Third Dimension in Flash Enables Web Sophistication

Adobe Flash has been able to retain its popularity and reputation solely because of its capacity to scale itself to meet the requirements of users which changes drastically within short spans of time. Evolution of Flash and the ActionScript platform has been highly resourceful enabling Flash developers to develop entities in high standards.

Users from all over the globe have become very sophisticated and the websites they have started using are also expected to be top-notch. The progress in technological advancements has been rapid in the last decade keeping the process of development of other technologies on their toes. The increase in bandwidth especially has made it simpler for end users to access material on the web which is more evolved and browse through web pages rich content within seconds. From being a simple platform for developing vector animations for the web, it has matured into one used to develop complex applications run on multiple platforms.

The applications developed by Flash programmers tend to consist of graphics, animation, video and sound. These media content is completely controlled in the Adobe Flash platform using ActionScript 3.0 which is a powerful language using object oriented programming. The latest inclusion in Flash’s process of evolution is the addition of the 3^rd dimension in its applications and games.

Already there are various 3D features existing in Adobe Flash Player and Flash Professional CS5 which have been used to develop projects using the Adobe Flash platform and ActionScript 3.0. The advancements which have been planned in the Flash platform are anticipated to enable a Flash developer to integrate add-ons to enhance the 3^rd dimensional functionality during project development.

Flash professional CS4 was the first version to integrate 3D in the flash platform for flash developers to use although many other developers have found methods to simulate 3D attributes in their Flash projects. As of this version of Flash, the video content integrated in a project can be enhanced to have 3 dimensions. This can be done using the options available in the interface of Flash or by utilizing the coding aspect of ActionScript. Objects in the flash platform used to have the horizontal property of ‘x’ and the vertical property of ‘y’. In addition to these two dimensions a Flash programmer can add third dimension of ‘z’ which will define the depth of the object to their project. Additional functionalities of moving and rotating the object in the 3D space can also be activated using this version of Flash.   

Using these options the objects which are still in 2 dimensions can be manipulated and observed on the 3D space. Even by using a third party platform these actions can be performed by the Flash ActionScript programmers. By default the Flash platform considers the objects as two dimensional only, only when the object which is placed is altered it starts taking the 3^rd dimension into consideration.

For more information and to hire Flash Developer, Flash programmers and Flash Actionscript programmers visit: www.dckap.com

Third Dimension in Flash Enables Web Sophistication

Adobe Flash has been able to retain its popularity and reputation solely because of its capacity to scale itself to meet the requirements of users which changes drastically within short spans of time. Evolution of Flash and the ActionScript platform has been highly resourceful enabling Flash developers to develop entities in high standards.

Users from all over the globe have become very sophisticated and the websites they have started using are also expected to be top-notch. The progress in technological advancements has been rapid in the last decade keeping the process of development of other technologies on their toes. The increase in bandwidth especially has made it simpler for end users to access material on the web which is more evolved and browse through web pages rich content within seconds. From being a simple platform for developing vector animations for the web, it has matured into one used to develop complex applications run on multiple platforms.

The applications developed by Flash programmers tend to consist of graphics, animation, video and sound. These media content is completely controlled in the Adobe Flash platform using ActionScript 3.0 which is a powerful language using object oriented programming. The latest inclusion in Flash’s process of evolution is the addition of the 3^rd dimension in its applications and games.

Already there are various 3D features existing in Adobe Flash Player and Flash Professional CS5 which have been used to develop projects using the Adobe Flash platform and ActionScript 3.0. The advancements which have been planned in the Flash platform are anticipated to enable a Flash developer to integrate add-ons to enhance the 3^rd dimensional functionality during project development.

