup is that you can reuse the Arboretum on the sides by putting down another business. You can also swap out the business for a higher paying one when it becomes available. (Hot Tip: The bonus boosts work for when you collect, so you can use this decoration plan on more than one business. You just gotta do it one at a time.) This seems to be the best Energy-saving and money-making plan for the long run.
Macoan's CityVille 4x4 decorations chart
Another user, Michael A. Coan (a.k.a. macoan) made some handy charts to help other players with laying down decorations. For businesses that take up a 4x4 space (such as Josh's Pool Hall), click here. For those that use up 3x3, click here.
Who would've thought that having less businesses and more decorations can get you more money?
While efficient Goods management and mastering your Franchises in CityVille will certainly make you a far more successful mayor, one player has pointed out an extremely important aspect of the game that has the potential to send your profits sky high by implementing some hardcore decorating methods.
You can see in the image above, Josh Morlan (a.k.a. morlanjo) has done his math, using the Pool Hall as his example, he calculated that:
Normal Pool Hall output: 420 coins
Output with bonus: 1391 coins
1 energy = 1391 coins
Each Charlieville train I send out for more goods nets me 991 coins (that's
-400 coins for the 100 production)
Basically, collecting money from businesses will always cost 1 Energy (Note: Resupplying businesses with goods doesn't use up Energy!). So he decided to choose a business that will pay him the most money and raise its profits by surrounding it with decorations that offer the biggest boosts. For most folks, that big boost decoration would be the Arboretum, which offers +16% and costs 4,000 Coins. In the top image, you can see he's also using the Bronze Statue (+2%) and Flower Patch (+1%) to plug any leftover space. Why is there space leftover? Well, your business needs to connect to the Asphalt Roads in order to make money. Between his Bronze Statues, you can see the small strip of Sidewalk that lets the Pool Hall connect to the street.
After all these changes, each Energy Josh spends on the Pool Hall will now nab him 1,391 Coins instead of 420 Coins. The great thing about this setup is that you can reuse the Arboretum on the sides by putting down another business. You can also swap out the business for a higher paying one when it becomes available. (Hot Tip: The bonus boosts work for when you collect, so you can use this decoration plan on more than one business. You just gotta do it one at a time.) This seems to be the best Energy-saving and money-making plan for the long run.
Macoan's CityVille 4x4 decorations chart
Another user, Michael A. Coan (a.k.a. macoan) made some handy charts to help other players with laying down decorations. For businesses that take up a 4x4 space (such as Josh's Pool Hall), click here. For those that use up 3x3, click here.
Who would've thought that having less businesses and more decorations can get you more money?
FrontierVille Pioneer Toy Factory: Everything you need to know
Log into FrontierVille today, and you'll be greated with the presence of a holiday-themed factory on the outskirts of your pioneer town. Looks like a bunch of elves moved onto your property and built a toy factory -- and now are getting ready to put you to work collecting toys. This can be done by asking friends (by posting a message on their Facebook Wall), helping neighbors on their homesteads and collecting daily bonuses. Toys can also be sent as free gifts.
pioneer toy factory collect toys
Once you have enough toys, you'll be able to redeem them for the six holiday-themed rewards:
frontierville toy factory colectibles
Candy Cane Lamp
Drummer Boy
Rudolph
Sledding Hill
Giant Pink Tree
Winter Mare
Oh yeah, and if you want to score these six items without doing all of that work, you can buy the number of presents you need using Horseshoes. Three Toy Bundles (x5, x10, x20) can be purchased for 15, 29 and 55 Horseshoes respectively.
pioneer toy factory collect toys
Once you have enough toys, you'll be able to redeem them for the six holiday-themed rewards:
frontierville toy factory colectibles
Candy Cane Lamp
Drummer Boy
Rudolph
Sledding Hill
Giant Pink Tree
Winter Mare
Oh yeah, and if you want to score these six items without doing all of that work, you can buy the number of presents you need using Horseshoes. Three Toy Bundles (x5, x10, x20) can be purchased for 15, 29 and 55 Horseshoes respectively.
Cafe World Holiday Dinner Catering Order: Everything you need to know
Attention all Cafe World caterers! A new job is now available to undertake via your Catering Van (the Catering Business menu), and it comes in the form of the "Holiday Dinner" order. Not to be confused with the Company Holiday Party job released last week, this is an entirely new catering order that sees you catering a Holiday Dinner, apparently just for friends, instead of for an entire company.
