Thứ Tư, 15 tháng 2, 2012

Restaurant City celebrates new hours with a Limited Edition RC Polo Shirt

Restaurant City's new 24-hour schedule is a definite game-changer and involved tweaking everything from the arcade machines to the resting beds. To celebrate, there's a new uniform in the store to dress up your waiters in -- the RC Polo Shirt, costing 2,300 Coins. You can find it by clicking on one of your waiters for Employee Info, then Uniform, then Shirt.
Restaurant City Limited Edition RC Polo Shirt
But there's even a better way to get one. Players who start a shift will be awarded a RC Polo Shirt at the end of the shift for free!

Happy Aquarium: Lilo & Stitch-inspired Tank Mates swim into store

The not-so subtle nods to Disney continue in Happy Aquarium with these three latest items in the new Tank Mates section of the in-game store -- Surfer Turtle, Scuba Alien Bear, and Mila, Hula Swimmer. Mila is obviously Lilo, and while the Scuba Alien Bear looks like a pink koala bear, the fact that it's called an "alien" makes it an obvious homage to Stitch, which resembled a blue koala bear.

The game has packaged these three as the "Friends from Hawaii." Unlike the earlier Disney-esque offerings, these are not limited edition items, but they still cost premium money. Scuba Alien Bear is the cheapest at 24 Pearls and 20 Facebook Credits (or $2 USD), followed by Mila at 36 Pearls and 30 FB Credits ($3 USD), and finally, the Turtle is 48 Pearls or 40 FB Credits ($4 USD).

These three also sport a tiny bit of animation. Beneath the Turtle's surfboard is a bit of foam spritzing. The Bear's eyes, hair tuft, and ears move a little. And Mila's eyes will blink occasionally.

Hotel City plans for international and cosmopolitan decor -- starting with flags

Hotel City Nightlife
New locations and backgrounds are coming soon to Hotel City. Just check out this gorgeous night city skyline (image above) at the Bellboy Playfish's Hotel. Last week, the game gave players the ability to decorate the outside of their hotels with five new items. This week, a set of international flags and four new items have joined that roster -- Cherry tree, Large rose bush, Tree on pavement, and White picket fence.
Hotel City international flags
Hotel City can't spell Philippines!Sixteen countries are represented in this first ever flags release, and they are: USA, UK, France, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Germany, Spain, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines (the game has it misspelled as "Philipenes"), China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Thailand. All the flags cost 10 Playfish Cash each. PFC are sold in sets, where the more you buy, the more you'll save. At the smallest set, you can get 25 PFC for $5 USD.

The best thing about Zynga's newest acquisition -- Ponzi Inc.

Today Zynga announced the acquisition of the Austin-based Challenge Games. Normally, news about one company gobbling up another isn't terribly exciting for the average consumer, but this purchase means that Zynga might soon be adding some interesting new games to its roster.

Specifically, the tongue-in-cheek Facebook game, Ponzi Inc. The tycoon game, which was released while Robert Madoff was still making headlines, puts you at the head of your own Ponzi scheme. You upgrade your office, perform jobs and get fellow players involved in your pyramid scheme so you can skim off their earnings. Ponzi, Inc. is easily one of the most underrated games on Facebook, so when a Zynga rep told me that the FarmVille publisher plans to give this original game some much-needed promotion, a celebratory fist-pump was in order.

ponzi inc


warstorm on facebookChallenge Games also owns Facebook football game Gridiron Live. If you recall, Zynga launched a pigskin game called Football Wars then sidelined it later. That, plus the fact that there's mounting competition in the social sports game space from EA/Playfish and now ESPN/Playdom, getting a sports game up and running seems like a good move for the house that built FarmVille. There's also Warstorm a fantasy-themed card game, which will appeal to the Magic the Gathering set. Zynga just shut down its fantasy game Dragon Wars on MySpace, so this new acquisition might help fill the void left behind.

All three of these games will also be a great way for Zynga to reach out to a different kind of social gamer. If you look at the majority of Zynga games -- FarmVille, Cafe World, PetVille -- they all appeal to the casual gamer, a majority of which are female. A football game and a fantasy-themed card game just might be the ticket to getting a more diversified audience, which will be important as we see all big social games, even FarmVille, continue to lose players month over month.

But, back to Ponzi, the real reason to celebrate this corporate union. If you haven't played this Facebook game yet, I recommend you do so post-haste. It's the one pyramid scheme you won't mind getting mixed up with.