Flash professional CS4 was the first version to integrate 3D in the flash platform for flash developers to use although many other developers have found methods to simulate 3D attributes in their Flash projects. As of this version of Flash, the video content integrated in a project can be enhanced to have 3 dimensions. This can be done using the options available in the interface of Flash or by utilizing the coding aspect of ActionScript. Objects in the flash platform used to have the horizontal property of ‘x’ and the vertical property of ‘y’. In addition to these two dimensions a Flash programmer can add third dimension of ‘z’ which will define the depth of the object to their project. Additional functions of moving and rotating the object in the 3D space can also be activated using this version of Flash.   

Using these options the objects which are still in 2 dimensions can be manipulated and observed on the 3D space. Even by using a third party platform these actions can be performed by the Flash ActionScript programmers. By default the Flash platform considers the objects as two dimensional only, only when the object which is placed is altered it starts taking the 3^rd dimension into consideration.

For more information and to hire Flash Developer, Flash programmers and Flash Actionscript programmers visit: www.dckap.com

Bubble Raider Facebook Based Bubble Shooter Puzzle Game

Bubble Raider is a Facebook-based bubble shooter puzzle game from UK-based developer PlayDemand. The game has been available since December of last year, but has been showing particularly strong growth since the beginning of May. At the time of writing, the game is the No. 11 top gainer by MAU this week with an increase of 220,000 (76%).

Bubble Raider’s basic mechanics are very conventional for the genre. Players fire bubbles from a cannon at the bottom of the screen using their mouse and must “pop” groups of three or more connected like-colored bubbles. Any bubbles which are no longer connected to the top of the screen after a group has been popped fall to the bottom and provide the player with a bonus. If the player takes too long to complete a level, the “ceiling” begins to descend, pushing the remaining bubbles further down. If the bubbles cross a line at the bottom of the screen, the level is over and the player must expend a life to try again.

Alongside the level-based mode, known as “Journey,” Bubble Raider also includes two additional ways of playing. “Time Attack” is a “blitz-style” mode, where players have a minute to score as many points as possible. In this mode, the ceiling does not descend, but clearing over half of the screen causes new groups of bubbles to scroll down, providing a potentially “infinite-length” level. Players are ranked against their friends on a weekly leaderboard in this mode, can send bragging Timeline posts to their friends and can make use of soft currency to purchase powerups — though the earning rate of this soft currency is very slow, making it practically essential to spend real money if players wish to take advantage of these boosters.

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Flash 11.2 Security Updates And Fixes

Adobe has released an update for its popular Flash developer that addresses a critical security issue. According to the security bulletin page over at Adobe Support, the vulnerability is being exploited in the wild so Adobe has issued a security update for its Flash Player software that fixes two critical vulnerabilities in the widely-used program. At long last, this latest version also includes an auto-updating mechanism designed to streamline the deployment of Flash security fixes across multiple browsers. This does not mean that users who do not use Internet Explorer or work with different operating systems are safe from exploits, as the vulnerability exists on every system as well.

This is the third security update for Flash in the last six weeks. Flash Player v. 11.2 addresses a couple of bugs in Adobe Flash Player 11.1.102.63. Adobe warns that these vulnerabilities could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. Adobe has traditionally deployed two separate installers for Windows based systems: One for Flash on Internet Explorer, and another for non-IE browsers. With the release of Flash Player 11.2, Adobe is introducing a new background update mechanism to help Windows users while updating. The new Adobe Flash Player background updater updates all instances of a release version of Adobe Flash programmer for all Web browsers on a computer. Previously, users had to perform separate updates for each Web browser running on their system. If a vulnerable version of Adobe Flash Player is on a system, you are asked to upgrade to the latest version as soon as possible to protect the system from possible exploits.

After the introduction of the new background updater, Windows users have the option to download and install updates for Adobe Flash Player automatically, without user interaction. After a successful installation of Adobe Flash Player 11.2, users are presented with a dialog box to choose an update method. The following three update options are available to users:

* Install updates automatically when available (recommended)
* Notify me when updates are available
* Never check for updates (not recommended)

Additionally, the user can change his update preferences at any time via the Flash Player Settings Manager, which for Windows users can be accessed via the Control Panel. In the Flash Player Settings Manager, the update preferences can be found and selected in the Advanced tab under Updates.