This job seems to be setup like most of the others, with a total of three stars available to earn, depending on how quickly you can complete the order, with the 3--star prize being a large decoration that you'd likely see up at Santa's Workshop. Meet us behind the break for everything you need to know about this new catering mission.
Once you start the Holiday Dinner catering job, you'll see that you have three full days to complete the job in order to do so with a three star rating. This job asks you to cook three holiday-themed dishes, which actually makes this catering job one of the hardest ever released, as these holiday recipes start out as locked out for users, until they can complete enough of the Holiday Dinner goals (remember, goals are an entirely different feature than Catering) in order to unlock access to cooking them. For example, the Baked Ham recipe that we'll talk about a little later can only be cooked after finishing part 5 of the Holiday Dinner Goals.
Whether or not you've unlocked these recipes does not affect your ability to accept the Catering order, so if you think you have enough friends on your account that have already unlocked those recipes and will be cooking them for their own stake with this job, go right ahead. Still, it seems unreasonable that Zynga would give such a short time limit of three days when this is the case. Luckily, this order as a convenient "Cancel Order" button located on its menu, so if you'd rather not even attempt the job until you have personally unlocked all three dishes, go right ahead - we won't blame you, as we're doing the same.
Moving onto the task at hand, however, once you are ready to tackle this mission, you'll need to serve Waldorf Salad 127 times, Baked Ham 138 times, and Angel Slices 63 times. You can unlock these tasks for Cafe Cash, at a price of 20, 18, and 16 Cafe Cash, respectively. In addition, you'll need to collect 15 Candy Canes and 10 Gingerbread Men to finish off this job's tasks.
For finishing the job in order three days, you'll earn 6 Catering Points, 6,300 Cafe Points, 141,750 Coins, and the Toy Workshop Bench decoration - a large animated item that has an elf diligently working away at a table in Santa's Workshop.
For the 2-star prize, you are given a total of five days to complete the order. This results in a prize of 4 Catering Points, 4,500 Cafe Points and 101,250 coins.
Finally, the 1-star prize will be received for simply finishing the mission, even if you go past the five day time limit. For going through with completing the order, you'll receive 2 Catering Points, 2,700 Cafe Points, and 60,750 coins - not a bad haul, considering.
For this job, you can have up to 11 people, including yourself, working on the job at once. You can either click on the "Ask for Help!" button to send individual requests to friends to ask them for help, or you can go into the Catering Business menu to see if any of your friends have already undertaken this job themselves, and if they have, you can instantly join their catering crew, if there are any positions left.
Since this job is such a difficult one (unless you and 10 of your friends just happen to have already unlocked the three Holiday dishes), this might be the time when you should take advantage of the ability to add more than the standard 11 total crew members to your order. This is done by clicking on the "Unlock Slot" button, at which point you are asked to gather the proper gear to allow another chef into the kitchen. You'll need to gather 1 Hat, 1 Jacket, 1 Pants, and 2 Pairs of Shoes in order to unlock a new crew slot, which can be done by asking your friends to send you the items via individual requests. You can skip this step entirely by simply paying 5 Cafe Cash to unlock the new slot instantly, if you so choose.
Remember, no matter what happens with your catering order (that is, no matter which star rating you end up getting), you'll be able to retry it if you so choose to get a higher score, and perhaps even unlock the Toy Workshop Bench decoration, if you didn't unlock it the first time around.
There's no telling whether or not this job will expire after the holiday season is over, so make sure to take a stab at this job while you're guaranteed to have a good shot at it. Besides, if you start the job now, you'll have the best chance of finding other players on your friends' list that are also trying the catering job, giving you an even better chance at success, so keep that in mind.
This job seems to be setup like most of the others, with a total of three stars available to earn, depending on how quickly you can complete the order, with the 3--star prize being a large decoration that you'd likely see up at Santa's Workshop. Meet us behind the break for everything you need to know about this new catering mission.
