Trivia Adventure blends roleplaying, quiz and board game mechanics into one intriguing package

Trivia Adventure from Austin-based Steel Penny Games is a new Facebook game featuring elements of role-playing, quiz and board games. It launched in the first week of January for early testing by new players, and has been gradually picking up steam as users discover its intriguing blend of genres.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Trivia Adventure currently has 2,000 monthly active users and 400 daily active users.

Trivia Adventure is primarily a role-playing game. Players design a character of either gender, name them, choose a character class to enjoy an initial bonus to one of their statistics and are then thrown into a short tutorial introducing them to the game’s basic rules.

The majority of the player’s time in Trivia Adventure is spent exploring dungeons and wilderness areas. Movement around these areas is handled in a board game-like manner. Players draw one of three cards, each of which shows how many spaces they can move. It’s possible to spend soft currency to reveal all three cards if there’s a specific space the player wants to try and land on — for example, one which holds treasure, which can take the form of either items or soft currency.

On certain spaces, the player is required to engage in combat. This is handled in a turn-based manner, with the player usually attacking first. Upon clicking the “Attack” button, a trivia question pops up on screen.  Answering the question correctly gives the player a bonus to the damage they inflict on the enemy they are fighting, while answering incorrectly still allows the player to inflict damage, but also means they receive a greater amount of injury from their opponent.

All actions, whether they are movement or attacking, cost Momentum, the game’s version of energy. Momentum completely refills upon gaining a level, and also gradually tops up over time. Players can also receive Momentum bonuses by sharing their activities to their Facebook walls — there are benefits for friends also playing the game here, too, as players can share questions to their walls, with experience bonuses on offer to those who answer correctly.

Social features for the game include the aforementioned sharing mechanic along with the usual facility to send gifts to friends. A competitive element is also added, as each player’s run through a dungeon is scored according to how much they explored, how much loot they found, questions they answered correctly and streaks of correct answers. Leaderboards are displayed upon each dungeon delve, and players can replay past areas to improve their score.

For Steel Penny Games, whose development background has primarily been in contract work for a number of console developers, social gaming development proved to be a challenge.

“The move to social games was something that proved us wrong,” explains Jeff Everett from the company. “We played the occasional Facebook game in what spare time we had and thought we could do something fun real fast. As it turns out, web development and social games in general have a whole new set of problems we had to solve. Of course, that also meant we had a lot of mistakes to make and learn from before we could get our first game playable!”

The game’s monetization is primarily handled through the sale of hard currency, here known as Steel Pennies. These can be purchased with Facebook Credits and then used to top up Momentum; add soft currency; refill health; purchase premium items from stores; and add benefits to the character, including additional inventory slots or companion pets. Facebook Credits can be bought directly or earned via offer wall.

Trivia Adventure has showed slow but steady growth since its launch in mid-January. The game has already received several updates to improve gameplay, but the developer has plenty of new content in mind for the future.

“We have a pipeline of new locations, enemies, items and questions ready to release as they become finalized,” says Everett. “We plan to continue adding the new content over time, as we monitor our metrics and determine the time of things players enjoy the most. Our game technology allows for us to easily localize not only the game elements, but our questions as well. Since we could not just use the same questions [many of which are U.S.-centric] in other regions of the world, those questions will need to be written with that territory in mind.”

You can follow Trivia Adventure’s progress with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

View the original article here

Army Attack Blends Real Time Strategy, Treasure Hunting Genres to Create Deep Singleplayer Experience

Army Attack is the latest game from Millionaire City developer Digital Chocolate. The just-launched game focuses on single-player gameplay while incorporating social features to encourage collaboration, interaction and cooperation between players.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, Army Attack currently has 33,304 monthly active users and 28,370 daily active users.

Gameplay in Army Attack blends real time strategy combat with a bit of the treasure-hunting social game genre. The player’s military units take it in turns to explore the grid-based map, “conquering” unexplored squares as they go, acquiring items, experience, standard currency and energy randomly along the way. Obstacles can be destroyed by the player’s units, with thematically-appropriate items being released from the various structures. For example, the player can earn enemy intelligence to spend on expanding the play area by destroying “propaganda towers.” Discovered enemy units can be engaged in combat, with defeated vanishing from the map.

Strategy comes from unit placement as attacking units receive a bonus when allied units occupy squares adjacent to both the attacking unit and the target. It costs at least one energy to move a unit to a square and depending on what squares the player has “conquered,” it can be a challenge to maneuver units into a bonus-friendly firing position without spending the entire energy gauge. Moreover, tnemy units get similar firing bonuses, so players must consider attack formations before sending off single units into unknown regions of the map where clusters of enemies might wait.

Army Attack also features a base-building mechanic which is introduced via a series of missions. Producing buildings requires both energy and several resources, the latter of which can either be collected from destroyed structures and enemies or traded with friends. Players can set up a “wishlist” of items that they need and publish this to their wall so their Facebook friends who are also playing the game can help out. Resources can also be used to acquire “fire missions,” which are very strong attacks which the player can inflict on the enemy if they’re encountering a particularly tough challenge.

Lastly, there’s a supply chain from the structure the player builds to the towns the players liberate. Generating supplies from specific locations nets the player additional standard currency. The larger the town or city, the better the payout for supplies provided, though the larger towns and cities take longer to payout.

Despite the violent subject matter, the presentation of Army Attack is similar to a children’s cartoon, with defeated units exploding in puffs of smoke and dropped items rather than any show of gore. The presentation is somewhat reminiscent of the Nintendo Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS Advance Wars real time strategy series, so players who enjoy gaming on dedicated platforms will feel right at home.

The game is monetized exclusively with Facebook Credits as the premium currency players use to purchase in-game items and boosts. Players can also use Facebook Credits to buy the standard form of currency, Cash. Certain mission objectives and building resources can also be bought with Facebook Credits, though this is not always possible, and buildings can either be instantly completed as well. Certain particularly strong or useful buildings and units can only be produced through spending Facebook Credits. Buying new maps for the player to conquer can be done with a combination of Cash and the Intel resource that can be gifted by friends.

At present, the game offers three opponents to defeat throughout the course of the single-player campaign. Social features appear to be limited to visiting friends’ maps and gifting; which is interesting, as it seems this type of combat would lend itself to competitive multiplayer. As the game only just launched May 20, we expect to see additional features introduced into Army Attack as the game scales.

In the meantime, you can follow Army Attack’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

View the original article here