Adobe Auditude is Adobes video ad management and monetization platform, helps media companies to dynamically insert, target and measure video ads efficiently. With the integration of Adobe AudienceManager and third party site data, publishers can better understand who is viewing the ad and target accordingly. Advancements to Partner Management tools enable content owners to better manage inventory distribution and revenue shares with syndication partners. Enhanced reporting tools give publishers the ability to access more detailed data on ad views, completion rates, location information and more.

About Author

DCKAP is a Fremont, CA based global technology services company delivering technology driven business solutions that meet the strategic objectives of the clients. Also For Free consultation and more informations on regarding Flash ActionScript Developers, Flash Development and Flash Programmers.

Pot Farm review

Pot Farm from East Side Games and Brain Warp Studios has been available on Facebook for some time now — we last looked at it a whole two years ago — but the game has been seeing a surprising resurgence in popularity in recent months. At the time of writing, the game’s monthly active users figure is back up to 880,000 — closing in on the figure of a million MAU that we quoted in our review from 2010.

Pot Farm is a relatively simple farming game that casts players in the role of a bedraggled, bearded hippy running a “crop”-growing operation of questionable legality. The basic game flow revolves around players planting various crops, waiting for them to mature (or fertilizing them to make them grow instantly) and then harvesting them to sell and earn money.

The twist on the basic farming game formula is the fact that some of the fictional in-game crops are more illegal than others. Planting an illegal crop negatively impacts the player’s “protection” rating. If this stat drops to and remains at zero, the local park ranger will show up and confiscate the illegal plants if the player does not harvest them quickly enough. Since the illegal plants typically yield higher profits than the legal ones, players are encouraged to take this risk in order to build up their finances. Players may also build various structures to increase their protection, however, ranging from legal crops such as hops and corn to fir trees blocking the operation from prying eyes, angry bears and, oddly, inflatable sheep.

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Flash Developers Expertise Brings a Cutting Edge to Media and Entertainment

Fremont based global technology Services Company DCKAP announced today a proactive development initiative in Flash and ActionScript technologies for business, education, entertainment and multimedia, in keeping pace with surging market growth.

Our team of flash programmers has the expertise to design and develop flash web sites and flash intros for businesses and flash based applications using flash scripting language ActionScript 2.0 and ActionScript 3.0. Flash animations and intros that we develop can be easily integrated into a web site to make it highly interactive. DCKAP has successfully completed and delivered a diverse range of Flash ActionScript applications for business, entertainment and education for its various clients.

Flash has all the required features to create and deliver compelling applications, content and video to a wide audience. It is an integrated, cost-effective solution, has multi-screen, multi-device capability and enhanced search engine indexing, along with an emphasis on data security. Flash animations and Flash introductions are intuitive and enable the creation of applications that demand user attention and can be easily integrated into Web applications to make them highly interactive. With creativity and professionalism of the Flash ActionScript developer, businesses will derive maximum return on investment. Flash designers, Flash developers and Flash Action Script programmers use Flash as a versatile tool to create highly interactive Web applications, Game Programming and presentations. We have designed and developed various flash web sites and other applications like presentations, animations, cartoon, games & movies, banners, screensaver, action games, flash chat, remote based solutions and flash applications using Macromedia Flash MX to the global clients. ActionScript 3.0 is the programming language for the Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR runtime environments. ActionScript 3.0 is used for a variety of applications from simple animations to complex data-rich interactive applications.

Flash is an effective and attractive tool that enables the user to create highly skilled and attractive applications and presentations that will look great, work perfectly and smoothly. DCKAP is involved in the flash application development and most of the websites uses flash action script 3 components to interact with the users. Our professionals use wide range of flash action script animation to create interactive flash animations and tutorials. With creativity and professionalism of the Flash ActionScript developer, businesses will derive maximum return on investment. Flash designers, Flash developer and Flash Action Script programmers use Flash as a versatile tool to create highly interactive Web applications, Game Programming and presentations.

