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Two new titles released by Ngmoco, Adventure Bay and Star Wars: Imperial Academy
Neil Young and his company Ngmoco are running out of time to get all twenty new freemium products out that were promised earlier this year, but it looks like they're going to make a run at it anyway. Over the past weekend, Ngmoco released two brand new freemium titles on the US App Store. First up is Star Wars: Imperial Academy, a first-person shooter Star Wars game developed with THQ that basically plays like a Star Wars-themed skin of Eliminate. Unfortunately, iTunes reviews on this one aren't very good (framerates are apparently not great), but it is free, so if you're good with a blaster, it's probably worth a download anyway. Ngmoco has also released Adventure Bay recently. I'm surprised this one isn't just called We Island, because it's basically an island and pirate-themed version of the "We" series of games, from We Rule to We Farm and We City. You can build your own island (through waiting and spending in-game purchased Spice, this game's version of Mojo), do a little exploring to find treasure and collect items or do quests to earn money and fame. I can't say that it's bad, necessarily, but whatever you thought of We City will probably have you thinking the same thing about this one. So unfortunately, two less-than-impressive titles from one of the biggest iPhone gaming companies around. We'll have to see what Ngmoco plans next year. With the emphasis on "daily active users" and the freemium business model, it's possible that Ngmoco is just fine with how its business is going. But it would be nice to see a little more innovation on the gameplay side as well.
Ngmoco's We Farm now available in Canada
Ngmoco has released the followup to its popular We Rule game on the Canadian App Store. We Farm is, as you can see above, very similar to We Rule, with the main difference being that the game is set on a farm rather than in a medieval fantasy world. You'll be able to raise animals, plant vegetables, build up a barnyard, and of course, trade and share with friends to earn experience. We Rule originally launched in Canada back in February (Ngmoco likes to use America's neighbors to the north as a testing ground before releasing their apps worldwide), and then it was released to everyone in March, so we can probably expect the same time frame for We Farm. Will it be as big a hit as We Rule was? It's hard to tell; the gameplay is certainly proven already, but one of the draws of We Rule was that it wasn't just a FarmVille clone, and obviously, this seems to be borrowing at least the setting from Zynga's popular title. Of course, another reason that We Rule was so popular was because it had the iPhone all to itself, and now FarmVille is up and running. We'll see, though. Ngmoco has certainly shown that it's constantly learning about how to find success on the App Store; I'm sure the company has taken lessons from We Rule and GodFinger, not to mention that their development method allows for plenty of quick updates and changes if things don't work out right away. It's been fascinating to watch Ngmoco's experiment, and We Farm (along with We City, another adaptation planned for release soon) is their next step.
