FarmVille Changes Wheat Crop

Update: Due to technical issues, the Wheat Crop was not actually changed tonight. However, the changed mentioned below will be the anticipated changes made to the Wheat Crop as released by Zynga/FarmVille.

"Please note: Due to technical issues, this feature is not yet available. We sincerely apologize for any confusion or frustration this may have caused you. We will do our best to get this feature to you in the near future." (Official FarmVille Forum)

As mentioned via Monday's (June 14th) official FarmVille Podcast, changes have been made to the Wheat crop.

Because Wheat will be a key crop to the upcoming release of Crafting Cottages, FarmVille decided to lower the harvest time and Crop Mastery for Wheat.

Here is the new specifications for Wheat seeds:

Wheat
Hours: 12
XP: 1
Cost: 13 coins
Yield: 61 coins
Crop Mastery: 500, 1500, 3000

In addition, Whither for Wheat is being turned off until June 21st, this is to allow people to adjust to the new time line.

How do you feel about the new Changes made to the Wheat crop?

FarmVille Silo Home & Wind Turbine

    farmville silo home
In addition to new coin purchasable animals, FarmVille has added two new expensive items- the Silo Home and the Wind Turbine.

If you are a high level farmer and looking for something to spend your coins on then you may want to consider this new building and decoration.

    Silo Home – Level 65 required to unlock, costs 1,000,000 coins (1 million coins)
    Wind Turbine – 1,500,000 coins (yes that is 1.5 million coins)


This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.

FarmVille Black Stallion Mystery

Earlier today, June 15th, and prior to updates, FarmVille released the Black Stallion to the FarmVille Market for only a few minutes. It seems that this limited and unannounced release was unintentional and accidental.

Those farmers that were lucky enough to snag the Black Stallion were able to purchase it for reportedly 40,000 coins.The Black Stallion is able to be placed in the Horse Stable and some farmers are already yielding foals.

Currently, the Black Stallion is not available for purchase, but hopefully will be soon in the near future.

This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.

YoVille: New Summer Theme?

Hope you all are ready for Summer! Summer will kick off sometime this week in Yoville. The Hollywood Theme will be coming to an end with this last release. Platinum Ninja has posted on YoVille.com. Read her Official Blog after the jump.

Hey Guys,

We wanted to give everyone a heads up that the Hollywood Theme will be coming to an end later today with the Hollywood' Theme's last release of items. Hopefully you all are having fun decorating your homes and are getting creative with your Hollywood Sets and Hollywood Home Items! There were some pretty homes and sets that we saw posted on the forums with this release of items and we can't wait to see what you guys come up with next! Here is a sneak peek of some of the Hollywood Set items coming soon.
yoville moon landing
For those of you who were wondering we do not have any immediate plans to remove this Hollywood Theme from the Furniture Store. We will keep you updated if there are any changes to this but for now we plan to have this theme in the store for purchase for a while.

Later this week expect to see a new Summer inspired Theme to hit YoVille! Summer is almost officially here so it's time to celebrate it and have some fun in the sun! So stay tuned! Well that's about all folks make sure to keep your eyes out for more the rest of the Hollywood Sets coming hopefully later today the kick off of a new Summer theme later this week.

Happy Birthday, Mafia Wars - Zynga's Facebook game turns two

Hard to believe that it was only two years ago that Mafia Wars launched on Facebook, and over that time the game has seen many incremental changes, which has both pleased and teed off devoted fans.

To celebrate this 24-month milestone, the mafioso game's offering double the loot for fighting for the next two days, plus a five free Throwing Knives (+65 attack skill) to help you hit rivals where it hurts. We're not exactly sure why this 'celebration' is focused fighting, though we suspect it might have something to do with the recent announcement that, in Mafia Wars Las Vegas, fighting will be "integral to conquering your enemies and completing your ultimate goal as the lord of the Las Vegas Underworld."

Are social gamers messing up Facebook's user stats?

Much has been made in the press in the last few days about Facebook's imminent crossing of the 500 million user threshold. This seriously huge number suggests that nearly one in every 14 people in the world has a Facebook account -- a staggering yet not altogether unbelievable idea. However, there's some reason to believe the 500 million number is inflated by many Facebook users that hold multiple Facebook accounts. And many of those that open multiple accounts no doubt do so because of social games.

While having more than one Facebook account is technically a violation of Facebook's terms of service, countless people do indeed start secondary accounts for various reasons. Some do it for privacy; so they can post semi-public information that's still hidden from their wider social network. Others start pages for fake characters simply as a joke.

But many others start up their secondary Facebook accounts for gaming purposes. These multiple-account users can divided into two main groups. The first group creates multiple accounts to gain an edge in a game -- after all, it's a lot easier to get dozens of neighbors in Farmville if all those neighbors are actually you.

The second group simply starts up a secondary gaming Facebook account for convenience. Not only does this secondary account stop all those "free gift request" messages from clogging up the News Feeds of your real friends' News Feeds (who probably couldn't care less, if they don't play those games), but it also protects your "main" Facebook account from in-game neighbors who may be complete strangers in real life.

It's hard to determine exactly how many people have used multiple Facebook accounts for either of these gaming purposes, but the Facebook chatter about the problem is not insubstantial. Facebook's own official statistics show that only 50% of their users log in each day, though it's hard to extrapolate what that means to the "real" user count.

Still, as Facebook continues to grow as a gaming platform, it seems they're going to have to take some action on the multiple account problem. Either they'll have to get much more proactive about policing their one-person-one-account policy or loosen the regulations so users can easily separate out each facet of their online persona (such as their gaming persona) into its own unique account. Then, at least, Facebook can honestly say that their hundreds of millions of accounts each represent a unique personality, if not a unique person.

How social games can rewire our brains for the better

We've all heard the scolds talking about how games like Grand Theft Auto will turn a whole generation of kids into amoral killers. But that same concept can be used to explain how some social games are rewiring our brains to make us better people.

Ayogo founder Michael Fergusson recently talked about that very idea in a Fast Company interview. As one of the guiding forces behind diabetes-prevention game Healthseeker, Fergusson knows that games can subtly influence our behavior. "We're not trying to do huge things like make smokers into non-smokers, or basketball fans into soccer fans," he said. "We're trying to motivate very small actions by giving very small rewards, and design those rewards to leverage what we understand about how our brains work."

Historically, our brains have rewarded us for using past experience (seeing a predator every ten minutes) to predict future rewards (anticipating when the predator will return). Fergusson said these and other insights into how our brains work can be used in game design to create "compulsion loops" to do things that are good for us. "The idea we were designing around is that instead of making the primary goal getting one person to do a thousand healthy things, we would focus instead on getting a thousand people to do one healthy thing," he said.

Fergusson even sees these concepts extending outside the gaming world and into the real world of government policy. "What if process of getting a healthy snack from a vending machine was more fun than for getting a chocolate bar?" he asked. "I know there's a lot of talk about taxing junk food to discourage consumption, especially by kids. I would love to see some thought put into making healthy food more enjoyable through play." Yum!

Pet Society: Huge Park Mascot and the Essentials of Cute

Pet Society Fun Park Mystery Eggs Park Mascot
Can you believe how big this guy is? He's a Park Mascot who comes in the Fun Park Mystery Eggs for 600 coins. My pet Sushi and I like the balloons he's holding–they bob up and down–but we're daunted by his size.

This led me to do a little research on park mascots. Turns out some people have a real fear of them. On unusualphobias.com, I found several interesting comments:

    ...People dressed as big characters or animals are just really freaky. I have thought that they were since I was little, and I'm not really sure why. If I see one I get all scared and just try not to look at them, but I still know they're there and it's horrible. I'm 15 now and it was so embarrasing on the school trip to Disneyland, because I couldn't tell anybody and I insisted that we took the longer routes around to avoid those creepy things! It's their faces, they're so scary! And they don't speak either, that's creepy too.

Here's another comment on the same forum:

    I have many phobias, but the most prevalent is my fear of costumed characters. You know, like Chuck E. Cheese. To me, going to Disney World is like going to hell.

All of this makes me wonder if something that's bigger than yourself goes against the essence of being cute. Check out this article on Ars Technica about scientists studying why some things are considered cute. Basically, it boils down to our evolutionary love of babies. If something resembles a baby in any way, we are programmed to think of it as cute:

    Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

    Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need.

The Park Mascot in Pet Society has a friendly face, but it's too large and imposing. It doesn't fit these definitions of cute. I think if it were smaller than my pet, it would have a much better chance at being cute. What do you think?

This article originally appeared on Pet Society Anonymous.

Furniture From The Exotic Kingdom Now In YoVille

New Moroccan Furnishings have been released in YoVille. Deck your new Palace with the rich colors and distinct geometric designs of exotic Moroccan furniture. Items include Pillars in white and gold capped, Moroccan Arched Doorways, Sconces, Floor Lights, Chairs, Sittable Pillows, Loungers, Ottomans, Fireplaces, Couches, and much, much more!

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View the complete array of items after the jump. Thank You Angiebaby and Spiralda!

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This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.



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My Sweet Shop: New confectionary game is anything but sweet

my sweet shop on facebook
When I logged into Ranch Town today, I noticed a new game on the Meteor Games toolbar. My Sweet Shop is a brand new game in beta testing that brings a familiar farming and harvesting mechanic to building a bakery.

At first glance, My Sweet Shop has an appealing aesthetic with a peaceful color palate and crisp interface. When you really look twice, however, the game has an odd top-down camera angle and the game isn't all that fun to play. It's basically Ranch Town, but instead of a ranch, you're in a candy shop. Instead of clicking on stoves and ovens to make your dishes such as Cafe World, you actually have to farm your ingredients and combine them in machines. There is really no difference to this game over Ranch Town, aside from displaying your resulting products on a counter for guests to purchase. My Sweet Shop has a grid that the mouse snaps to while planting and harvesting, and it feels more like a clickable game board than a typical farming game. Personally, I just wasn't a huge fan of the gameplay.

