Zoo World celebrates 4th of July with collection game

Zoo World 4th of July
Zoo World is celebrating Independence Day with a fun little game that has players collecting fireworks and sparklers. These items can be exchanged for limited edition animals that cannot be attained any other way. There are four rewards that can be received - a lobster, a white bird, a blue bird, and a red white and blue butterfly.

To collect fireworks, you will need to ask friends to send them to you. This is a bit tricky, because all three fireworks are not immediately available. Right now, you can send and receive the Red Firework only. On the gift page, you can see that the White Firework will be giftable in 1 day, and the Blue Firework will not be giftable for 3 days. This stretches the game out a bit and makes it so you cannot possibly finish the game on the first day. Sparklers can only be received from wall posts, but anyone can go in and share sparklers.

To access the 4th of July game in Zoo World, go to your home zoo and click on the red, white, and blue boat that is parked near the entrance to your Zoo.

Indie social game creators team with RockYou Studio Partners to get noticed

Fans of indie social games, this might be the next place to look for new games that your friends probably never heard of. RockYou announced the launch of Studio Partners, a new initiative to take indie Facebook game creators under its wing and give their games the exposure they deserve by leveraging its "advertising solutions, analytics tools, and broader marketing support," RockYou said in a statement.

Studio Partners is an open platform for developers to submit their games and potentially increase their reach through publisher RockYou's resources. Following the company's relationship with John Romero's indie--can you say that about the guy who co-created Doom?--social game studio Loot Drop (whose first game, Cloudforest Expedition, is due out this summer), RockYou looks to maintain developers' creative freedom while hopefully increasing their audience.

"We're inspired by the originality and imagination of social game developers around the world," said Josh Grant, SVP and GM of Studio Partners and formerly RockYou's SVP of Strategy and Corporate Development. "Studio Partners gets to the heart of what RockYou believes in-delivering the very best, most innovative games to our players." If innovation is truly the way to beat the monolithic competition in the social games space, RockYou (and its upcoming stable of indie creators) might have the leg up.

[Image Credit: TellMeBaby]

Do you think the competition for the big league Facebook game developers will come from indie creators? What types of innovation do you hope to see from RockYou and Studio Partners?

3 Blokes launches strategic assault on Facebook with Galactic Allies

We can almost hear the 3 Blokes team in Australia screaming "Fire everything!" as they hit the proverbial "Launch" button on its first Facebook game under publisher RockYou, Galactic Allies. (It would be most appropriate, no?) Real-time strategy fans can jump in on the thrill of space-faring, asynchronous player vs player combat, complete with 3D visuals.

Essentially, Galactic Allies is RockYou and 3 Blokes's answer to the growing trend of hardcore strategy games on Facebook. However, the duo make a point of mentioning that this is a more casual approach to the burgeoning sub genre, and that the game features a heavy focus on an episodic storyline. And in keeping with current trends sparked by developers like Kixeye in War Commander, players can control units individually.
Gallery: Galactic Allies on Facebook
This means you'll likely be able to maneuver your starships around enemy fire, adding another layer of strategy to combat in the game. "Galactic Allies alters expectations for what a Facebook game can be," said 3 Blokes VP and GM George Fidler in a release. "It's a deep and compelling strategy game, but with the accessibility of a browser game." (It also looks like it takes the general idea behind Galactic Trader, one of 3 Blokes's first games, and blows it wide open using some familiar art assets.)

Hopefully this accessible approach will apply to the litany of upgrades players will accumulate across various missions and episodes. Judging from these early screen shots, it looks like Galactic Allies will focus heavily on dialog, but more importantly: Battles will take place both on the surface of alien planets and far above them in the infinite void. In other words, there will be plenty of things high and low to make go boom in Galactic Allies.

Click here to learn more about Galactic Allies on Facebook >

Are you a fan of strategy games on Facebook? How do you think Galactic Allies might size up against its competition? Sound off in the comments. 1 Comment