Social Gaming: Build your own kingdom on We Rule

A new free social game catching up on popularity on the iTunes App Store is We Rule by ngmoco, Inc.

It’s a friendly game of “building” and “growing” much like Farmville on Facebook, but enjoy the convenience of managing your virtual world on-the-go, anytime anywhere! On We Rule, you design your own kingdom – build castle, towers, villages, marketplaces and farms; lay roads, fences, ponds, rivers and statues; and plant trees, flowers and shrubs. Invite your friends be your neighbors, visit their kingdoms and do businesses.

Expand your land and keep as you level

Harvest crops to earn gold

Build properties to trade with neighbors

Design or re-structure every detail of your kingdom

It’s a really simple game that can be addictive and a chance to show off to your friends how creative you are at designing a beautiful city! At least, that’s where the fun is for me. Perhaps ngmoco can host a series of “Best Kingdom for…” contests, so players can submit screenshots of their own kingdoms to share, promote and vote by all We Rule fans!

Getting started?

Download the game from the App Store and here’s a quick jam of the basic gameplay from ngmoco:

Some creative juices…

Check out these videos for ideas on building your own kingdom on We Rule:

Expand your alliance!

Pop by and say ‘hi’ on We Rule’s Facebook Fan Page or tweet with #werule if you are on Twitter. There are always people looking for neighbors. 🙂

R.T

Social Gaming on the iPhone

It wasn’t too long ago that social gaming hit its peak on Facebook.

For a while I was trying out some of the social games on Facebook, like Café World, and it just got too tiresome to keep up. For one, these are real-time virtual simulation games. You get to create, own, manage a virtual world, and it keeps running 24/7 even when you are logged out, so you need to always play in order to maintain progress. Secondly, in Café World, if you leave your food out for too long, it would go bad and attract flies. The next time you log in, you have to clean up and recook for another 3 hours or so (depending on the dish). Not good when you will be away from the computer for a substantial period of time. Other types of social games I’ve tried on Facebook include Castle Age and Ninja Saga, web-based and flash-based battling games.

It’s definitely high engagement for a committed social gamer, but the cost of lacking engagement can sometimes be quite high for the gamer (in game terms). So I gave up soon after.

The social gaming experience has since revolutionized a little. Now, social games are no longer just played on social networks through your web browser, but on your mobile as well. And effectively, iPhone has become a new “mobile social network” connecting the many iPhone users from around the world.

As you can imagine, it’s a lot more easier to manage on the iPhone because you can do it whenever and wherever you go. Interaction with other players is much more active too, as players can receive push notifications to alert them of the progress in game, and choose to respond to it immediately. In some games, you can even compete with your friends (or a random player online) LIVE. You can then broadcast your game status to your social networks (Facebook and Twitter) and also invite them to join your league.

Read more about social gaming on iPhone, the history and future, on Web Crawler (CNET).

Thinking of becoming an iPhone social gamer yourself?

Watch this space for reviews on some of the best free social games to kickstart your iPhone social gaming career. Coming soon.

R.T