My Sweet Shop

It seems that My Sweet Shop is in very early beta, because there are some missing pieces. First of all, avatar customization is non-existent. You pick male or female, and that is it. Secondly, there is no decoration whatsoever. The only thing the shop contains is ingredients and machines. You cannot make your shop "your own" at all, which is a big missing feature as personalization in social games is a huge driver for retention. The game just doesn't feel 'complete' or fun yet.

There are plenty of bakery and sweet themed games that are doing this right. Baking Life, Cafe Life, and Chocolatier are three that come to mind. Our recommendation is to skip this game and try one of the others, and just give it time to mature and evolve into a game that that will be as sweet as its name implies.

Play My Sweet Shop on Facebook >

Revive a planet with Terranova: a new environmental space game

Here at Games.com - The Blog! we are always scouring through Facebook looking for what could be the next great undiscovered game. Today, we unearthed a true gem in Terranova, an environmentally friendly space game where you can save your planet from biohazardous threats. This game is developed by Atakama Labs and is being promoted by Playdom (who are also hosting the game's official forums). Launched just two days ago, this game is one to keep an eye on.

In Terranova, you play a little astronaut who has been charged with reviving and tending to a hazardous planet. Your goal is to clean up and remove waste, plant new life, explore undiscovered lands, and make the planet a better place. Right away, you'll notice that the game looks beautiful. The art is a fun vector style with a very stylized environment, and the avatars are highly customizable and adorable. The game walks you through a precise tutorial that shows you the basics of zapping harmful hazards, planting, watering, and growing flowers and vegetation, and cleaning up and recycling garbage. This isn't a simple farming game by any means.

For those who have played FrontierVille, you'll notice some similarities. Mostly around the questing system. Terranova keeps players entertained with a seemingly endless list of things to do. From planting flowers with pollen, then placing a beehive near them in order to attract honey, to finding boards in order to rebuild bridges - there is plenty to do in this game. Instead of giving you one simple map like farming games do, there is tons of exploration that can be done through clicking on portals on the ground or using the interactive minimap to travel from place to place. Not all areas are unlocked from the start however, you need to unlock them by buying tools or tasking part in tasks in order to gain access to new places.
Terranova uses the familiar energy mechanic that FrontierVille, Treasure Isle, and other games are using nowadays. A major difference is that as a player, you can regenerate your own energy using machines that will replenish all of your energy periodically. There are other machines too that will gain you benefits, such as Water Pods that allow you to collect more water in order to keep your plants growing, or filters for rivers that have become polluted. Advanced players will run into Genelabs that allow you to discover rare plants.

A strength of Terranova is the decorating aspect of the game. With so many areas to explore and the ability to freeform decorate, players can really make their planet their own. There is a huge opportunity for true creativity here in this game. When you visit a neighbor's planet, you can navigate through all of the areas that they have customized. There is an endless amount of creativity and things to do in this game.

If we had to find a fault, it might be that there is TOO much to do. An easily evident gameloop isn't immediately apparent to the player, much the same as FrontierVille and Playdom's new game Fanglies. It's very cute, much more complex than most social games, a new theme that hasn't been done well yet, and has a ton of potential - but it might not grow as fast as the simpler games. The micromanagement aspects actually remind us a bit of MyTribe, which had an environmental feel to it as well.

So far, we're loving the game. There are only 8,000 players enjoying it so far, and it appears to be plagued by some resetting glitches - but it's definitely a top contender out of the new and up-and-comings.

Play Terranova on Facebook >

FrontierVille Storage Shed: Everything you need to know

There's s a new way to keep your homestead from getting too cluttered. No, it's not the sassy dames from the BBC's 'How Clean is Your House' or your mommy dearest -- it's a new FrontierVille Storage shed that will hold up to 20 decoration items.

Before you get too excited, you can't just go buy the shed and start storing stuff like you're some kind of squirrel getting prepped for winter. You will actually have to put in some digital elbow grease (figuratively and literally) to get the job done.

To get started, head to the in-game market and purchase the Storage Shed frame. You can find it under the Buildings tab in the Market. The frame costs 20,000 coins and 20 wood, and once you place it on your property, you'll have to spend 10 energy and a total of 100 pieces of wood to whack it.




frontierville storage shed
Once all of the whacking is done, then you'll have to start collecting materials to complete the building. You'll have to collect 35 items in all, a list which consists of the following:

    5 Windows
    5 Cement
    5 Pegs
    5 Mallets
    5 Singles
    10 Elbow Grease

These materials can be acquired by requesting them from friends, and that is the only way you can get these materials right now -- you can't buy them in the store and they are also not available for everyone to send items as free gifts. That means that unless you have very active neighbors, building this shed could be quite difficult. Hopefully this will change over the next few days.

There's a new achievement that comes along with the Storage Shed -- the 'Saving Space' achievement. To complete this achievement, you will have to build the storage shed, customize it and buy one farm rake from the market (which costs 2,000 coins and 5 wood, located under Decorations in the market). frontierville storage shed achievement

I haven't finished my shed yet, mostly because the only way you can get the materials needed is by begging friends, there is no option to buy them in the store (not yet, at least). Here's the rest of the details from the official FrontierVille forums:

    "Building itself costs 120 Wood and 20,000 gold totally. Rare piece drops only on complete and daily bonus. Daily bonus contains random item from basic decorations: Cobblestones, Fences, Flowers, Chairs, Stools, Firewood, Benches, Crates, Shovels, Pitchforks and much more but no expensive or Horseshoe item."


storage shed collection

In addition to the achievement, there is also a new Storage Collection which consists of the following items:

* Door Hinge
* Spider
* Step Stool
* Toolbox
* Vice Clamp

Once you've collected all of these items, you will be able to turn them in for a free Work Bench decoration.

Check out the rest of our FrontierVille Cheats & Tips right here.

FrontierVille: Barns for animals and new quests coming soon?

This week, FrontierVille released a new storage shed that lets players -- once they've put some elbow grease into it -- store up to 35 decorations. That's right, emphasis on the decorations. If you try to stick an animal in your shed, you'll get a message saying that animal barns are coming soon, according to this player. Have you seen this as well?

If we've learned about social games, if you find a big poll in their official forums, you can bet that the powers that be are deciding what new features to roll out next. We spotted this new FrontierVille poll that asks players if they've completed all of the quests in the game, and considering that 64% of the people who responded have ... I'm guessing we're going to see a slew of new quests in the not-so-distant future.

frontierville poll

FarmVille official podcast (8/20): Pigpens, truffle hunting & new charity event on the way

This week's FarmVille podcast has arrived and community manager Lexi 'Lexilicious' Smith goes over the new FarmVille storage cellar in details and talks about two of the next big releases in everyone's favorite farming game -- pigpens and a new charity event for Haiti. See the Games.com recap below:

Storage Cellars
Lexilicious spends the bulk of the podcast going over the new storage cellar in detail. That includes the stuff we already know -- how to build it and expand it. And the stuff we didn't already know, i.e. how the storage cellar works with your existing storage barns. The cellar, which has a capacity of 500 items, will not allow you to store an additional 500 items. Instead, it will increase your existing storage limit to 500, so if you already have 100 items stored on your farm, you will only be able to store an additional 400 additional items.

Pigpens

    Pigpens will be arriving in FV in the "very near future."
    Will arrive in two separate phases
    The pigpen will be a buildable item
    New truffle hunting feature will be introduced after pigpen is done
    Feed pigs slop (made from bushels) and they will hunt for truffles on neighbors farms
    Truffles can be traded for prizes, including new types of pigs.


Haiti Charity event:
New charity event coming to help Haiti in a few weeks, and you will be able to participate without having to pay money. No word on whether this will involve a special crop or will be something completely different.


Below is the complete transcript of this week's podcast from the FarmVille forums:

    FarmVille Podcast - August 20th:

    Hey Farmers and welcome to this week's installment of the Official FarmVille Podcast. My name is Lexilicious and I am here to bring you all of the latest news and information from around the Farm. This week, we will be discussing our latest releases, and you guys will all be getting a sneak peek of what is coming to FarmVille in the near future.

    So this week, the long awaited Storage Cellar finally made an appearance, bringing with it some well deserved leg room. We have already seen some initial questions from players about how the new Storage Cellar feature works, so I am going to quickly go over some of the details of this feature for all of our listeners.

    The new storage cellar will allow you to store up to 500 items on your Farm once it is fully expanded. If you are level 16 or above, The Storage Cellar can be found in your Gift Box, or it can be purchased from the Market for 10,000 coins. To get started with this feature, open your gift box and place the Cellar on your farm.

    To expand your Storage Cellar, you will need to collect shovels from your friends. Each Shovel that you collect will count as 1 storage space in your new Cellar.

    Neighbors can send you the Shovels you need to expand your storage from the Free Gifts Page, or you can click the "ask for more" button from the Cellar's menu. Each gift sent to you from your Neighbors will grant you two Shovels. When neighbors send you Shovels, it works exactly like any other free gift. After you accept the gift it will appear in your gift box. After clicking the "use" button under the gift it will automatically be added to your Storage Cellar.

    Alternatively, if at any time during your construction process you decide that you'd rather simply purchase the Shovels required for the Cellar, you can do so by clicking the "Buy Shovels" button from the Cellars's menu. You can purchase Shovels in packs of 10 for 5 Farm Cash.

    As I said earlier, with the release of the Storage Cellar, we have increased the total storage capacity to 500.

    As all storage on your Farm is part of one shared inventory, if you already have items stored in other buildings, they will count towards the new 500 limit. For example, if you already have 100 items stored on your Farm in existing Storage Buildings, you will only be able to store 400 additional items in the Cellar once it is fully expanded.

    If you choose to not use the Storage Cellar, your Storage limit will still have increased to the new limit of 500. However, using the Storage Cellar will take up less room and provide more storage than using existing Storage Buildings.

