City of Wonder: Review and Tips

This is a personal review City of Wonder, a casual social game on Facebook. I started playing City of Wonder about a month ago so bear in mind that I may not have unlocked all that there is to unlock. City of Wonder is a simulation game developed by Playdom and played on Facebook where you can create prosperous civilizations which will let you progress through the ages while researching various technologies. In short, City of Wonder is a streamlined, very social version, of Civilization which focuses more on city building.

When starting out, you will be given a piece of land to cultivate. The tutorial and your advisors will help you reached several levels before setting you free on your own.

There are a few numbers to keep track of when playing City of Wonder.

Population is the number of people living in your city. To increase the population of your city, you have to build residential buildings or dwellings. To build a residential building, you will need coins. Some building require certain research to be completed before you are able to build them. Once a residential building is built, a timer will count down and when it finishes, an icon will float over the residential building indicating that people are ready to move in. Clicking on the building will increase your population by a certain amount depending on the type of residential building. Different residential buildings add different amounts of population and also requires varying lengths of time.

Happiness sets the maximum number of people that can reside in your city. One of the ways to increase this number is to build cultural buildings and decorations. Both will cost some coins but will surely increase the happiness in your city and allow your population to grow. The same with residential buildings, some cultural buildings and decorations requires a certain research to be completed before you are allowed to build them.

Coins are required to build things among other things. Coins can be earned in several ways, the simplest of which is to build Market buildings. Building market buildings will cost you some coins. Once, a market building is built, a timer will count down and when it finishes, an icon will float over the market building indicating that coins are ready for collection. Clicking on the market building will add a certain amount of coins to your total. Different buildings add different amounts of coins and also requires varying lengths of time. The number of market buildings you may construct depends on your population. You may also earn coins using Goods buildings. You may construct Goods buildings which will cost you some coins. When finished, you can click on a goods building and choose which goods you would like it to produce. Different goods will cost you different amounts of coins as well as earn different profits and take different amounts of time to finish. The number of goods buildings that you may construct depends on the size of your city.

XP or experience is used to determine your level. XP is gained by doing actions in City of Wonder. Earning a level will open up research options for you so that you can fulfill the requirements of the other buildings.

All in all, City of Wonder is a social game that offers more depth than the other games out there and I feel it is a nice change.

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Warstorm on Facebook

Warstorm is a fantasy fighting game where you pit your armies against hordes of enemies, friends, or anyone in the world. In this fantasy card game, you build an army of wizards, warriors and beasts. You then attack the armies of other players as well as go on missions. When you win battles, you earn silver and experience which you can use to get more cards and give your army new abilities.

Game Mechanics

The game revolves around duels between squads composed of collectible cards. The cards come from different factions (Humans, Elves, Orcs, Undead and Demons) and  types (Heroes, Units, Artifacts and Spells).

Your army is made out of squads and each squad is led by a hero card. The user interface has enough slots for you to build up to 12 squads. Each squad is composed of 1 Hero, some units and zero or more artifacts and spells. Your first hero is Lord General Pozak, a Human leader.

The hero chosen for the squad determines the other elements needed to form it.
For Lord General Pozak, he has a ready value of 8. The ready value is found at the lower left corner of the card. It indicates how long it takes a card to enter battle after it is drawn. His unit count is 6 which is the number of combat units this heros squad must contain. His artifact count is 0 which indicates the number of artifacts this heros squad must contain and lastly his spell count which indicates the number of spells that this heros squad should contain is 0.

Once you have assembled a complete squad, you can proceed to completing the missions. Missions involve an equal number of squads from your side fighting the same number of squads from the enemys side. Combat is done in a series of turns where the cards are drawn in random andstay at the bottom of the combat area for a number of turns equal to the cards ready value. When the card enters battle, it attacks the unit opposite it and does damage equal to its attack value. This value is subtracted from the defense value of the attacked card. If the defense value is zero, the card is destroyed and it leaves play. If there is no card in front of a combat unit when it attacks, it deals damage to the opposing armies morale. When your enemys morale reaches zero, you win the duel. When the enemy runs out of cards, you win the duel.

The game has a lot of tutorial missions to help you get the hang of the different cards. Some cards are built for speed with minimal life and maximum attack while other are build to defend with minimal attack and maximum life. Other units have special abilities like archecrt, heal, zap and others. All these abilities are explained during the tutorial.

Tips and Strategies

• In the early part, save your silver, do not buy the novice pack when instructed to do so. Just continue on to the next mission until you earn enough to buy a pre-made deck. You will need 3 squads to finish the coming missions. 
• Once you get to 3 squads, you need to save up to get to 4 squads as the next missions requires at least 4 squads.
• It is advisable to get to 4 squads before you purchase the expert packs

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Rise of Social Gaming

With my latest personal development project being a Facebook app, I couldn't help but notice that Facebook has become the largest social gaming platform on the internet.

So what is Social Gaming? Social Gaming is currently a huge phenomenon on the large online social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. These social networks offer their members/users FREE games. Most of these free games are casual games. They are targeted at or used by a mass audience and are typically distinguished by their simple rules and lack of commitment required. They usually require no long term time commitment or special skills to play.

What makes social gaming different from just plain old casual gaming is the network element. It adds a very addictive dimension by allowing their users to play with and against their friends, friends and acquaintances. It makes simple casual games much more enjoyable.

The games are written by Social game developers like Zynga and Playfish. Most of them monetize these games by selling virtual goods to their players as well as giving them offers.

Virtual goods allow players to have a better overall experience either by better customization of avatars or allowing them to level-up faster. For users unwilling or unable to pay for the virtual goods, a wide variety of offers are available which when completed will allow players to earn in-game currency. This in itself poses no outright danger but when you examine the offers, it will seem like a scam.

Some offers will ask you to take a quiz or a survey and ask for your mobile number. A code is then send to your phone via sms and the user is asked to enter the code on the site. This act will subscribe your mobile number to a monthly subscription for a pretty much useless service.

Another type of offer asks users to sign-up to receive a free CD or other product to try. The product is free except that the user needs to pay for shipping. What the fine print says though is that the user will be charged full price unless the user returns the product.

I have yet to hear about users here in the Philippines getting scammed by similar offers described above.

Please post what sort of offers you've done and did they have any detrimental effect?

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