The true power of Flex lies in ActionScript, in-depth knowledge of which is an essential requirement for developers for adding interactivity to the applications. The developers also bring the knowhow to build component libraries in Adobe Flex, which is an important requirement for ecommerce solutions and multi-media web applications.

About DCKAP
DCKAP (www.dckap.com) is a Fremont, CA based global technology Services Company delivering technology driven business solutions that meet the strategic objectives of the clients. Founded in 2005, with offices in California & Colorado, USA, the UK, Australia and a development center in India, DCKAP has earned appreciation from well respected Fortune 100 companies for its competent services.

Stylista Fashion-themed Facebook game

Stylista is a fashion-themed Facebook game from Thai developer Sandbox Global. The title has been available in open beta for some time now, but showed up as the No. 4 top emerging Facebook game last week.

Stylista casts players in the role of a woman who’s recently arrive in New York and focuses on the growth of the player character’s “style” through shopping, decorating and social interactions. Gameplay largely revolves around visiting shops to purchase new clothing items and accessories, completing non-interactive real-time “jobs” to earn money and fulfilling the requirements for various quests in order to progress through the game’s light story.

The game begins with the player designing a custom avatar. This may only be female, though the player does not seem to be referred to by name at all in the game. A fairly limited choice of appearance options is provided at the outset, though players are able to unlock additional hair, eye, makeup and eyebrow styles as they progress through the game and earn money.

When shopping, players are able to “try on” various outfits simply by dragging them from the shop screen to their avatar, and then may purchase them using one of the game’s two currencies. Upon purchasing an item, players are rewarded with “style points,” which are used to unlock new districts and shops to visit. Hard currency items tend to offer considerably more style points than those purchased with soft currency. Hard currency may be acquired with Facebook Credits, credit card, mobile phone or PayPal, though for card, phone or PayPal payments the game’s interface only displays real money prices in Thai baht rather than dollars until the actual Facebook pay window pops up.

A lot of content in the game is friend-gated. An early quest requires players to invite a friend to the game in order to progress, and the expansion of the player’s room — required to store all their purchases — also requires the “assistance” of actively playing friends to complete, or the expenditure of hard currency.

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Features Of Adobe Flash Player 11.3

Adobe Flash released a beta of their upcoming Flash Player Cyril- Flash Player 11.3. The 11.3 release focuses on adding a number of features that would make Flash a more attractive gaming platform. To this effect Flash developers have added support for streaming textures. Games running using Stage3D can now stream textures, starting with lower quality and increasing quality as the texture load.

Flash also adds support for keyboard input while in full screen mode. With this feature, games are essentially limited to windowed mode if they need any kind of keyboard control. Full screen input will ask the user for permission, since it has the potential for misuse.

A number of improvements to audio have also been made, with support for low latency audio in their streaming API. Low latency audio support has also been added to their Sound API. Native JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) support enables ActionScript Flash programmer take advantage of fast parsing and generation of JSON-formatted data. Existing data could be integrated with minimal or no modification to the ActionScript project. Other interesting new features include FrameLabel events, now quality for individual bitmaps can be changed with support of Bitmap.drawWithQuality, the release outside mouse event is back and Flash Player now supports native encoding of bitmap data to PNG, JPEG, and JPEG XR. The last one will greatly improve the performance of online image editors.

While Flash Player 11.2 introduced auto-updates for Windows, 11.3 introduce auto-update for Mac OSX as well. For this release of AIR, Adobe seems to have focused on mobile. A number of new features have been added to AIR:-

* AIR supports USB debugging of applications running on iOS devices.

* For AIR apps running on Android 4.0, Stylus support has been added.