    If you wish to transfer your items from your other Storage Buildings into the Cellar, you will first have to increase the capacity of the cellar to make room for the items. If you have enough room in your Cellar, you can simply delete your other Storage Buildings and the items will automatically be placed in your Cellar. However, you will not be able to delete a Storage Building if the number of items stored within is greater than the number of spaces you have available in your Storage Cellar.

    In addition to storage, you can unlock new items by obtaining shovels. As you collect Shovels, you will also gain "points". As you gain points for trading in Shovels, you will be able to unlock new items. Clicking the "progress" tab in your Cellar's information page will show you what items you can redeem with your points. As you collect points, each item you can unlock will be revealed as you collect the proper amount, and the "redeem" button will become available for each item. Clicking "Redeem" will award you the gift in return for the proper amount of points.

    One important thing to know about the Cellar is that once it is placed on your Farm, the Cellar cannot be sold or deleted. It can still be moved, but once you place the storage cellar on your farm it will be a permanent addition.

    In addition to the Storage Cellar, our new Summer Theme also made an appearance this week, bringing with it all kinds of great new Limited Edition items for your Farm. Many of these new Limited Edition items have great animations and fit wonderfully with anyone who may have a New England Farm or a Beach themed Farm. If you are interested in purchasing any of these great new items, please make sure to head to the Market before they disappear.

    Alright! And since this week was jam packed with new releases, we want to know what you think of our latest updates. The FarmVille team is always interested to hear your feedback, so if you have any opinions you would like to share with us, please make sure to visit the Official FarmVille Forums or www.farmville.com.

    Alright! On that note, let's go ahead and get into the coming soon segment of today's podcast.

    First up is a feature our community already seems very excited about. Pigpens will be making an appearance in FarmVille in the very near future. Now, Pigpens will be released in two separate phases. The first version of the Pigpens will introduce a constructible building that will offer you storage for any of those poor, homeless pigs you may have running around your farm. The second version of this update will introduce truffle hunting, a feature that will allow you to trade in truffles for new items. To gain truffles, you will have to feed your pigs slop, which can be made from bushels. Once your pigs eat their slop, they will hunt for truffles on your Neighbors Farms. These truffles can be traded for exciting new prizes, including new types of pigs!

    In addition to this, I am very happy to announce that FarmVille will be doing another charitable campaign for the wonderful people of Haiti. This upcoming event will allow our users to help build a much needed school for the children of Haiti, and there will be opportunities for players to participate to this noble cause without having to pay money. The FarmVille Community Team will be providing more information about this campaign in the coming weeks, so please make sure to stay tuned for updates.

FrontierVille: "Build a Water Tower!" asks a lot for a little

Added on September 17, the goal titled "Build a Water Tower!" in FrontierVille asks for quite a lot of materials. The goal doesn't come as part of any particular theme, but maybe it's here to douse the flames from the recent item updates. All you'll need is less than three open goals for this one to appear and it doesn't seem to have a time limit. We would hope not for what it requires:


    Gather 1,000 lumber (!)
    Receive 5 Survey Authorizations
    Receive 5 Water Rights Agreements


Here's the clincher: all of these items, including the 1,000 lumber, will be used in completing this goal. Now, while receiving a nifty-looking decoration for 250 XP is nice, it can't be worth a whopping 1,000 lumber! Though, it does sell for 2,500 coins.

Anyway, you can get all 10 pieces of paper work by requesting them as gifts from friends or you can buy them outright for 10 Horseshoes per requirement, which amounts to about less than $3. What's going to eat up most of your time is gathering 1,000 pieces of wood for this goal, which is a little unreasonable. Enjoy mowing down the rest of your homestead for the next week or so.

Happy Aquarium Anniversary Event offers free exclusive fish next week

Happy Aquarium anniversary Crowdstar Fish
Happy Aquarium anniversary CrowdStar FishHappy Aquarium is going to be giving out a free, new CrowdStar Fish on Wednesday, September 29th.

Crowdstar's favorite colors are still yellow and orange, and while its first fish resembled a five-pointed star, this newest fish comes bursting with fins like a bright sunflower. Fans in the forums are eager for a name, but for now, we'll have to wait until next week, between the hours of 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. (Pacific Daylight Time/PDT) for more details of this pretty piscine blossom.

If you don't want to forget to grab your fish during the 1-hr window of its availability, the game gives you the option to let Happy Aquarium add the anniversary date to your Facebook events calendar. All you have to do is wait for the event window to pop up in your game and answer "Yes", "Maybe", or "No" on whether you'd attend. To reach their events page directly, log into Facebook and click here.

Cafe World One-Year Anniversary dishes and catering mission coming soon

It's hard to believe that Cafe World launched a year ago on September 30 -- it feels like I've been running my virtual restaurant much longer than that. In honor of the cafe simulation game's one-year anniversary, everyone will be invited to celebrate via a series of limited time Anniversary Dishes and an Anniversary Catering Mission.

cafe world one-year anniversary dishes
The Catering Mission will have 'amazing rewards,' and it sounds like you'll need to get the existing catering missions done before you are able to take this one one.
cafe world one year anniversary menus
There's no official word on when these anniversary items will arrive in-game, but September 30 is coming up shortly, so keep your eyes open and birthday hats at the ready.

FrontierVille "Swap Meet" goals: for newbies only!

In light of recent advanced goals, two new, potentially unreleased goals may be floating about right now in FrontierVille for newer players. Showing them the ropes of the gifting and helping mechanics in the game, the new series of goals, "Swap Meet," have no prerequisites nor do they have a time limit. They're also pretty simple for you newbies to grasp, which is why we assume that if they are currently live in the game, they're only visible to new players. Now, don't you feel special?

Find the new goals and their requirements after the break. The first goal, "Prairie Swap," rewards 55 XP and requires players to:

    Add three items to their Wishlist
    Remove one item from their Wishlist
    Tend to five neighbor crops



Sounds simple enough, right? After completing this, newbies will be tasked with "Buyer Beware!," which asks players to learn about the gift of giving. Here's what you'll need to do for the goal's 25 XP and 200 coin reward:

    Send two items to your neighbors through their Wishlist
    Chop down five Pine Trees
    Finish one Collection



FrontierVille Buyer BewareAgain, these are all tasks you would probably do in normal play, anyway. The idea here is to get you used to using the gifting system effectively to complete your collections and later goals.

Using the new Wishlist system is easy. Just mouse over your friends' portraits and their five wanted items will appear. If you own one or more of those, the option to send that item will be visible underneath the icon. Click that icon and follow the steps.

Putting items into your Wishlist is a little more cryptic at the moment. Once you build a cabin (one of your first missions), just click on the cabin and choose to go inside. Your Wishlist--which you wouldn't know was there unless you scoured a forum or something--rests above your creation tools and you can edit and share it at any time. In later goals, the quickest way to complete them is to put the required items in your Wishlist, so enjoy the crash course.

YoVille Twitter Contest has players tweeting the deets to win big

Like any social gaming company should, Zynga understands the power of social media, which it hopes to display in the YoVille Twitter Contest during Player Appreciation Month. The contest is going on now through September 23 with 10 tweeters a day to win 100 YoCash and a Grand Prize winner to receive a massive 1,000 YoCash when the event ends.

All you need to do is follow "@yoville" on Twitter and tweet the following messages each day:

    Day One: "I want to win 1,000 YoCash! Join in on Player Appreciation Month on @yoville#YoVille!"
    Day Two: "Player Appreciation Month Rocks on @yoville#YoVille! I want to win 1,000 YoCash!"
    Day Three: "I want to WIN 1,000 YoCash! Player Appreciation Month going on now @yoville#YoVille!"


For each day, you can send out the above messages five times; that's 15 chances to win either 100 or 1,000 YoCash. You have until midnight of each day to submit your five tweets and the random winners for each day will be announced the following morning. With over 7.8 million users, we just can't wait to see how many times the fail whale makes a visit this week.

Treasure Isle: New Boosts up for sale, dig, cut and mine more than ever

New Boosts
Still waging the endless war of opinion that is Pirates vs. Ninjas? Zynga has added new Boost items to Treasure Isle that should help with coming to that conclusion. Each of the three Boosts, Shovel, Machete and Pickaxe will cause the tools to use one less Energy per task and go for varying amounts of Island Cash. Oddly enough, there is also a bundle option that pretty much trivializes the idea of buying them separately. The items' asking prices go a little something like this:

    Shovel Boost: 50 Island Cash (about $9)
    Machete Boost: 20 Island Cash (about $4)
    Pickaxe Boost: 15 Island Cash (about $3)
    Boost Bundle: 50 Island Cash (wait a second...)*


*While you can buy these Boosts separately, a bundle of all three costing the price of just the Shovel Boost is quite a deal. Considering the Shovel is the most widely used tool in the game--who's Boost will most likely sell the most--just buying a Shovel doesn't make much sense. If you're going to invest in these at all, save yourself the $7 and go in on the bundle.

More YoVille Halloween Costumes now available

yoville halloween costumes
The second installment of Halloween costumes has arrived to YoVille. Head over to the clothing store and check out this set of spooky fashion. Dress as a devil, mummy or even a pumpkin and scare your friends. Body costumes also have matching accessories. Check them all after the link.

If you are looking for a cheaper costume, check this post about the new 30 coin costume!
yoville halloween costumesyoville halloween costumesyoville halloween costumes
This article originally appeared on YoVille Lounge.

Find more stories on our 2010 Halloween Guide for FarmVille, Mafia Wars & more.

Restaurant City offers ghoul-busting action and free treats for Halloween

Restaurant City Halloween Horrors Unleashed
As though Midnight Week and the currently running Transylvannia Week weren't enough, Restaurant City has unleashed a neighborhood invasion where players can nab Halloween ghouls to earn points for daily awards. These awards are divided into three tiers: Bronze (requires 150 points), Silver (400 points), and Gold (800 points).
Restaurant City Ghoul Meter
Each of these tiers also gets its own ghoul meter so you can keep track of how many points you have.
Restaurant City Unleashed Ghouls Awards
Today's Gold Award is the discontinued Brain Jar (a premium item that was originally available in July for 15 Playfish Cash). Bronze and Silver prizes tend to be free coins or rare ingredients. Be sure to post to your Facebook profile when you collect your prizes because it'll give other players the chance to share in your winnings!