Once you start the Holiday Dinner catering job, you'll see that you have three full days to complete the job in order to do so with a three star rating. This job asks you to cook three holiday-themed dishes, which actually makes this catering job one of the hardest ever released, as these holiday recipes start out as locked out for users, until they can complete enough of the Holiday Dinner goals (remember, goals are an entirely different feature than Catering) in order to unlock access to cooking them. For example, the Baked Ham recipe that we'll talk about a little later can only be cooked after finishing part 5 of the Holiday Dinner Goals.
Whether or not you've unlocked these recipes does not affect your ability to accept the Catering order, so if you think you have enough friends on your account that have already unlocked those recipes and will be cooking them for their own stake with this job, go right ahead. Still, it seems unreasonable that Zynga would give such a short time limit of three days when this is the case. Luckily, this order as a convenient "Cancel Order" button located on its menu, so if you'd rather not even attempt the job until you have personally unlocked all three dishes, go right ahead - we won't blame you, as we're doing the same.
Moving onto the task at hand, however, once you are ready to tackle this mission, you'll need to serve Waldorf Salad 127 times, Baked Ham 138 times, and Angel Slices 63 times. You can unlock these tasks for Cafe Cash, at a price of 20, 18, and 16 Cafe Cash, respectively. In addition, you'll need to collect 15 Candy Canes and 10 Gingerbread Men to finish off this job's tasks.
For finishing the job in order three days, you'll earn 6 Catering Points, 6,300 Cafe Points, 141,750 Coins, and the Toy Workshop Bench decoration - a large animated item that has an elf diligently working away at a table in Santa's Workshop.
For the 2-star prize, you are given a total of five days to complete the order. This results in a prize of 4 Catering Points, 4,500 Cafe Points and 101,250 coins.
Finally, the 1-star prize will be received for simply finishing the mission, even if you go past the five day time limit. For going through with completing the order, you'll receive 2 Catering Points, 2,700 Cafe Points, and 60,750 coins - not a bad haul, considering.
For this job, you can have up to 11 people, including yourself, working on the job at once. You can either click on the "Ask for Help!" button to send individual requests to friends to ask them for help, or you can go into the Catering Business menu to see if any of your friends have already undertaken this job themselves, and if they have, you can instantly join their catering crew, if there are any positions left.
Since this job is such a difficult one (unless you and 10 of your friends just happen to have already unlocked the three Holiday dishes), this might be the time when you should take advantage of the ability to add more than the standard 11 total crew members to your order. This is done by clicking on the "Unlock Slot" button, at which point you are asked to gather the proper gear to allow another chef into the kitchen. You'll need to gather 1 Hat, 1 Jacket, 1 Pants, and 2 Pairs of Shoes in order to unlock a new crew slot, which can be done by asking your friends to send you the items via individual requests. You can skip this step entirely by simply paying 5 Cafe Cash to unlock the new slot instantly, if you so choose.
Remember, no matter what happens with your catering order (that is, no matter which star rating you end up getting), you'll be able to retry it if you so choose to get a higher score, and perhaps even unlock the Toy Workshop Bench decoration, if you didn't unlock it the first time around.
There's no telling whether or not this job will expire after the holiday season is over, so make sure to take a stab at this job while you're guaranteed to have a good shot at it. Besides, if you start the job now, you'll have the best chance of finding other players on your friends' list that are also trying the catering job, giving you an even better chance at success, so keep that in mind.
CityVille: Help choose which building(s) will be released next!
As CityVille has already been launched into the #5 spot on the overall Facebook app leaderboards, it's not surprising that Zynga is looking to expand the amount of content in the game. What's more, they've decided to give us, the real players of the game, a chance to help shape and influence the content that will be added in the coming days and weeks. This comes, first and foremost, in the form of a new poll on the official CityVille forums, where users can look at a variety of possible new buildings that may or may not be added to the game, and vote for their favorites.
As of right now, there are just five buildings to choose from, and you'll need to login to the forums in order to vote (a simply login with Facebook Connect will allow you to vote with the least amount of hassle). The choices are:
Power Plant
Gas Station
Prison
Parking Lot
Casino
As of this writing, the post has only been open for a matter of hours, and the Casino is winning with almost 46% of the vote. Second is the gas station with 24%, and the other options decrease from there. For the sake of the argument, the Parking Lot is in last place currently, with just 7% of the vote.
