FB: Here Be Monsters

Alrighty, time to break out the Facebook games. Here's one I've been playing for awhile now:

Don't be deceived by the cheery kid like graphics, this game has some solid mechanics, a lot of draw and appeals to quite a few different types of players. If I break down the features in the game with like examples of other games, you get something that looks like it was produced from the metamorphical box.

So! Every player starts out in London while they work through the tutorial. While you progress you are presented with/encounter the following features (which I will equate to other popular games).

• You choose a homestead

LIKE: Farmville or Harvest Moon
DISTINCTIVE: Here you collect Stardium randomly

• You build things for production

LIKE: Farmville or Harvest Moon
DISTINCTIVE: All buildings have upgrades that increase crafting success and decrease time required

• You can keep animals

LIKE: Farmville or Harvest Moon
DISTINCTIVE: When you reach the level you can keep pigs they shit out some interesting and decidedly painful resources and jewels

• You can make friends and visit their homesteads

LIKE: Farmville or Animal Crossing
DISTINCTIVE: You can use this feature to reach distant areas and new lands without wasting all your energy

• You trap monsters

LIKE: Mousehunt
DISTINCTIVE: You have to collect or craft all your baits and some of the monsters are well amusing and drop loot you need for further crafting

• You complete quests

LIKE: Every other RPG, MMO or RPGMMO (or Saturday night after drinking far too much if you're one of those personalities)
DISTINCTIVE: Some of the quests are the only way you can acquire certain traps or trap certain monsters

•  You can find wishing coins (talk to your pigs... O-o) or have them awarded on the daily to gamble on some loot

LIKE: Many other games
DISTINCTIVE: You can actually buy one of the types of coins with soft currency

• It takes time to complete your crafting projects

LIKE: Every other life consuming and will destroying freemium game
DISTINCTIVE: You can purchase time with soft currency or even CRAFT IT! (time potions for the win)

• The game uses real geography

LIKE: Monster (something) I played ages ago on iOS which I'm not going to attempt to locate the exact name of as AppAnnie is proving that searching for the word 'monster' is as bright an idea as searching for 'war', 'tank' or 'racer'...
DISTICTIVE: Different geography offers different resources

Your best friend through all of this is your Almanac! It has a collection of all the stuff in the game, what it can be used for and what it offers or costs. If you want to trap a monster, catch a fish or find a plant you can select the map in the almanac for that item and the game will place you over that area of the map for easy locating.

The farming aspect is much like any other farming game but your crops don't wither at the same manic speed they do in other games. You can plant something that finishes in an hour and return three or four hours later and collect them. If friends have fertilised your crops they won't wither and you can also craft neverwither potions and revive potions for your plants or ask for them for your 'friends' for free.

Friends!

It's always an iffy word in social games. In HBM you can ask your social friends to play with you OR you can add people you encounter in your wanderings. You can have up to 100 friends so you sometimes have to discard players that look to have stopped playing in spells.

Monetisation!

You can pay for whatever you want but the hard currency will be rewarded occasionally. The customary level up 'here's a unit of hard currency' occurs as well as a weekly reward for consistently logging in daily. Soft currency is easily collected if you have the time.

Luck!

The game will reward you increased luck for consistently logging in daily as well. One assumes this means you will get better things pooped out by your pigs and decreased chances of failures with your crafting and so on.

Crafting!

Some items are difficult to make and have a high failure rate. You can increase your chances of success with 'Success Potions'. These you can win at the wishing well or receive from your friends.

Stardium!

This is where I give you a big section of information as well as a method of farming to help you increase your Stardium Potion production rate (as it's used in quite a few recipes).

Stardium will fall into your homestead every few days. This is usually six units that could be hidden behind your buildings and trees if you don't take care on how you place your objects. If you fail to pick it up, you won't receive any new stardium, it'll just keep falling in the location you left it.

Two pieces of Stardium makes a Stardium Potion in your laboratory.

Stardium Potions are used in many useful things including Time Potions. They can be made from Stardium or creeping ooze (check your almanac for all the recipes).

I now offer you a lovely loop for keeping copious amounts of Stardium Potions!

1. Identify the creep trees!
This is a creep tree, you will start with a few in your Homestead










2. Isolate them in your Homestead and cut down all your other normal trees (your non-fruit trees)

• If you have any other normal trees in your Homestead you will find them growing more often then the Creep Trees (see Step 3)

3. Every few days a new Creep Tree should start growing
4. When it does, move it over with the others
5. As your Creep Trees rejuvenate (takes a few days) cut them to 4/5

• So long as you don't reduce it to a stump it will grow back
• Every time you cut one of these trees you have a chance at gaining some Creeping Ooze
• Creeping Ooze can be used to craft Stardium Potions

6. Repeat steps 3-5 until your heart's content

7. You now have a Stardium Potion factory!

One of the things I love about this game is that you aren't trapping evil monsters to help keep the population safe and sound in their beds, you are trapping monsters as a service to the monsters! Trappers are encouraged to trap monsters in order to cure them of the corruption that has befallen them due to Stardium exposure. So no monsters were harmed in the making of this game, it's brilliant. :)

There is so much more to this game then I've covered here, but I've already waffled a good long while as is. I recommend this game for beta or worse as it's really shaped up over the last several months and is jumping from strength to strength as it evolves.