Vampire Wars' Bear Familiars and Parisian sets are filled with Energy

With the events in Paris unfortunately come to a close, Zynga has added some items to Vampire Wars for us to remember our adventures with. There are new Bear Familiars that grant the same bonuses as those before them, which, quite frankly, is kind of boring. Can't these creatures be a bit more interactive? Couldn't they, say, grant a new Familiar-centric ability when purchased? It seems like Familiars have solidified themselves as a staple for Energy boosts and as cosmetic accessories. These are the three Bears you can buy from the Avatar Shop:

    Grizzly Bear: 40 Favor Points, grants 25 Energy
    Polar Bear: 60 Favor Points, grants 40 Energy
    Zombie Bear: 80 Favor Points, grants 55 Energy


Again, you'll have to buy these Familiars in order from top to bottom, which will run you the expected total of 180 Favor Points, or around $25. While the Energy is a permanent addition, there isn't much motivation to buy the Familiars unless you're either a collector or want to make a cosmetic change. Check behind the break for the other new items in Vampire Wars.
Parisian Avatar Sets
Next is our reminder of time spent in a distant land filled with delicious crepes and brilliant artwork, the Parisian Avatar sets. Fortunately, each gendered set offers the same bonuses this time around with each granting 2 Defense and 16 Energy. Each set, Female and Male, cost 35 Favor Points, or around $4. Again, the Avatar sets seem to give more for the money with more variety in their stats, but if raw Energy is what you're looking for, then the Familiars are unmatched if a little pricey.

Jay-Z and Microsoft's Bing use social game to promote autobiography

Decoded page appears on a pool table
We've seen rappers use the power of social games before, but this is just nuts (and he won't even have to blow something up). Esteemed rapper, clothing company CEO, record executive and now author Jay-Z is promoting his new autobiographic novel, "Decoded," with... a social game.

The lyricist-turned-businessman-turned-author teamed up with Microsoft's Bing Team and marketing firm Droga5 to make an online scavenger hunt of sorts starting today. The hip-hop maestro has spread 200 pages from his new book across the world from L.A. to London, asking his loyal fans to find them all before "Decoded" hits shelves Nov. 16. The pages will be displayed on everything from billboards to pool tables to the inner lining of designer jackets, according to The New York Times.

Players can discover the pages on their journeys into the real world or do it all from the comfort of their own computer chair using the game's website. All you need to do is register using your Facebook information (you know they had to fit it in there somewhere) and start searching through the website's built-in Bing Maps feature. Of course, you'll be given clues as to where the next page might appear and a proximity meter will help, but the rest is up to you.

Oh yeah, everyone who finds a page will be entered for a chance to win a trip to Las Vegas to see Jay-Z perform live with Coldplay on New Year's Eve 2010. Now that is social gaming.

New FarmVille.com Free Gift: Yellow Mums

Yesterday, we gave you a sneak peek at some of the upcoming "Mum" items that we believe would be coming to FarmVille in the near future. Tonight, one of those items has indeed launched in the game, in the form of a FarmVille.com exclusive free gift.

The Yellow Mums can now be gifted by players who travel away from Facebook (it'll be ok, I promise), and head to FarmVille.com, where they can then send them to their friends back on Facebook.

As a refresher for those who haven't dealt with FarmVille.com exclusive gifts before, it's smart to keep in mind that once the gift is "on Facebook," it can be sent back to you instantly by those friends without they themselves having to travel to FarmVille.com themselves. Convenient, no? Just have them click on the "Send a gift back" link, and voila - instant Yellow Mums for both of you.

We'll be sure to let you know when and if the other styles of Mums are launched in the game.

New FarmVille Animals: Pinto Pony & Dwarf Goat

In tonight's FarmVille update, we see the release of some sneak peek items that we told you about last week. The items then were called the Spotted Pony and the Spotted Pony foal, but due to tonight's store update, we now know that the Pony is actually called the Pinto Pony (and presumably, the Foal would be the Pinto Foal).

The Pinto Pony has been released alongside the Dwarf Goat. Both of these animals are available for Farm Cash, and we can see Zynga taking part in a promotion that hasn't been seen before with Limited Edition item launches. For the next two days, these two animals will be available at a 50% off introductory price of 12 Farm Cash for the Pony and 7 Farm Cash for the Goat.

After the two day introductory period, the prices for both will double, to 24 and 14 Farm Cash, respectively, so shop fast!

New FarmVille Country Fair Buildings: Festival Band and Garlic Stand

Tonight's FarmVille update sees two new buildings being released in the Country Fair theme, but this release is actually a bit more complicated than others.

The two items are the Festival Band and the Garlic Stand. However, as the Festival Band is a Farm Cash item, it is being celebrated as part of Zynga's 50% off introductory pricing, meaning that for the next 2 days, you'll be able to pick up the item for 21 Farm Cash. After the two day time limit, we're assuming the price will jump up to 42 Farm Cash, if our experience with math hasn't failed us.

The other item, the Garlic Stand, is a coin item, available for 250,000 coins. Unfortunately, as we said, it isn't part of the 50% off promotion, but you will gain a nice sum of 2,500 experience points for purchasing it, if you choose to make the splurge. The Garlic Stand will be available for the next two weeks, and we're assuming that the Festival Band will be as well (that is, 12 days after the introductory price expires, but that remains to be seen).

FarmVille Country Fair Decorations: Carousel, Giant Slide, Racing Booth, & Cotton Candy

As part of Zynga's extensive FarmVille update this evening, we've seen the launch of four new decorations in the ongoing Country Fair limited edition item theme.

The four items are the Deluxe Carousel, the Giant Slide, the Racing Booth, and the Cotton Candy machine. While the Giant Slide is a Farm Cash item, and is being offered at a 50% off introductory price of 15 Farm Cash for the next two days, it's really interesting (read: strange) to see that another Farm Cash item, the Deluxe Carousel, isn't also discounted. Either way, you can pick up the Carousel for 35 Farm Cash, while the Giant Slide's price will double to 30 Farm Cash in two days' time.

As for the other decorations, the Racing Booth (think a midway game where you try to win stuffed animals), and the Cotton Candy machine are both available for coins, at 3,000 and 2,000 coins, respectively - bargain basement prices, considering the fact that they are limited edition.

Aside from the Slide, these items are marked with a time limit of 14 days, so you still have a bit of time to shop before selling out becomes and issue. Still, if you're actively participating by decorating in this theme, we won't blame you for spending your cash / coins on them right now.

FarmVille decorations & animals find permanent home in the store

Zynga has released tons of new content in FarmVille this evening, but perhaps none is more interesting than the addition of some new (and returning) permanent items to the game's store.

The selection includes a Forest Horse and Autumn Horse, both of which cost 30 Farm Cash, as well as a Wild Turkey, available for 18 Farm Cash (the perfect way to start the Thanksgiving season off right).

In terms of decorative items, you can now purchase the parts to an Evergreen Train. Simply scroll past all of the currently available Country Fair items, and you'll see the three-piece set of Evergreen Train engine, Car and Cart (caboose), available for 20 Farm Cash, 120,000 coins, and 7 Farm Cash, respectively.

Sure, any of these items would be fairly expensive additions to your farm, but with no time limit, you'll have plenty of time to save up the coins or Farm Cash necessary to purchase one or all of them.

It's great to see Zynga bringing back some of our old favorites to the store (like the Wild Turkey), as well as offering these new items like the Train for our shopping pleasure.

Madden NFL Superstars adds Team Packs and Cyber Monday Deal

Team Card Packs
Putting those Collections together is a pain, isn't it? Playfish and EA want to help with that through their most recent update to Madden NFL Superstars. Players can now buy NFL Team Packs in the Store for various Playfish Cash prices. These Team Packs will contain a mix of players of each NFL team and require various levels to access. These packs should make completing particular Collections that much easier considering you can aim toward completing a specific team's Collection through buying Team Packs.

Also included in the update is a huge Cyber Monday Deal. For the rest of the day as of this writing, players can buy an Ultimate Card Pack bundled with 20 Game Day Tickets for 90 Playfish Cash or about $18. At just 10 Playfish Cash more than a normal Ultimate Card Pack, this deal will have you set for a long time. Not to mention that for a short while all the previous Players of the Week can be found in both Ultimate and Platinum Card Packs and they're more common than ever. You only have a few hours left, so take advantage of this update while you still can.

Social City: Save the Windows Phone promo link for 2 free City Bucks daily

Social City: You got more City Bucks!
If you remember the Windows Phone 7 promotion in Social City, you'll recall that players are suppose to get a free City Buck for every time they viewed a Windows Phone commercial, and are allowed up to "2 video views per day." This ensured 2 free daily City Bucks, but the video was only advertised on Page C (the Financial News section) of the Social City in-game newsletter. And then, shortly after, the advertisement disappeared, and with it, we assumed the freebie deal was gone too.

But that freebie offer is back today! And following the return of the offer is a hot tip from a game-savvy and generous player, Nunofrc, who left a comment saying that all you need to get the free daily City Bucks offer, is to save and run the link to the videos -- here's that link.

Click on the link when you're already playing Social City. Doing so will launch a Windows Phone commercial in the form of a YouTube video. After the video has played all the way through, you'll get a message from the game that your free City Buck has arrived. Repeat this, and you've got 2 free City Bucks!

Zynga: FarmVille Unicorns will soon offer Unicorn foals

One of the most hotly anticipated items in FarmVille over the last few weeks was the Unicorn. Luckily, we were finally given the Unicorn as part of the Mystery Game last week, but even then, users weren't fully satisfied. What was missing from the equation? The simple ability for Unicorns to produce foals.

Luckily for all of you, our inside source at Zynga has confirmed to us that in the future, Unicorns will be able to breed foals. Now, don't get too excited just yet, as this feature might take a few weeks to come to the game. Why, you ask? According to our source, it has to do with the fact that December will simply have so much stuff going on in FarmVille, that they won't be able to fit it into the normal development schedule. Rest assured though, it will happen in the future.