Interestingly, Zynga has made clear whether these items would be classified as businesses or community buildings. While it's presumable that items like the Casino and Gas Station would be released as businesses alongside the current options like the Toy Store or Diner, the Prison could very well be a community building, allowing you to add more population to your town (after all, the Police Station is a community building, so why stop there?).
We don't know when the winning item will be added to the game, but keep checking back with us, as we'll make sure you're the first to know which item wins, and when we'll see it in the game (personally, we're hoping for the Casino, so we're glad we're not alone in that vote).
As of right now, there are just five buildings to choose from, and you'll need to login to the forums in order to vote (a simply login with Facebook Connect will allow you to vote with the least amount of hassle). The choices are:
Power Plant
Gas Station
Prison
Parking Lot
Casino
As of this writing, the post has only been open for a matter of hours, and the Casino is winning with almost 46% of the vote. Second is the gas station with 24%, and the other options decrease from there. For the sake of the argument, the Parking Lot is in last place currently, with just 7% of the vote.
Interestingly, Zynga has made clear whether these items would be classified as businesses or community buildings. While it's presumable that items like the Casino and Gas Station would be released as businesses alongside the current options like the Toy Store or Diner, the Prison could very well be a community building, allowing you to add more population to your town (after all, the Police Station is a community building, so why stop there?).
We don't know when the winning item will be added to the game, but keep checking back with us, as we'll make sure you're the first to know which item wins, and when we'll see it in the game (personally, we're hoping for the Casino, so we're glad we're not alone in that vote).
CityVille: HQ Payouts doubled, game balance tweaked, bugs fixed
Almost a week has gone by since Zynga released their first major game upgrade for CityVille, providing for a Bonus Meter that's easier to fill, resulting in more profits for users, and a streamlined storage bar, that now contains both ship and overall Goods in one total (among other changes and improvements), but they haven't stopped there.
The developer has now announced an even larger list of changes that have taken place in the game this week (including one once again affecting the Bonus Meter), with some of these actually working to hurt the very rapid progress users have been experiencing since the game's launch.
As usual, we have the full list of improvements and changes behind the break, so meet us there, won't you?
First and foremost - the good news. The first bit of good news it the fact that HQ payout bonuses have now been doubled. That's right, from now on, when collecting from your Franchise HQs (not those franchises that your friends have added to your town - the actual Franchise skyscraper(s) you have in your town), you'll earn double the coins as before. With coins being perhaps the most valuable commodity in the game (aside from maybe energy), anyway to earn bonus coins is definitely appreciated.
Next, a bit of bad news. When supplying your franchises, you'll no longer receive bonus energy. While energy hasn't really been an issue for most users, who can play the game in five or ten minute sessions and never run out, this might become a bit harder to do, as this bonus energy is no more. Zynga says the reasoning behind this alteration was to "improve game balance," so we'll have to see how that works out for them.
As for Quests, earning items for your quests will now be easier thanks to the altered time limit for posting item requests. At launch, the request window was "once every 24 hours." Now though, players can now post item requests for items (like Chocolates, Endorsements, and the like, depending on the Quest) once every four hours.
Two other improvements come in the form of tweaked train values, which sees the amount of coins required for each amount of good when sending off your trains being altered slightly, and in the form of a changed Bronze Statue Payout Bonus. The Bronze Statue is a decorative item available to purchase from the store. Now, though, the payout bonus that you receive from the Bronze Statue has been reduced, again, as Zynga says, to help improve game balance.
While this is already a lot of changes to take in, there are even more general bug fixes to speak of, ranging from improving the texts in wall posts, to lessening the amount of Out of Sync errors that a player could potentially run into while performing certain (at the time) bugged activities. Here's the list of bug fixes, straight from Zynga:
Collections Feed Posts - Collections feed posts now correctly states "Get 50 coins".
Bonus Meter - Fixed/adjusted bonus meter payouts, and issues related to bonus meter progression.
OOS errors when supplying franchises - Fixed the issue that was causing OOS errors when supplying franchises.
Friends listed on the requests page - Requests of the same type can only be sent to the same friend once per day; fixed the issue where friends were still appearing on the list, which was causing some of the gifts/requests related issues.
Franchise HQ displayed payout bonus - Fixed the issue where franchise HQ payout bonuses were being displayed incorrectly.
Quest: Build City Funds - Resolved the issue with requesting "Capital Endorsements".