* For those developing AIR applications for iOS on Mac OSX, the developer tools now support running AIR apps in the simulator.

* AIR apps are now better while running in the background. They can perform network operations in the background and get notifications when the app is about to be suspended.

Finally, for Flash developer of AIR applications for Mac OSX, AIR adheres better to Apple guidelines. The next Flash Player release code-named Dolores will focus on performance, after which there is to be a major revamp of the core language and runtime, which might just mean Flash Player 12. Flash animations and Flash introductions are intuitive and enable the creation of applications that demand user attention and can be easily integrated into Web applications to make them highly interactive.

About the Author:
DCKAP is a Fremont, CA based global technology services company delivering technology driven business solutions that meet the strategic objectives of the clients. Also For Free consultation and more informations on regarding Flash Developers, Flash Development and Flash Programmers.

Business & Edutainment Goes To Higher Norms with Apt Flash Developers

Fremont based global technology Services Company DCKAP announced today a proactive development initiative in Flash and ActionScript technologies, to keep pace with surging market growth for business, education, entertainment and multimedia.

Our team of flash programmers has the expertise to design and develop flash web sites and flash intros for businesses and flash based applications using flash scripting language ActionScript 2.0 and ActionScript 3.0. Flash animations and intros that we develop can be easily integrated into a web site to make it highly interactive. We have designed and developed various flash web sites and other applications like presentations, animations, cartoon, games & movies, banners, screensaver, action games, flash chat, remote based solutions and flash applications using Macromedia Flash MX to the global clients. ActionScript 3.0 is the programming language for the Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR runtime environments. ActionScript 3.0 is used for a variety of applications from simple animations to complex data-rich interactive applications. Compile-time and run-time type checking and type information exists at both compile-time and runtime, improved performance from a class-based inheritance system than that of the prototype-based inheritance system, support for packages, namespaces, and regular expressions, revised Flash Player API are organized into packages and unified event handling system based on the DOM event handling standard are few of prominent the features in ActionScript 3.0.

DCKAP has successfully completed and delivered a diverse range of applications for business, entertainment and education for its various clients using Flash ActionScript 3.0. Flash has all the required features to create and deliver compelling applications, content and video to a wide audience. It is an integrated, cost-effective solution, has multi-screen, multi-device capability and enhanced search engine indexing, along with an emphasis on data security.

Flash is an effective and attractive tool that enables the user to create highly skilled and attractive applications and presentations that will look great, work perfectly and smoothly. DCKAP is involved in the flash application development and most of the websites uses flash action script 3 components to interact with the users. Our professionals use wide range of flash action script animation to create interactive flash animations and tutorials. With creativity and professionalism of the Flash ActionScript developer, businesses will derive maximum return on investment. Flash designers, Flash developers and Flash Action Script programmers use Flash as a versatile tool to create highly interactive Web applications, Game Programming and presentations.

The true power of Flex lies in ActionScript, in-depth knowledge of which is an essential requirement for developers for adding interactivity to the applications. The developers also bring the knowhow to build component libraries in Adobe Flex, which is an important requirement for ecommerce solutions and multi-media web applications.

About DCKAP
DCKAP (www.dckap.com) is a Fremont, CA based global technology Services Company delivering technology driven business solutions that meet the strategic objectives of the clients. Founded in 2005, with offices in California & Colorado, USA, the UK, Australia and a development center in India, DCKAP has earned appreciation from well respected Fortune 100 companies for its competent services.

Insomniac Games- Outernauts Monster Battle Game For Facebook

Insomniac Games’ is getting ready to release its first social title called Outernauts, a monster battle game for Facebook published by EA. While pet/monster collection isn’t new for the platform, it has proven to be a winning formula for some and it could yield another hit summer like 2011′s Monster Galaxy.

In Outernauts, players are cast as members of the titular agency, which is tasked with capturing and training alien monsters (“Beasts”) to help them make the galaxy a better place. As the adventure unfolds, players fight evil corporations and space pirates, help out local populations and investigate a mysterious group known as “The Ancients.”