If you missed out on the White Unicorn that was inside last week's Mystery Game, feel free to try this week's version, as it contains a chance to win a Candy Cane Unicorn from the Winter Holiday theme.

New FarmVille Winter Animal: Gypsy Horse

There had been talk for some time about the release of a Gypsy Horse in FarmVille, but after seeing leaked images of the horse, we weren't sure when exactly (if ever) the animal would actually be coming to the game.

In a rare non-Tuesday/Thursday update, however, Zynga has officially launched the Gypsy Horse in the game, as part of the current Winter Holiday limited edition item theme. For those that are simply amused by the name, know that the Gypsy Horse is an actual variety of horse - meaning that real-world horse lovers will probably be more than willing to purchase one of these beautiful animals for the game's asking price of 26 Farm Cash.

What's more, we have it on good authority that the Gypsy Horse will be able to produce a Gypsy Foal, if placed inside the Horse Stable and given the chance to breed.

The Gypsy Horse will be available for the next 26 days.

New FarmVille Mystery Game for the week of November 28

In a rare move, Zynga has updated the FarmVille Mystery Game before the regular Tuesday night time limit. Fear not, however, if you didn't have a chance to pick up one of the White Unicorns available in the previous Mystery Game, as this week offers something that you might like even better.

The contents of this week's Mystery Game are all about the new Winter Holiday season, and contain some items that we talked to you about as sneak peeks. The contents of the Mystery Game have been confirmed as the following:

Candy Unicorn
Winter Reindeer
Winter Ferris Wheel
Winter Sleigh
Winter Fountain
Arctic Hare

All of these items seem to be exclusive to the Mystery Game, which costs a whopping 24 Farm Cash to play this week, up from the 16 Farm Cash price you might have been expecting. Still, with the chance at another Unicorn, and the news that Unicorns will soon be breedable, it might be worth the expense. You'll have the next 6 days to decide that for yourself, before this round expires from the store.

Mafia Wars introduces Inventory Page revamp with nifty tutorial video

We mobsters have been patiently awaiting the new inventory page in Mafia Wars since it was hinted at a month ago by the Zynga team. Now, we are that much closer with its first unveiling to the public in this short tutorial video provided by Mafia Wars community manager Nate. Detailing all the changes to the Mafia Wars inventory system, Nate even goes through some features to the new inventory that will lead to entirely new features to the game such as informational item categories that will later have more meaning.

While the new inventory page certainly breaks things down more clearly, it seems far more geared toward veteran players than it does newbies or more casual Mafia Wars players like myself. With color-coded breakdowns of active and inactive items as well as better explanations of how these items affect your Attack and Defense statistics in addition to your mafia members, I have a feeling that this new system will go way over the heads of many players. Though, this is the direction the game has been headed in for some time, slowly becoming Zynga's hardcore social game. According to many commenters, the new inventory has yet to go live for them (including myself), but take a look for yourself and decide what crowd the new inventory is meant for.

FarmVille Sneak Peek: Party Barn, Icicle Cottage and Party Barn parts

    Party Barn Brick     Party Barn     Party Barn Nail     Party Barn Wood
Been wondering just what this New Year's Eve Party in FarmVille might look like since we recently broke the news? Just as expected, our friends at FarmVille Freak are on the case and have found some unreleased images of exactly where it'll take place. If some guess work is appreciated, I'd say the New Year's Eve Party Building will work a lot like similar buildings released this year, with players being required to ask their friends for construction materials and later to gift one another invitations for the big event.

Our reward for completing the Party Barn will be the bumping, new-age hoedown you'll see in the FarmVille Freak post. Finally, we have something to look forward to this New Year's Eve. You know, aside from the awesome parties, flowing drinks and Jan. 1 regrets.

FarmVille Sneak Peek: Gingerbread Gnome, New Year Gnome and more

    New Year Gnome     Winter Bear Cave     Snow Animal Statue
In addition to an expectantly awesome New Year's Eve Party, FarmVille Freak has found some unreleased decorations in FarmVille that should help sign off 2010 and ring in 2011 with a bang. For the remainder of this year, we have the Winter Bear Cave and Snow Animal Statue to winterize our farms even further. As for rounding out the Christmas cheer, a Gingerbread Gnome, Stocking Planter, Tinsel Arch and Tinsel Fence await us. And lastly, to help ring in the New Year is the 2011 New Year Gnome, all dolled up in a 2011 top hat, a fancy suit and scarf and fittingly enough blowing on a kazoo. To help us decide on what to save for first, FarmVille Freak has included estimated prices for a few of these unreleased items:

    Gingerbread Gnome – 18 FV$
    Winter Bear Cave – 25 FV$
    Snowy Animal Statue – 12 FV$
    Tinsel Arch – 10,000 Coins
    Tinsel Fence – 5,000 Coins



Stocking Planter     Tinsel Arch     Tinsel Fence
If these prices turn out to be accurate, that's quite a lot of cash for a simple cookie. Not to mention that it'll be rough to fancily fence off your Holiday area in FarmVille with a Tinsel Fence that costs 5,000 coins a piece. If you want the truest Christmas and New Year's experience on the farm, it looks like you'll have to harvest double time this holiday season.

FarmVille Sneak Peek: Snowball Fight, New Years Invite Icons and more

    Snowball Fight Hit Other     Snowball Fight Taunt     New Years Invite     Reindeer Mugshot
It looks like the folks at FarmVille Freak are working as hard as we are this holiday season to bring you the latest in holiday news from the farm. In its latest round of unreleased items in FarmVille, the team has found some icons that surely help give us a better idea of what the imminent Snowball Fight might be like as well as the New Year's Eve Party.

It seems that the Snowball Fight will be much like gifting expect with much less unwrapping and much more of the cold stuff in players' faces. It looks as if you'll be able to "send" throws to one another with the recipient given the option to send back, but that's not all. You will also be able to send your friends taunts to get them to throw more snow at you, which we imagine will be to help grow your pile of snow for that incoming Snowman feature. We also see what the New Year's Eve invites will look like, which could be part of building the yet-to-be-released Party Barn.

Seasons Greetings Game Card
While the new Seasons Greetings virtual Game Card from Zynga is self-explanatory, there is one peculiar unreleased icon that we just can't point our fingers on as to what it means, the Reindeer Mugshot. Could this be yet another unreleased feature or part of the incoming snow-related events? I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Unless, of course, FarmVille Freak works its magic ahead of time and grabs some more unreleased content for us to drool over. Until then, you just make sure you have enough room on the farm for all these incoming items.

CityVille Cheats and Tips: Visit Neighbors early and often

First Friend Visit
While we've covered visiting neighbors in passing once or twice in our ongoing series of Cheats and Tips for CityVille, it's only just now that the CityVille team has given us some vital information about how they work. Whether you're a hardcore mayor or just a casual city council member, these tips on how to maximize your bonuses from neighbor visits could potentially launch ahead of your friends in your favorite new Zynga game.

First off, every time you visit a brand new neighbor for the first time you will be rewarded with 100 coins, 3 Energy and 1 XP. Now, that's a pretty hefty bonus just for popping in and welcoming your new friend to the game, don't you think? As you all probably know already visiting friends daily after the fact nets you the standard 50 coins, 1 Energy and 1 XP.

Join us after the break for more details on exactly how neighbor visits work.
Old Friend Visit
Visiting a neighbor grants players five actions, marked by lightning bolts on the left hand side of the screen. These actions can be used to help your friend by providing business via tourist buses, chopping their trees, collecting fees from their properties or harvesting their crops. Though, we recommend avoiding that last option altogether--it almost always leads to complaints.

We'll admit it, we lied (at least only a little bit). While the visiting bonuses are available daily, they actually run on a 23-hour clock, meaning that they reactivate every 23 hours instead of 24. For the most hardcore of CityVille players, this will mean the world--but this news won't mean much to us more casual mayors as we actually enjoy sleep. However, here's where things get interesting.

Reputation Hearts
While the visitation bonuses are only available every 23 hours, your five actions will replenish every 12. This means that you can level up your Reputation score ( the meter that replaces your Energy when visiting friends) even more than before--bonus or not. Though you might not see yourself taking advantage of this piece of information, consider this tip. Why not try logging into the game just before you go into work or school and visit all of your friends? Then, by the time you come home, your friends should be ready for some help yet again. Try this out and you might see that Reputation score fill up even faster than your experience level. And if some of you feel that Reputation is a meaningless number, check out what CityVille forum moderator Sugar Monkey has to say about that:

    The number of bonuses you can get from neighbor visits also depends on your total reputation, so if your reputation is lower than the number of neighbors you have you will run out of bonuses before you will run out of neighbors to visit.

This means that although bonuses run on a 23-hour timer, they're are governed by your Reputation score as well. For example, if you have a Reputation score of 6 and you have eight neighbors, you will only be able to collect bonuses from six of your friends daily until your Reputation matches the number of friends you have. Basically, increase your Reputation to allow yourself to take advantage of all the bonuses your neighbors have to offer. So, as the game continues, requiring more neighbors for more features, you might want to take advantage of that 12-hour timer to make sure your Reputation matches your popularity.

No More Heroes creator to spit out three more Mobage social games

And only one of which will actually involve grasshoppers. Grasshopper Manufacture, the Japanese developer responsible for stylish, gory hardcore games like No More Heroes, revealed just before the Tokyo Game Show that it will release three mobile social games through the now-global Mobage network, Kotaku reports.

The first game to be released internationally under this new deal between the developer and DeNA, which runs the Mobage network with recent acquisition ngmoco, is Frog Minutes. The game already released in Japan back in March, so this will likely just be a localized version for Mobage on Android phones in the U.S. and abroad.

In Frog Minutes, players disturb parts of a forest scene to stir up various insects and feed them to frogs. The more quickly players do this, the higher their score will climb, it seems. Ribbeting, isn't it? (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Not much was revealed about Grasshopper Manufacture's other two Mobage projects other than their titles: Humans vs Zombies and Alien Busters.