XP Discrepancy - Fixed a discrepancy between XP being added and XP shown, which was causing OOS errors after leveling
Coin Discrepancy - Fixed a discrepancy between coins being added when collecting from businesses to the coins shown, which was causing the appearance of losing coins after refreshing the game and OOS errors when spending coins which were not being counted.
As we said at the beginning of this post, we can now see that the Bonus Meter has been altered yet again (seems they haven't been able to strike a nice balance as of yet). However, instead of changing the overall amount of coins that are awarded (like with the first change of the meter), we now see its progression being altered. That is, after the first week, teh meter would stick at the "Masterful," and would slowly fill, if it ever actually filled at all. This resulted in one large sum of bonus coins being awarded (in my game the bonus was always somewhere around 4,000+ coins.
Now, though, the Masterful bar fills just as quickly as the others, and once it is completely full, the bonus levels cycle back around to the first stage of "Bonus," and continues from there. In this way, you may receive four 1,000 coin bonuses instead of one large 4,000 coin bonus, which is actually fine with us. Hopefully this is how the meter will stay too, as we really like all of those bonus coins that we've been getting.
The developer has now announced an even larger list of changes that have taken place in the game this week (including one once again affecting the Bonus Meter), with some of these actually working to hurt the very rapid progress users have been experiencing since the game's launch.
As usual, we have the full list of improvements and changes behind the break, so meet us there, won't you?
First and foremost - the good news. The first bit of good news it the fact that HQ payout bonuses have now been doubled. That's right, from now on, when collecting from your Franchise HQs (not those franchises that your friends have added to your town - the actual Franchise skyscraper(s) you have in your town), you'll earn double the coins as before. With coins being perhaps the most valuable commodity in the game (aside from maybe energy), anyway to earn bonus coins is definitely appreciated.
Next, a bit of bad news. When supplying your franchises, you'll no longer receive bonus energy. While energy hasn't really been an issue for most users, who can play the game in five or ten minute sessions and never run out, this might become a bit harder to do, as this bonus energy is no more. Zynga says the reasoning behind this alteration was to "improve game balance," so we'll have to see how that works out for them.
As for Quests, earning items for your quests will now be easier thanks to the altered time limit for posting item requests. At launch, the request window was "once every 24 hours." Now though, players can now post item requests for items (like Chocolates, Endorsements, and the like, depending on the Quest) once every four hours.
Two other improvements come in the form of tweaked train values, which sees the amount of coins required for each amount of good when sending off your trains being altered slightly, and in the form of a changed Bronze Statue Payout Bonus. The Bronze Statue is a decorative item available to purchase from the store. Now, though, the payout bonus that you receive from the Bronze Statue has been reduced, again, as Zynga says, to help improve game balance.
While this is already a lot of changes to take in, there are even more general bug fixes to speak of, ranging from improving the texts in wall posts, to lessening the amount of Out of Sync errors that a player could potentially run into while performing certain (at the time) bugged activities. Here's the list of bug fixes, straight from Zynga:
Collections Feed Posts - Collections feed posts now correctly states "Get 50 coins".
Bonus Meter - Fixed/adjusted bonus meter payouts, and issues related to bonus meter progression.
OOS errors when supplying franchises - Fixed the issue that was causing OOS errors when supplying franchises.
Friends listed on the requests page - Requests of the same type can only be sent to the same friend once per day; fixed the issue where friends were still appearing on the list, which was causing some of the gifts/requests related issues.
Franchise HQ displayed payout bonus - Fixed the issue where franchise HQ payout bonuses were being displayed incorrectly.
Quest: Build City Funds - Resolved the issue with requesting "Capital Endorsements".
XP Discrepancy - Fixed a discrepancy between XP being added and XP shown, which was causing OOS errors after leveling
Coin Discrepancy - Fixed a discrepancy between coins being added when collecting from businesses to the coins shown, which was causing the appearance of losing coins after refreshing the game and OOS errors when spending coins which were not being counted.
As we said at the beginning of this post, we can now see that the Bonus Meter has been altered yet again (seems they haven't been able to strike a nice balance as of yet). However, instead of changing the overall amount of coins that are awarded (like with the first change of the meter), we now see its progression being altered. That is, after the first week, teh meter would stick at the "Masterful," and would slowly fill, if it ever actually filled at all. This resulted in one large sum of bonus coins being awarded (in my game the bonus was always somewhere around 4,000+ coins.
