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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 releases We City
Ngmoco has introduced its third title in the "We" series. We City arrives after We Rule and We Farm as the same kind of social simulation game. This time around, players will be building and creating their own cities, but other than the setting and the graphics, not too much has changed. Just like the other We titles, you can build farms to grow harvests (in this case, factories that build products), houses for citizens to give you rent, stores for your Plus+ friends to come and put orders in, and various types of decorations and custom items to paint your kingdom, sorry farm, sorry city as you see fit. What's called Mojo and Gro in the other two games is called Zap here, and it's available for the usual microtransactions, or some for free as you level up. Colleges are the one big innovation here -- you can build colleges and universities to do research for you, and those bits of research can unlock new buildings and items. It's kind of a shame that Ngmoco didn't go too far off of the beaten path -- especially with NimbleBit's Pocket Frogs showing that you can do different (and really fun) things with freemium, it's disappointing to see another "We" game with only the names and graphics changed out. But then again, I guess I can't blame them for going with what works. We City is available for free now on both the iPhone and the iPad. If you've played the other games, you know what you're in for, and if you've never seen Ngmoco's freemium model in action, here's your chance to check it out.
Ngmoco releases We Farm in the US, celebrates three million We Rulers with free mojo
Ngmoco's free to play strategy is spooling right along -- not only is its We Farm title now available on the US App Store (it arrived late last week after a short beta in Canada), but the company is also celebrating three million We Rule players by awarding everybody 20 free mojo. New players can get their mojo by downloading the app and logging in, or old players can just say hi, even if you've been away for a while (and all of your crops have withered up). Ngmoco also shared some fun stats about those three million kingdoms: players have played for 2.2 billion minutes collectively so far, and have built 70 times the number of buildings in New York City, with enough roads to go around the Earth three times over. Pretty wild. Still, as big as three million is, it's still not quite a breakaway hit -- Zynga's Street Racing Facebook game once claimed three million players, and it was recently shut down in favor of Zynga's other more popular title. I would definitely call We Rule a hit, and given that Ngmoco's plan has always been to push for a large free audience to try and claim a percentage of those folks for microtransactions, I think Neil Young's company is pulling off what it set out to do. But even with numbers this big, the App Store's not quite scratching the surface of what the most popular Facebook games are achieving.
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.