The developer plans to show more of those games at a later date, according to Kotaku. Grasshopper Manufacture is placing big bets on social games with a mobile social version of No More Heroes, which designer Suda 51 said he hopes it will be bloodiest social game around.

While it's interesting to see a Japanese developer known for taking risks with unique games major consoles that (unfortunately) sell poorly hop into the low-risk, high-profit world of social gaming, it wasn't hard to see this one coming. And considering the effect social games has had on traditional American developers, we doubt this is the last news like this we'll hear from Japan.

Karma Kingdom looks to combine social good, social fun on Facebook

A Facebook game that can score us some good karma points--where do we sign up? We've seen games like FarmVille and CityVille run social good campaigns, but Singapore-based developer Asvathaa has a made an entire game of the idea. The developer just released Karma Kingdom on Facebook, a quest-driven game that looks to help you "Create Your Better World," according to its tag line.

Karma Kingdom integrates Indian mythology into modern lessons of doing good for others. It does this by allowing players to curate an island nation and maintain their citizens' happiness using the three tenants of happiness: health, community and knowledge. You will be guided by several Indian gods and goddesses in your efforts to keep the people happy through quests.

You do this through creating homes for your people to live in, and then surrounding those homes with decorations that promote Health, Community and Knowledge. It seems as if it's important to keep that balance in the decorations you place. Otherwise, your citizens will quickly become unhappy and provide less Goodwill, the resource you need to provide for your people.

Players can plant crops to provide more Goodwill, and the game doesn't seem to be governed by any energy system. (Now, that's something fresh.) But what's more important is the real goodwill Asvathaa aims to create with Karma Kingdom. The Singapore developer has promised to donate a 10 percent of its income through Facebook Credits to non-profit charities. (However, Asvathaa doesn't say which charities it will donate to exactly.)
Karma Kingdom in action
The more happiness-generating decorations you buy in the game using Facebook Credits, the more Asvathaa will donate ... somewhere. "We want to offer a personal CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) platform for every individual as the desire to give back exists in each one of us," Asvathaa CEO and founder Ashok Desai said in a release. If anything, the game looks to be a fresh take on the genre given that it doesn't limit your play time through energy, and maybe it will do some good, too.

Club Penguin fires a salvo of fun with Puffle Launch for iPhone [Video]

Parents, secure the iPhones and iPads. If Club Penguin isn't going to slide onto Facebook anytime soon, we'll take the next best thing: the iPhone. Puffle Launch, first released as a mini game within the kids world of Club Penguin over a year ago, launches onto iPhone tomorrow, Sept. 15. The game, which will be available for the paltry price of $.99, puts players in control of Daredevil, one of the many Puffles available in the existing Disney-owned web game.

Just like in Club Penguin, kids can fire Daredevil from a cannon, careening into obstacles and collecting Coins. Better yet, those Coins can be transferred to kids' existing Club Penguin accounts to buy new items from the web game's store. As players advance through the game's many daring and dangerous aerial courses, they will eventually have to face the Crab Boss.

According to a Club Penguin representative, Puffle Launch is already played by 150,000 kids daily, and a new Puffle is adopted every second in the kid-friendly virtual world. (That amounts to more than 20 million of the little balls of love adopted in 2011 already!) With statistics like that, color us baffled as to why Club Penguin has yet to hit Facebook, especially considering the amount of preteens that are already active on the social network.

Hopefully, this is just the beginning of Club Penguin's expansion beyond its little home on the web and onto new platforms (aside from Nintendo's stable of consoles). Check out the game's trailer below, but you might not want to show the kids just yet, unless you're willing to buy it on every iOS device in the house.

Kabam on Edgeworld's release and what battles lie ahead [Interview]

Edgeworld
Even at first glance of its war-torn landscape filled with futuristic buildings blasted to bits by the laser weapons of alien and mechanized armies, it's clear that Edgeworld is San Francisco-based developer Kabam's most ambitious project yet. Formerly known as Watercooler, the studio and publisher is filled with fans of traditional strategy PC games. Even CEO Kevin Chou was a world-ranked StarCraft player back in the day.

Inspired by sci-fi staples like Star Wars, Star Trek and even the Halo series of shooter games, Edgeworld is the culmination of Kabam's ongoing mission to bring a true 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) game experience to Facebook. Since the game's "open beta" release in August, the team is hard at work to make that vision a reality as it claims to have in previous games. (As of this writing, the game enjoys over 858,000 monthly players, according to AppData.)

We sat down with Edgeworld Producer James Holloway recently to hear his thoughts on the game post-release, and what plans he and the rest of the Kabam team have for the strategy game in the future.
Edgeworld in action
Now that Edgeworld has released, what are your knee-jerk reactions? What do you love about the game at release, and what would you like to fix most?

We're really pleased with the release so far. We're seeing a lot of people come back to play the game--it has a really high retention. A lot of people are joining Alliances and engaging with each other. In every sector, I see chat is very active. But this is just the beginning.

The biggest thing that I think we're missing is that our Alliance feature is pretty lean right now. The thing that we would like to emphasize more is a cooperative play of the game. I think we have just the basics right now. The new Maps feature is going to integrate very tightly with alliances--you work together [with Alliances] to conquer territory.

We have about four unique turrets and nine units, and that's just the beginning. We're working on a new unit and a new turret that we're really excited about, and those are going to launch in the next month. We'll be introducing higher levels of our buildings. So, there's a lot more content that we need to create, and we're just getting started.

What's the most interesting thing you've seen players do in the game since release--something that never happened during testing?

One thing that we sort of didn't anticipate was that some Alliances and players are attacking each other for resources. At one point we didn't have inter-Alliance resource sharing, so right now you can actually send resources to other players to help them out. So, we didn't have that feature [originally].

But what people were doing was working around that by setting up their Command Centers, which are what contain your resources, outside the perimeter of their turrets. [Players would then] leave their Alliance, cook it, and then attack them and take their resources. So, they were doing resource transfers before the feature was even allowed.

Do you have any interesting or helpful gameplay tips for the players to get ahead in Edgeworld?

Certainly! If you're just starting out, we give every player two days of starter protection wherein no other player can attack you. That's a free few days of protection, and use that time wisely to build up your base and experiment with different configurations. Allow the Factions to attack your base. There's a lot of experimentation with the units.

Players are posting on the forums, talking with each other and also within their Alliances about the best combinations of units to deploy when attacking a base. There are a lot of combinations of tanks and DPS [damage per second] units you can deploy. Rhinos, or other types that have a lot of hit points, can take a lot of fire, and then you can deploy units with longer range or higher DPS behind them.
Edgeworld blast
Depending on what your goals are--like, you might want as many resources as possible--you might want to deploy the Raiders. The Rhinos draw fire from the turrets, while the Spectres sit outside and fire away at the turrets. You really want to upgrade your Spectres to give them a longer range.

We have two different types of units in the game right now: infantry units and mechanized units. It's not necessarily that the mechs are more powerful than the infantry--we're still constantly balancing the game to make sure every unit has its role.

Another thing is that the Warp Gates are really important as far as attacking goes. As you upgrade those, you increase their capacity so that you can actually deploy more units on the ground [at once]. As you unlock more units, the more powerful units will start to consume more of the [Warp Gates'] bandwidth, so you want to upgrade those to deploy the biggest army that you can.

Thanks for talking with us (and for the tips), James.

Territories Could Blow Alliance Play Wide Open

During our chat, Holloway had something brand new to show coming soon to Edgeworld. (Though, it's still in the concept phase, so weren't provided images.) It's a feature tentatively known as "Territories," and the game's producer hopes that it will expand Alliance play into something even more meaningful.

"We haven't seen a past feature like this that I can think of, and we all play a lot of games," Holloway gushes about what he's about to show me. "We're trying to make this a deeper, more robust 4X or empires building game."

As it relates to the game's story, many of the Galactic Union's outposts have been abandoned during the war for Cerulea IV, and they're ripe for the taking. The Territories feature will provide you with a map of the entire planet Cerulea IV, with your home base appearing in the center as a star. Your home base will be surrounded by either hostile, Alliance or neutral territories marked in red, green or simply displayed as abandoned outposts, respectively.
Edgeworld concept art
It's up to you to work with your Alliance to invade either hostile (controlled by enemy Alliances) or neutral outposts, and keep them under your control for as long as possible to reap their benefits, which weren't revealed to us. (Our best guess is additional resources to keep your home bases going.) Players will individually attack outposts just as they would enemy bases, and can call on their Alliance for help asynchronously.

However, players cannot build on these outposts, only bolster their existing defense turrets with their own resources to maintain control of the benefits they provide. This will make it more difficult for enemies to invade. Speaking of invading, players can only enter outposts that are adjacent to their own base or controlled outposts. Eventually, we see the Territories feature becoming a constant struggle between opposing Alliances, and hopefully something for us to work toward.

"This is very different from our other strategy games," Holloway says. "In most cases you individually own tiles on the map, but in this case you kind of need an Alliance to own territory. This is something we're really excited about. We're still working on it and prototyping it, but hopefully we'll have something out in the next four weeks."

Zynga, Playdom, EA and Bioware vets cause a Rumble with new freemium studio

While many a story has come to light recently, detailing high-level game designers jumping ship to Zynga, here's one where a fairly big gun under the big Z's umbrella has left for new pastures. To be specific, John Yoo, lead designer on CityVille, is one of a few industry veterans that have joined with Greg Richardson [pictured], of former BioWare/Pandemic fame, in the creation of a new freemium (free-to-play) game studio by the name of Rumble.

After speaking with Rick Thompson, the founder of another major social games company - Playdom - the two partnered to form Rumble. Rounding out this new package are former EA employees Mark Spenner and David O'Connor. With these big names in their camp, Richardson's goal with Rumble is to create games that are free to play (supported with paid add-ons), but lie somewhere in between the expensive world of high-end PC games and the extremely casual games represented by many Facebook titles.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Richardson has faith that this middle ground holds a lot of merit. "We saw this third hill, and we think it's the biggest of the three hills," he says. This isn't to say, though, that Facebook games are out of the picture, as Richardson confirmed that they will use the social service, but will also focus on mobile devices and PCs through the browser.