When the game starts, players have to choose one Beast to accompany their Outernaut on his or her journey across the stars. There are five different Beasts to choose from at the beginning of the adventure, and they can’t be captured later in the game. EA and Insomniac are planning to give players the ability to add these creatures to their menagerie, though, by selling real-world plush versions of each starting Beast. Each plush toy will come with a code that will unlock the associated Beast in Outernauts. Every Beast is based around a specific type of element — like ice, lightning and plants — which are stronger and weaker against other elements. At launch, there will be 12 different element types available.

Gameplay is divided between adventure exploration, puzzles, turn-based monster battles and base-building. Players can visit 30 different worlds and explore world maps by clicking on areas of ground that their Outernaut moves to. Each map contains a story mission and side quests. During our time with the game, we visited a world where we had to prevent space pirates from kidnapping a young girl, which meant defeating the pirates in battle. The game will also require players to do some mild puzzle-solving; in the demo, this involved flipping switches to unlock doors and move platforms.

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Ubisoft is gearing up to launch Ghost Recon Commander on Facebook

Ubisoft is gearing up to launch Ghost Recon Commander on Facebook, the first game developed by Loot Drop after the studio’s Cloudforest Expedition was shelved last year by RockYou. The game is designed to interact with Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, a console and PC game releasing May 22. This is Ubisoft’s second Facebook companion game after 2010′s Assassin’s Creed-based Project Legacy.

Ubisoft VP of Digital Publishing Chris Early tells us that Ubisoft came up with the general theme for the Ghost Recon Commander, but was relatively hands-off when it came to designing the game’s mechanics beyond the idea of crossover content. Loot Drop co-founders Brenda Brathwaite and John Romero set out to create a Facebook game that would appeal to core gamers, while leveraging some of the lessons learned from Ravenwood Fair — the Lolapps game on which the two worked before forming their own studio. The game was shown for the first time to press at a private event at the beginning of the month.

Gameplay in Ghost Recon Commander requires players to establish and supply small squads of soldiers (“Ghosts”) that are sent on black-op missions, which include rescuing hostages, item retrieval and eliminating all enemies on a map. Each successful mission earns soft currency cash, which is used to buy new equipment for characters and to construct a base, which supports the squads. Replaying these missions increases the player’s cumulative score, which increase star ratings and net larger rewards. The game will launch with one campaign containing 10 missions, but more missions will be added soon after.

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KartRider Dash New Facebook Release From Nexon

KartRider Dash is a new Facebook release from Nexon: a kart-racing title heavily inspired by the Mario Kart series. The game allows up to eight players to race against one another simultaneously online in a variety of cartoony environments

KartRider Dash initially puts players through a series of tutorials introducing the game’s basic controls and explaining how to set up and join games. Players may either race with random opponents via the “Quick Start” mode, or with friends via “Buddy” mode. Participating in races costs fuel, which regenerates over time or may be purchased from the in-game store with soft currency. Players may also purchase unlimited fuel for either a single day or a full week if they are intending on dedicating themselves to their racing. When playing in Buddy mode, only the player who created the game session expends fuel on each race; in Quick Start mode, all racers expend fuel with each new race.

Gameplay once the race begins is very similar to the well-established conventions of the kart-racing genre set by titles like Mario Kart. At the start line, carefully timing the first press of the accelerator allows for a big speed boost. As racers proceed around the track, items may be collected to hinder other players, and a “drift” button allows players to deliberately skid around corners. The use of items and drifting can be challenging, so the game allows players to practice both of these techniques without having to expend fuel at any time.

Besides the standard racing mode where items may be used, KartRider Dash also includes a play style called “Speed Mode.” Here, there are no items on the track, but players may earn boosts by drifting around corners without colliding with the sides. Doing so fills a meter in the corner of the screen, and when this is full a boost item is awarded. This mode is ideal for players who enjoy racing but find themselves frustrated with the “full-contact” nature of the “Items” mode.