Now, though, the Masterful bar fills just as quickly as the others, and once it is completely full, the bonus levels cycle back around to the first stage of "Bonus," and continues from there. In this way, you may receive four 1,000 coin bonuses instead of one large 4,000 coin bonus, which is actually fine with us. Hopefully this is how the meter will stay too, as we really like all of those bonus coins that we've been getting.
CityVille Cheats and Tips: Guess What? You Don't Need Roads!
There's two schools of thought when it comes to the best way to play CityVille -- that is, whether looking pretty and saving land is more important than cramming things to the hilt and saving Energy. Right now, the prevailing wisdom of players is to value Energy-saving over land space. Today, we already showcased an awesome way to save Energy by using decorations. But if you find yourself running out of space more than Energy, here's some pointers:
CityVille Franchise HQ bonus
1. Franchise HQs don't need Roads to work. They take up 5x5 of space, which is a lot, but you need them to manage your franchises. Most people put these buildings off to the side, but they offer a +2% boost range of 11x11 to businesses. (You can see from the sample image that one HQ can bonus boost up to five businesses.) So put 'em where you can use their bonus boosting power!
CityVille Community Buildings
2. Community buildings (e.g. Post Office, Police, City Hall, etc.) and Storage buildings (e.g. Silo, Red Barn, Sticks, etc.) don't need roads either. Community buildings give out money and owning them allows you to have a bigger population. And Storage buildings let you have more goods. But other than that, these are pretty useless. Profit bonuses from decorations don't work on them. So if you have to put a building in the corner, do it to these two kinds!
CityVille Roads versus Sidewalks
3. Contrary to the headline of this post, roads are important. We all know certain buildings can't earn coins unless they're somehow touching the roads. So what do I mean when I say you don't need them? Well, the game starts you off with some Asphalt Roads already in place. This means most of us are tempted to keep using them, so we buy more for 10 Coins each. But a better substitute is actually the City Sidewalk, which costs 20 Coins. If you care about space, one Asphalt Road takes up 3x3 land, but one City Sidewalk takes up just 1x1 land. Instead of connecting your buildings by using the Asphalt Road, use the City Sidewalk!
(Note: A piece of City Sidewalk must be touching a piece of Asphalt Road to work. See the above image where I put down one piece of road in the middle of nowhere, connected the Sidewalks to it, and the businesses are functional? And that one Coffee Shop has some Sidewalk sticking out of it, but the game says it's "Not connected to road.")
CityVille Franchise HQ bonus
1. Franchise HQs don't need Roads to work. They take up 5x5 of space, which is a lot, but you need them to manage your franchises. Most people put these buildings off to the side, but they offer a +2% boost range of 11x11 to businesses. (You can see from the sample image that one HQ can bonus boost up to five businesses.) So put 'em where you can use their bonus boosting power!
CityVille Community Buildings
2. Community buildings (e.g. Post Office, Police, City Hall, etc.) and Storage buildings (e.g. Silo, Red Barn, Sticks, etc.) don't need roads either. Community buildings give out money and owning them allows you to have a bigger population. And Storage buildings let you have more goods. But other than that, these are pretty useless. Profit bonuses from decorations don't work on them. So if you have to put a building in the corner, do it to these two kinds!
CityVille Roads versus Sidewalks
3. Contrary to the headline of this post, roads are important. We all know certain buildings can't earn coins unless they're somehow touching the roads. So what do I mean when I say you don't need them? Well, the game starts you off with some Asphalt Roads already in place. This means most of us are tempted to keep using them, so we buy more for 10 Coins each. But a better substitute is actually the City Sidewalk, which costs 20 Coins. If you care about space, one Asphalt Road takes up 3x3 land, but one City Sidewalk takes up just 1x1 land. Instead of connecting your buildings by using the Asphalt Road, use the City Sidewalk!
(Note: A piece of City Sidewalk must be touching a piece of Asphalt Road to work. See the above image where I put down one piece of road in the middle of nowhere, connected the Sidewalks to it, and the businesses are functional? And that one Coffee Shop has some Sidewalk sticking out of it, but the game says it's "Not connected to road.")
Đăng ký:
Nhận xét (Atom)