In addition to developing its own games, Rumble will publish other developer's titles. While no specific details were announced about any of Rumble's specific games (we can expect the first sometime early next year), Richardson did list many of the company's areas of inspiration, which lie anywhere from Zelda and Super Smash Bros. to Diablo and Civilization. Regardless of the game in question, he says that Rumble looks to avoid overly complex gameplay. With this many areas of inspiration, we're definitely interested in seeing what Rumble comes up with, but for now - the possibilities are endless.

FrontierVille: Finish the New Years Resolution goals for 20 Horseshoes

Apparently, you guys know how to get things done in FrontierVille, at least where behind the scenes changes are concerned. If you were one of the many people that tried to finish the six New Years Resolution missions in FrontierVille before January 14 in order to earn your free 50 Horseshoes, but couldn't, there is still a definite incentive to actually finish those missions, aside from earning the various Crates full of decorations that you'll receive when finishing each one individually, that is.

After much outcry from users over the difficulty to complete these missions (on the official fan page, on the Zynga forums, and every other site with a comment button), or the various glitches being suffered from therein, Zynga has decided to reward all users for finishing the missions, regardless of whether they did it before January 14, or after.

All six of the New Years goals will be available to complete until January 31, as first reported, but Zynga has now announced that if you can finish all six before the end of the month, you'll receive 20 free Horsehoes. Sure, it's not 50 Horseshoes, which admittedly is a lot better, but any free Horseshoes at this point is definitely better than none, especially when considering the downright difficulty of some of these missions. Sell 50 Oxen, Pigs, and Goats? Sheesh!

In addition, remember that if you can complete all six missions before they expire, you'll receive an exclusive new badge - the Resolute Pioneer badge, that is only being given away to those users that complete this feature in full. If you don't complete one or more missions before they expire, so too will your opportunity at receiving this badge. You wouldn't want that to happen would you? Good luck to all those that are still trying to finish these goals in time - we're going to need it!

Cafe World Cooking Academy Graduation Goals: Everything you need to know

Did you think that the White Cravat missions would be the end of your term in Cafe World's Cooking Academy? With all of the work we've had to put into our schooling so far, it would be great if that were the case, but unfortunately, there are three more missions to complete before we can apparently leave our school days behind us.

Before we get into the details of these missions, it should be noted that some users (myself included) have so many outstanding goals that these newest goals won't even appear in our quest set on the right side of the screen, because they are covered up by other goals. In the case of goals that ask you to collect items from friends (which these do), you'll need to either complete other goals to uncover the Graduation set, or hope that the goal has something you can complete within your own Cafe, so you can force the quest window to pop up (click on the black progress bar in the top left corner of the screen when it appears).

Whether you can see these quests on your cafe or not, meet us behind the break for a look at the steps you'll need to complete to finally finish your work at the Cooking Academy.

The first is called The Big Day," which is a reference to Graduation Day. It asks you to complete three steps:

Collect 1 Graduation Hat
Collect 2 Grad Bull Horns
Collect 5 Graduation RSVPs

Unfortunately, yes, all three of these are collection steps, and you'll likely be incredibly familiar with how they work by this point. Simply send requests to your individual Cafe World neighbors - the ones that you think would be most likely to help you. And remember, in Cafe World, RSVPs can typically only be sent one-per-player, so you'll need to find five different friends to help you complete this portion of the mission, or pay the 35 Cafe Cash price to unlock them all.

After finishing this portion of the quest, you'll unlock the actual graduation mission series, which comes with two parts. The first part is "Graduate with Honors" and asks you to cook a few dishes, earn some coins, and raise your Buzz Rating.

Cook 12 Herbed Halibuts
Earn 15,000 coins
Attain Buzz Rating of 75

The Herbed Halibuts can be put onto the stove, deleted, and then cooked again to more quickly complete this task (otherwise you'll be waiting the full 24 hours that they take to cook). Earning 15,000 coins will of course happen over time if you simply play the game, and a quick way to raise your buzz rating is to take advantage of your Coffee Machine or Drink Bar, if you have them. Serving an individual coffee or drink to a customer can sometimes raise your buzz rating 3 or 4 points or more, so use some of that energy you have on hand and quickly put that requirement to bed.

Finally, finishing this portion of the quest will unlock "Graduation Day," a one-task quest that asks you to "Attend Graduation." Simply click on the button that says "Attend Graduation," and you'll receive your Graduation Diploma as a reward. This is apparently a wall-hanging decoration that you can use to show off your progress to your friends that visit your cafe.

Once this is complete, rumor has it that you'll be able to finally unlock Cooking Specialty, and you'll be able to choose from three chefs that you'd like to cook with - American, French or Chinese. What happens after that is anyone's guess, as we haven't heard of any users actually making it that far yet. Once the Specialty Cookbook becomes more widespread, we'll be sure to give you a complete rundown on how it works.

CityVille: Landmarks have arrived, but they might disappoint you

It's an update that many CityVille players had been waiting for - that being the addition of Landmarks in our cities - however, the actual execution of said feature might leave you wanting for more. Either way, Landmarks are officially now available to build in your cities.

There are four Landmarks available to purchase so far - the Pearl Tower (a building in Shanghai, China), Big Ben, the Empire State Building, and the Chicago Tower. All four can be purchased from the now unlocked "Landmarks" portion of the game's build menu, and all four come with the exact same stats. They all cost a whopping 2 million coins each, and they all serve as a sort of Community Building, adding to your maximum total population available by 2,000 citizens.

Once you build the structure of your landmarks, you'll be able to staff it with 12 of your friends by sending requests to those individual users that you think will help you. Only then will the population bonus go into effect.

And... that's pretty much it. See? I told you their release was pretty lackluster. If you can afford one of these buildings, I suppose the simple fact that you could afford one would be worth bragging about, as your friends would then see the building when visiting your town and be in awe, but your mileage may vary on that front.

We'll be sure to let you know when more Landmarks are released, or if new features are added to the buildings therein, so keep checking back!

FarmVille Sneak Peek: Cupid's Castle building project coming soon?

It looks like Zynga will be releasing a new building project for us in FarmVille in the near future, to coincide with the upcoming Valentine's Day holiday. The building is the Cupid's Castle, and it apparently has three stages of construction (shown from left to right in the above image), each making the castle more elaborate and downright cute in the process.

In theory, this building will be just like the Haunted House or the Winter Workshop released during the Halloween and Christmas events, respectively. Since it seems as though we'll be collecting valentines in a collection event just like last year, this would only make sense, as the Cupid's Castle would then give out free valentines every time you collect from it (that is, if it works as we assume).

Of course, all of this is purely speculative at this point, and whether or not the building will actually serve any purpose whatsoever remains to be seen. This is a just a best guess as to what we think Zynga will do. Remember, there is no guarantee that the building will actually even be released in the game, so keep that in mind.

FarmVille Sneak Peek: Six new Duck types apparently coming soon

If you've finished building your Duck Pond in FarmVille, and would like more variety in terms of the Ducks that you place inside of it, you're in luck, as we've found six as-of-now unreleased images of Ducks that will apparently be launching in the game in the very near future.

The ducks are, from left to right in the picture above: Muscovy Duck, Red Billed Duck, Pekin Duck, Scoter Duck, Cayuga Duck, and Goldeneye Duck. All of these are true-to-life varieties of Ducks, and seem to be pretty good virtual representations at that.

There's no word yet as to how these Ducks will be made available (they will most likely be available as Farm Cash items in the store, but may also be released as free gifts), or how much they'll cost, so start saving both your coins and your Farm Cash just in case. In addition, remember that there is no guarantee that all of these Ducks will be released officially in the game, so keep that in mind.

We'll make sure to let you know when/if these Ducks become available and how to add them to your farm, so keep checking back!

CityVille is available in Indonesian, Turkish; global conquest continues

Zynga has made CityVille available in Turkish and Indonesian. Now that players can say both "Merhaba" and "Halo" to CityVille, the world's most popular social game is now available in seven languages including English. However, the languages aren't available to me personally--perhaps it's an issue of location? Hopefully, this is fixed soon, because I'm sure there are plenty of Turkish or Indonesian folks living in the US who would like to play in their native language.

Update: CityVille has also been made available in Portuguese, yet no official announcement was made. The language is ready for use unlike Indonesian and Turkish.

Regardless, this appears to be Zynga's next step in maintaining CityVille's dominant numbers: reach out to as many demographics as possible. The game recently suffered a dip in players from its massive peak of 100 million, and you can bet the monolithic developer will do everything in its power to steady its numbers. However, it will be interesting to see how Zynga handles localization in countries with vast culture differences such as China, Japan and the rest of East Asia.

Facebook Game Cheats and Tips: How to master the new News Feed

Facebook News Feed tweak
As some of the more observant social gamers may have noticed, the Facebook team has revamped the way the News Feed works. While the changes have greatly reduced the clutter in your News Feed, they might have reduced the amount of social game-related posts you're seeing. This is because the News Feed now (by default) displays only the News Feed posts by friends and Pages that you interact with the most. But what if you want to see all of those posts in the rare chance they provide something useful? Here's how to make it happen.

On your homepage, scroll all the way up to the top of your News Feed. Then, click on the text that will most likely read "Most Recent" and you will see a drop down menu appear. If you'd like to see all game-related News Feed post from your friends, click on the Games icon and your feed will refresh with only those updates. This way, you can easily see what everyone is up to and reap the benefits more easily. Who said you need third party apps?