Between races, players may spend soft and hard currency in the in-game shop. Here, players may purchase visual upgrades such as new kart bodies, new characters and the ability to dye their character and kart; performance upgrades to their kart’s engine; and items which allow them to “auto-block” specific items. Certain items are level-locked, requiring players to have played the game a certain amount before being able to purchase them. This means that beginning players must learn to avoid and deal with offensive items rather than immediately purchasing the “auto-block” options, giving the game a good sense of pace and challenge.

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Social Game - Self Workout in Park for Facebook

Self Workout in the Park for Facebook is a new social game based around Self Magazine’s fitness events of the same name. The game challenges players to get their avatar fit and healthy, and hopefully inspire their real-life self to do the same.

The game commences with the creation of a custom avatar. This is accomplished through the purchasing of clothes, haircuts and other body features with soft currency, a short lifestyle questionnaire and the selection of the avatar’s “body type.” Since Self Magazine is primarily aimed at women, players may only create a female avatar regardless of their own gender.

Once the game begins, the player’s experience is directed by a series of quests from three different female “coach” characters. Through these quests, the player is encouraged to purchase fitness equipment and refreshment stands for their park, engage in workouts and invite their friends to join them. By doing so, players earn various types of “points” and level up their character.

Workout in the Park makes use of a fairly complex system of statistics and rewards in order to encourage players to think about all aspects of their fitness. Visiting a refreshment stand, for example, can provide players with water, protein and vitamin points, which can then be spent on participating in workout activities. These, in turn, provide players with experience points in Fitness, Nutrition and Wellness categories, and in order to level up all three of these point banks must be filled up to 100. On top of all this, the player has an Energy bar, though unlike many social games this may be simply restored by visiting a coffee stand. Gameplay becomes a matter of balancing workout and refreshment activities in order to earn points at a good rate.

All activities may be undertaken at one of three “intensity” levels. In each case, the costs increase with each level of intensity, but the rewards are greater. Higher-intensity activities also take longer periods of real time to complete, though it’s possible to spend the game’s hard currency to immediately finish an activity if the player desires.

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6waves’ latest title Ravenshire Castle

6waves’ latest title Ravenshire Castle is a strange beast. Combining elements of citybuilding gameplay with tactical stealth action, it looks like being the final entry in the “Ravenworld” series, thanks at least in part to the dissolution of 6waves’ internal development teams. But does this series end with a proud lion’s roar, or simply a whimper?

Ravenshire Castle casts players in the role of a lion or lioness revealed to be the heir to the titular estate. The castle in question has fallen into disrepair over the years, and it’s up to the player to restore it to its former glory by building and expanding, harvesting resources and retrieving the lost Ravenshire treasures from a series of rival castles.

Gameplay unfolds in two main parts. While at their own castle, players may build new rooms, build new items (each of which is designed to go in a specific room or outdoors) and collect income of currency and resources from objects and crops. Quests are provided by a series of quirky animal characters who gradually move in to the player’s estate as story progress is made.

Gameplay in this first part breaks with very few genre conventions — there’s building, crop harvesting, collecting items and all the usual activities — though there is a noticeably stronger focus on gathering specific resources to complete building projects than some similar titles. Most resources can be collected either by asking friends or by harvesting from the appropriate items. Some may only be gathered from rival castles, which is where the second part of the game comes in.

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Mirrorball Slots brings fairy-tale gambling to Facebook

British studio Plumbee broke out of stealth mode back in March with $2.8 million in funding and the announcement of its first Facebook game: Mirrorball Slots. The team’s fairy-tale themed slot machine title is now freely available to all on the social network, and showed up as the No. 14 fastest-growing Facebook game by DAU earlier this week. But is it any more interesting than the numerous unimaginative, uninspired slot machine sims already available on Facebook?