The monetisation strategy isn't aggressive or pushy. You never feel as though they're about to walk you up to a wall at any given point and force you to splash out if you want to get ahead. Practically everything you can buy with hard currency is vanity and I've seen some homesteads that had a fair amount of those items in them.

As players race to collect EVERYTHING in the game (as it all counts towards achievements and ticking a box in the almanac) monetisation will occur. They've done a solid job with this game and I will continue to play it.

Raptr

It is time to discuss one of my favourite haunts... raptr! That banner tells no lies, it is a community for gamers that transcends platforms and lets you rack up ranks, rep AND rewards simply for playing the games you most enjoy and a few you might have been considering trying.

Sign-up and download the client. You get a nifty toolbar to one side of your computer screen and you're off and running. Connect your accounts, invite your friends, join then visit the forums for your game, meet other people and get those much needed tips and tricks if need be.

+ Game publishers and developers, you can incentive new players to pick up your game and have a go through this community.
+ Game players, you can get FREE in game rewards for picking up the weekly challenges detailed at the raptr community.

As a game farmer, I'm very much pro FREE STUFF. Here you can get FREE STUFF if your game is on the list. We're not talking free t-shirts and other 7004 that's splashed out so you can promote someones product while hanging out with your friends or loitering outside the local strip joint, this loot is better, much much better. This loot is IN GAME.

We're talking equipment, guns, buffs, consumables and what-have-you. Buffs and consumables are usually one offs, but the equipment and guns are normally yours to keep. Grab yourself an in game item few other people are guaranteed to be waving in your face or shooting you in the back with.

I've included a couple of the current rewards below. Free avatar stuff for XBL? Get on it!

 With the best bits out of the way, let's take a look at the technical side of things.

raptr lets you:

• Connect your PSN account
• Connect your Xbox account
• Track your browser game usage as well

raptr does for you:

• Tracks your game time and ranks you in accordance to the time you spent in the game
• Ranks you against other players in the community that play that game
• Informs you when you meet prerequisites for rewards and what you're missing (sometimes regional)
• Gives you weekly, monthly and yearly stat read outs
• Publishers: These also sometimes mention the most active gameplay day and months. Players get free loot, you get free stats.
• Players: You will marvel at where your life has gone and where you found the time.
• Let's you register games that aren't in the system that might be new so you can start racking up rank
• Let's you manually enter game time for handheld devices
• I don't doubt one day they will have ALL accounts linked if possible

What can I say? I love raptr. Some people have reported difficulties linking their accounts, but if at first you don't succeed, try again the next day when your account has been formally established and put into the register. It's very much worth looking into and it is definitely well worth FREE STUFF! 

Players organise games and gatherings, post all the latest news for their favourite games and help you get the jump on the updates.

It's about time we broke down the barriers and unite as gamers. raptr is here to help and help it will. www.raptr.com to get on board. Sign yourself up, get a feel for the community and you're off and running. Check out the rewards, see if any of your fav games are on it and find a good reason to delve deeper or revisit games you might have strayed from or completed a couple of months ago.

Rekindle your love affair of free rewards and enjoy doing the thing you would have done with or without free rewards, play games!

Introductions

Greetings and thanks for visiting my blog!

My name is Dawn, but everyone in my gaming circles know me as slightlyNsane. I am an avid gamer who fell hard for mobile games in the early days of the iPhone and still can't get enough these many years later. What do I do for a living? Well, I'm a digital games designer oddly enough.

Designer by day and farmer by night, I scout the interwebs, app stores and play shops for challenging new experiences I can sink my teeth into and wrap my mind around. Having experience in broadcasting as well I have supplied voice work for numerous full and arcade titles over the years, primarily ambient but principal on occasion as well.

Armed with my Android tablet, iOS device and MS laptop I vow to continue my hunt for amazing entertainment and offer insight and reviews into a varied array of games that either top the charts or warm my heart for varying reasons I will gladly share.

As a farmer I enjoy freemium titles the most and have yet to spend a cent on any in app purchases. I'm a class of player the studios are well aware of, that hopes I will acquisition others for their titles if I myself refuse to become a feeder. It's a delicate balance, but this blog proves I'm more then happy to play my viral part in ensuring their games have a steady stream of new users so long as their title has something that tickles my fancy and doesn't require its players to pay to win. I'll quite happily grind and I'm sure quite a few of you who will end up reading these do as well.

I won't always give out stellar reviews. There are more then a few games that disappoint me as I press on in them, testing how long it takes me to get over the walls put in place for those who refuse to pay. One thing is for certain though, I love a game with a sense of humour, so those titles win me over fairly quickly.

It might not be a game some days but something else gaming related that I will add here and I will aim to post something every week. At times it will be daily and others it might be monthly as my schedule is quite varied. At any rate, whatever I post will hopefully be as interesting as it is insightful. So for now, fire in the hole!