Games Feed
You can also tailor the News Feed to only display posts from those you want to posts from by clicking on the "X" next to their name in any given post. Choose "Hide all by [X]" to never see a post from them again. Better yet, if all you're interested in is gaming on your account, you can create your own Friend's List to populate the News Feed. All other posts will be blocked from your feed. So, say you only want to see FarmVille-related posts. Then create a Friend's List that only includes the FarmVille fan page, your favorite news sites and your swathe of farmer friends. Finally, watch the News Feed populate with all the bonus items you could have never hoped to find before.

[Via All Facebook]

Did you find these tips helpful in increasing your available News Feed bonuses? How did you go about finding these bonuses before Facebook changed the feed?

Feeling depressed? Play Bejeweled, a new study says

The National Institute of Mental Health says that roughly 21% of all Americans suffer from some form of "mood disorder," and a large portion of those same people suffer from full-on depression. Another not-so-fun fact is that depression is the leading cause of disability for people ages 15 to 44.

So instead of popping a pill or masking your sorrows using some other less-than-productive means, a new study, underwritten by PopCap shows that playing "casual" games like Bejeweled, Peggle and Bookworm Adventures can help reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression.

bejeweledThe study, conducted at East Carolina University's Psychophysiology Lab and Biofeedback Clinic performed on a group of 60 clinically depressed people (half of them served as a control group), who were evaluated after playing a few of PopCap's games, and those who played the games experienced 57% reduction in symptoms. The findings also suggest that playing casual games can have short and long-term benefits for those who play them.

"The results of this study clearly demonstrate the intrinsic value of certain casual games in terms of significant, positive effects on the moods and anxiety levels of people suffering from any level of depression," says Dr. Carmen Russoniello, ECU clinic director and professor who presided over the study. "In my opinion the findings support the possibility of using prescribed casual video games for treating depression and anxiety as an adjunct to, or perhaps even a replacement for, standard therapies including medication."

I'd be curious to see what other types of games have the same effect. Would playing all games help people feel less depressed? What if you play these games too much? Another recent study published in the New York Times says that heavy video game playing has been found to cause depression in teens, mostly because they're spending so much time playing games that they neglect a social life. Not sure if that would also apply to Bejeweled and the other games in the PopCap study, but something to consider for the next go-round.

Incrediland on Facebook: An incredibly confusing experience

Remember what it felt like to watch the Teletubbies as an adult or even a young adult, for that matter? Playing Incrediland on Facebook is to relive that wave of unsettling and aggravating confusion. The only difference between the two is the former was designed for toddlers while the latter is in a place largely dominated by an audience that's 18 and older. Home of the Incredimals and developed by a company of the same name, Incrediland is a series of small islands containing three species of these strange creatures. And your task is to collect them all through horribly disconnected activities and terrible loading times.

The game starts you off with one Incredimal, the Gambi. Now, there are 30 subspecies to each of the game's species of critters making for 90 total Incredimals to collect. Now, how you do this is where Incrediland becomes frustratingly convoluted. Frankly, I created an Incredimal and have no idea how I did it. Even after reading the game's tutorial carefully the process is like some sort of endless, pointless Rube Goldberg puzzle.

Gambi in the wild
From what could be gathered, you will visit your second Incredimal through a series of nondescript menus and tiny buttons. Then, you will breed this creature with your existing one to create a new Incredimal that will hopefully fulfill one of the 30 subspecies you are looking to acquire. After the baby hatches from the Incubator, which takes a full hour, you can teach it new tricks in the Nursery for it to mature into an adult. Each trick costs Incredicoins to teach your critter, but these can be refilled through several methods as well as buying them outright for cash. Oh, and these Incredimals also have stats attached to them--Speed, Strength and Intelligence--but you likely won't have an idea in the slightest as to what they mean (I don't).

Finally, your newly trained and matured Incredimal can breed with your existing ones to create new subspecies. As you level up from creating new creatures, you will gain access to new species and subspecies. The game's tutorial video claims that your friends will be needed to progress, but I've yet to see any reason to add friends other than the ability to trade and sell Incredimals. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to much more to Incrediland than the simple and inexplicable act of collecting miscellaneous creatures. Sure, Incrediland has an impressive and complex breeding concept and collection hook, but its been nearly impossible to appreciate beneath baffling interaction design.

FarmVille: Bushels can still be shared, don't worry

Zynga made an interesting change to FarmVille yesterday that condensed several pop-up notifications. Of course, one of those was the infamous Bushel pop-up. Now, only one, smaller pop-up will appear after harvesting all of your crops providing a total of Bushels found throughout an entire harvest. This unfortunately removed the ability to share them through notifications. FarmVille blog contributor Tim reminds us that its still possible to share Bushels.

All you need to do is share from inside the Farmer's Market. Click on any given Market Stall, click on "Look Inside" and then click the "Use Bushels" button. From there, each Bushel will appear and have the option beneath it to either be used or shared. Click "Share," choose how many you want to share and then you'll be prompted to make a News Feed post for all of your friends to scrap over. This method is tedious for sure, but at least those annoying pop-ups are gone.

[Image Credit: FarmVille Blog]

Are you satisfied with the changes to Bushel notifications? What other optimizations would you like to see come to FarmVille?

FrontierVille Sneak Peek: Fanny and Bess Mystery Crates

The war between Fanny and Bess continues regardless of whether you set them up during the Valentine's Day Goals (a little flirtatious rivalry, perhaps?). FrontierVille Info has found two new Mystery Crates that are on their way to FrontierVille revolving all around our two favorite ladies, Bess and Fanny. It's unknown when exactly these Crates will be released or whether they're slowly rolling out already, but according to FrontierV, they will cost between 30 and 35 Horseshoes.
Bess Collection
The Bess and Fanny Collections each have a chance of dropping one of four items, which are essentially mirrors of one another. The Bess Collection includes a White Rabbit, Bess' Horse, Bess' Wagon and Bess' Outhouse.

Fanny Collection
If you hadn't noticed already, each Collection takes on the general theme of its character pretty heavily. The Bess Collection is largely red and orange-colored, while the Fanny Collection takes on blue and black almost exclusively. Fanny's items include a Black Raven, Fanny's Horse, Fanny's Wagon and Fanny's Outhouse. According to FrontierV, these items will be available for purchase through March 28, so I'd say these Crates are en route as of this writing.

[Image Credit: FrontierV]

Do you plan on buying either of these Mystery Crates? Which do you prefer more, and why?

FarmVille Model Farm goes green with St. Patrick's Day items

As useless as it may be, the Model Farm presses on in FarmVille, and has been updated in time for St. Patty's Day this Thursday. Items in this edition of the Model Farm include some new additions that were just introduced to the game last night like the Irish Hare, Irish Cob Horse, Leprechaun Girl Gnome and more. Of course, all of the items here are available for either Farm Cash or an exorbitant amount of coins, though you do receive that random bonus for visiting. Taking a peek won't hurt anybody, right?

[Via FarmVille Freak]

Find the rest of our St. Patrick's Day Coverage right here.

Do you visit the Model Farm daily for the bonus? Have you ever purchased anything from there?

Rumor: FrontierVille 37x37 Land Expansion is rolling out to pioneers

Despite the Goals leaking early and our prediction of a March 1 release date, the 37x37 Land Expansion in FrontierVille has been MIA for six weeks now. However, according to FrontierVille Info, several players have reported that the expansion has arrived on their homesteads. If true, the expansion is coming in the midst of a Coyote invasion, but we have (almost) everything you need to know right here. So, don't come crying to us that you don't know what to do and get to expandin'.

Have you seen the 37x37 expansion on your homestead yet? When it finally launches, do you plan to take it head on or are you too busy fending off hungry Coyotes?

Quote of the Moment: 'Zynga can't just throw FarmVille onto mobile'

Angry Birds Facebook

    You can't take an experience that works in one environment and one ecosystem and force-feed it onto another. It's like Zynga. They can't just take Farmville and throw it on mobile and see what sticks. The titles that have been successful for them on mobile are the ones they've built from the ground up for the platform.

Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio said this in an interview with Inside Social Games regarding Angry Birds' big move to Facebook. The (filthy rich) Angry Birds' "Mighty Eagle" also revealed that the Facebook version has been in the works for an entire year. This goes to show how seriously the company is taking the move in comparison to most studios who crank out Facebook games in a fraction of that time. However, the prime reason behind Rovio's extended development for Angry Birds Facebook is adapting the same experience to a different platform. One can imagine this is a challenge from either end of the spectrum.

[Image Credit: Game N Train]

What do you think of Rovio's strategic approach to Facebook? Will they be successful on the platform?

FrontierVille's same-sex marriages originally a 'bug'

Zynga's FrontierVille is the first Facebook game to include same sex marriages. In the Wild West themed game, you create an avatar and, soon after you start settling your piece of frontier property, you have the option to take on a virtual spouse -- which can be a man or a women.

While all this seems modern and open-minded (not to mention, follows a bigger trend in video games, such as The Sims and Dragon Age, that depict sex scenes with same-sex partners) -- turns out that the options for a same sex spouse was totally unintentional. Zynga Chief Game Designer and FrontierVille creator Brian Reynolds says the option to choose male or female was originally a 'bug.' Players seemed to like it, he says, so they just left it in. Since then, the number of same sex marriages in-game is triple that in the US. That piece of data might explain the Fanny n' Bess Valentine's Day mission that launched in February, where the goal was to form a love connection between two of the game's female characters.


Reynolds also says players respond well to the game's Facebook wall posts, which are filled with sexual innuendos like (which we've covered that in more detail here), "Justin visited neighbor homesteads and got wood!"

frontierville wall posts sexual innuendo
All of this sexy talk was part of Reynold's 'The New Frontier in Social Gaming' talk at this year's South By Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas, which was covered by Inside Social Games. Reynolds discussed the thinking behind the game, which -- while not the most popular Zynga game -- has set a new standard for social games. Big picture, that means people making games now face the challenge of adding tried-and-true game experiences, such as quests, story, characters, into the social experience of a Facebook game.

And, Reynolds says game makers should not to be afraid to push boundaries in order to elicit social interaction. "Friends don't want to know about what you've done in a game," he says, "they want to know something funny about you or something they can start a conversation with."