Play Ponzi Inc on Facebook >

See the official acquisition press release below:

Zynga Acquires Challenge Games

San Francisco – June 3, 2010 – Zynga today announced the acquisition of Austin-based social game company Challenge Games. Effective immediately, the Challenge Games office will become Zynga Austin, a game studio focused on product development. Today's announcement expands Zynga's studio operations adding to locations already in San Francisco, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Bangalore, and Beijing. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

"Austin is an ideal location to extend our studio operations with its rich talent in the games business," said Mike Verdu, senior vice president of Games at Zynga. "We look forward to building out our Zynga Austin studio with the best and brightest in the industry as we continue to bring social games to more users worldwide."

Challenge Games' Co-Founder CEO, Andrew Busey, will become Zynga's general manager and vice president of the Austin studio. The Challenge Games team of 35 employees will be immediately integrated into Zynga's workforce.

Challenge Games, backed by Sequoia Capital and Globespan Capital Partners, launched in 2007 to focus on immersive Web game development built on a virtual goods business model. Two of the company's most popular games, Warstorm, a collectible card game set in a fantasy universe, and Ponzi, a tycoon game, will be further developed by the Zynga team.

Today's acquisition along with Zynga's recently announced partnerships with Facebook and Yahoo! continues to extend the company's footprint worldwide, creating more opportunities for Zynga to connect the world through games. Recently, the company announced a promotion with 7-Eleven where stores across the United States and Canada are offering special promotional game gifts with Slurpees® and other items.

About Zynga
Zynga has over 230 million monthly active users playing its games. These games include FarmVille, Treasure Isle, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, YoVille, Café World, FishVille and PetVille. Zynga games are available on Facebook, MySpace and the iPhone. Through Zynga.org, Zynga players have raised over $3 million for world social causes. Zynga is headquartered in Potrero Hill in San Francisco. For more information, visit www.Zynga.com or www.Zynga.org.

Cafe World's new Egyptian set gives restaurants the ancient royal treatment

Cafe World: Fit for a Pharaoh
While the patrons in your Cafe World game can't walk like an Egyptian, they can walk into an Egyptian themed restaurant designed by you. Out of the 31 new pieces of decor, which is a pretty small release, exactly 22 items are premium goods requiring Cafe Cash. One US dollar essentially equals 5 Cafe Cash.

The most expensive of these, the Pharovision TV (located in Windows, not Decor), costs 18 Cafe Cash. Runners-up include an animated Peacock that fans its tail and a mummy that pops out of the Tuts Sarcophagus. Two new items of clothing for your workers are both 1,500 Coins each -- Turquoise Nile Top and Elegant Nile Top.

This release was long in coming, considering that Restaurant City came out with its own set back in January. Check out the rest of this post for a full visual preview.
Cafe World Egypt theme

Thứ Bảy, 11 tháng 2, 2012

Mafia Wars: Build cars extra fast in the new Gone in 60 Hours Event

Mafia Wars' Gone in 60 Hours limited time event has started, and for the next few days, you'll be able to build cars twice as faast and collect double the car parts when completing jobs and fighting. You'll also be able to bild the Future Shock 1985, a nod to the time-traveling DeLorean from 'Back to the Future.' What mafia car collection could be complete without that? Not mine.

This event also comes with extra construction parts that will help level up your Chop Shop faster, including 10 of each: cement blocks, power tools, car lift, acetylene torch and shipping containers. Not a bad deal if you've been wanting to level up your Chop Shop, but haven't been able to yet.

New FarmVille Puppy: Shiba Inu

farmville shiba inu
FarmVille Shiba Inu NoticeTonight June 30th the new Shiba Inu Puppy was added to the FarmVille Market. We had previously let you know this puppy may be coming as we posted the unreleased images of it just a few days ago.

farmville shiba inuThis new puppy is available for 65$FV and comes in Brown, Black and White. And will help you 'fetch things' when fully grown.

    "inu is the Japanese word for dog...the word shiba means "brushwood" in Japanese, and refers to a type of tree or shrub whose leaves turn red in the fall.This "inu is the Japanese word for dog...the word shiba means "brushwood" in Japanese, and refers to a type of tree or shrub whose leaves turn red in the fall.This leads some to believe that the Shiba was named with this in mind, either because the dogs were used to hunt in wild shrubs, or because the most common color of the Shiba Inu is a red color similar to that of the shrubs. However, in an old Nagano dialect, the word shiba also had the meaning of "small", thus this might be a reference to the dog's small size.Therefore, the Shiba Inu is sometimes translated as "Little Brushwood Dog." (Source: Wikipedia)

This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.