Mirrorball Slots, like its numerous competitors, assumes that players know how to play a slot machine with multiple pay lines, and provides no tutorial whatsoever. Players may bet on up to 25 different pay lines at once, with their maximum bet increasing as they level up. Various combinations of symbols net different amounts of winnings, and “wild” cards may be substituted for any symbol. It’s possible for multiple lines to pay out at once, and particularly huge wins prompt a “share” dialog where players are invited to brag about their good fortune on their Timeline.

“Bonus Wilds” vary in functionality depending on the machine players are currently using — on the Three Bears-themed machine, they increase the winnings multiplier; on the Rapunzel-themed machine, they “stick” in place until the player wins something; on the Snow White-themed machine they can trigger a bonus round.

Alongside these symbols, there are also “Scatter” markings that allow players to trigger a “free spins” mode, the exact form of which again varies according to the machine players are using. The player is initially provided with ten free spins of the reels, and certain symbols provide particular bonuses. On the Three Bears-themed machine, collecting “Goldilocks” symbols in sufficient quantities turns the three different “bear” symbols into wild cards; on the Rapunzel machine, collecting bonus wilds allow a prince to climb a tower, earning bonus spins and increasing winnings in the process; on the Snow White machine, players simply get triple winnings for a brief period.

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More shiny gem-matching with Jewel Journey

Jewel Journey is a match-3 puzzle title for Facebook. The developer’s name is conspicuously absent from the game canvas and its fan page, making it hard to pin down exactly who created it. Judging from the fan page in question, however, it’s possible to see that the game has been available from around January 2012, and it is also currently showing up in the “Newest” list on Facebook’s Games page.

Jewel Journey is a competent but unremarkable example of the match-3 genre, bringing no real innovations to the table. It even goes so far as to use the clichéd premise of the player being an archaeologist, but does not force this with intrusive, badly-written dialog scenes. Instead, it serves as the justification for the titular “journey” through a series of stages, beginning in the Grand Canyon and later moving on to an army base, a frozen wasteland, the lost city of Atlantis and some Mayan ruins.

The basic gameplay is conventional match-3: by swapping pairs of gems and making groups of 3 of the same color either horizontally or vertically, the player scores points. Making a row of 4 or 5 or a L/T-shaped group produces special gems which explode, remove all of a particular color or clear an entire row and column when matched. The ultimate aim of each timed level is to cause one or more fragments of a “key” to fall down to the bottom of the screen. When this is accomplished, the level ends and the player receives a bonus according to how many gems they matched and how much time remained. Levels are distinct from one another according to their shape — some have holes in the middle into which gems may not be moves, others have awkward, irregular sides.

On some levels, special gems appear to hinder the player. Locked gems may not be moved by the player until they are unlocked by matching them with the appropriate color, but they are affected by gravity if matches are made beneath them. Frozen gems, meanwhile, are fixed solidly in place until they are matched. In order to help counter these obstacles, the player has a number of items which can be purchased using in-game currency. These tend to help with clearing areas of gems in several ways or shuffling the board. There are also four powerups only available via gifts from friends — these directly help with clearing locked and frozen gems and also provide the possibility to earn more points and time for a level.

Players are nagged to add friends after every single level. Later stages are also friend-gated, making it essential to recruit other players in order to continue progression. Players also have the opportunity to share news of achievements and high scores on their Timelines as a means of viral promotion, and each level has its own leaderboard.

The game’s currency is earned through play, mostly through a timer which rewards players with free coins for every 10 minutes of continuous play. There is no energy system in place and this counter continues even when simply sitting on the map screen, so there’s nothing to stop players from leaving the game running in the background and racking up the coins for free — the only input required is to click “Collect” on the popup that appears every ten minutes. This is quite a player-friendly move but may hurt the game’s monetization in the long run, especially as the developers also host regular coin giveaways at least once per day on the game’s fan page.

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