Ngmoco dives into a mobile world of magic with SkyFall

When thinking about mobile RPGs, exploration, an in-depth storyline and strong social features might not be the first things that come to mind. According to ngmoco Executive Producer Chris Plummer, however, that's exactly what we can look forward to when it comes to the company's soon-to-be-released social, mobile, free-to-play RPG SkyFall (phew, what a mouthful).

In the world of SkyFall, the planet is literally full of magic, down to its very core. Massive beams of magical energy and light shoot towards the sky from the center of the earth, giving the entire planet (along with its inhabitants) the power to wield it. The balance shifts, however, as a meteor shower event called a SkyFall occurs, which damages these beams or shuts some down altogether. The fictional universe of SkyFall is a rich one, with a complete history based on an ancient race of inhabitants that crafted massive buildings and statues. You'll spend your time in SkyFall interacting with these buildings and exploring various dungeons on maps via an overhead perspective.

SkyFall's gameplay setup is one surrounding exploration, as Plummer told us during a demo of the game last week. Exploration was the "spark of inspiration that set off the idea of the game." You'll start your experience fairly simply, by choosing one of three classes for your character: rouge, mage or warrior. Depending on the character class you choose, you'll have access to different weapons and skill sets, and you can put points into four attributes as you level those characters up: attack, defense, source (magic, or mana if you prefer) and luck, which improves your ability to dodge attacks.

Once you're set loose into the game, you'll start your quest for exploration by tapping on squares on each map. Each tap requires energy, limiting the amount of time you can play in a single sitting, but some taps can remove multiple squares at once. Only as you clear this "fog" off of areas on the map will you be able to see the buildings, treasure chests and even enemies underneath. In this way, the game retains the random encounter setup seen in many traditional RPGs, but in other cases (when you clear out whole sections of the map with a single click) also gives you the slight ability to avoid them.

As you make your way through the world, you'll run into various NPCs that will either give you more of a background story on the game's world, or will send you out on quests. These quests can be to simply make your way through an area to talk to another character or can be the expected varieties of item fetch quests and the like. During many of these quests, you'll be asked to interact with either forests or dungeons, two "interior" map-types. Forests are fairly safe, and are used mostly for item collection (chopping down trees for wood, collecting resources to make potions, etc.) while Dungeons are far more dangerous and "random."

Unlike in the outer world, where cleared squares stay cleared permanently, dungeons can and will be retaken by enemies and the fog if you leave them alone for long enough. While these dungeons' layouts themselves won't change, Plummer did tell us that "you can leave a dungeon and a little timer appears on the dungeon. As long as you continue to explore while the timer's going, it will not re-shroud, but if you leave it for a long period of time, it will get retaken by the enemies."

During combat itself, you'll have the ability to wield multiple weapons (longswords, daggers, staffs, etc.) to the total of two weapons and two spells, but will need to choose the specific weapon you want to attack with before your turn. Each individual weapon has its own "Attack Bar," which you'll set into motion at the beginning of your attack. A small marker moves from left to right across the bar, and by tapping again while in the bar's green section, you'll perform a normal attack (of course, the stronger the weapon, the more damage you'll do). Critical hit zones are found in red on these Attack Bars, adding an element of skill and timing to your actions.

You can use potions during battle to refill some of your health, but if you happen to perish, you're left with a single hit point and transferred back out to the main map where you can try again. If you succeed in battle, you'll be taken to the loot screen, where you'll have the chance of finding some of the 1,000 different loot items in the game. Most of these are gear items (weapons, clothing, etc.) that you can equip to your character, while others might be for quests or crafting. Crafting itself wasn't available in our demo, but Plummer told us that you might eventually be able to craft "things like potions and consumables... even though we haven't locked the final design of it."

This loot screen is a bit of a time-consuming process, as you'll need to tap on each individual item that you wish to claim, but this allows you to better manage your limited inventory (32 item slots to start, which can be expanded as you level up). Your items will decay over time, and can be repaired, or you can simply head into one of the many towns you'll encounter to buy new items or sell those extra, seemingly random items that you've claimed along the way.

Gallery: SkyFall Android / iOS Preview


While all of the above can be handled in a solo setting, there are a few social mechanics that bring your friends in on the fun. For one, dungeons can be accessed with your friends, as you pull them into your game and can control them in combat. This is done asynchronously, giving you a better chance to survive in battle (especially when you'll fight more than one enemy at once). While you can play with friends, each player's progress in the world is completely separate, save for when you actually go to their own games to visit them. Here, you can spend three bonus energy per friend to "explore" some squares for them. There's also an in-game messaging system, and you can visit specific areas within towns to see other players, even if they're not your friends, and ask them to join your "alliance," or friends network. Eventually, item trading will also be available.

In terms of the game's premium content, you'll be able to purchase keys to unlock treasure chests for guaranteed rare loot (if you choose not to use a key, you'll have a 50/50 chance of receiving these items), or you can purchase Rejuvenation Potions to refill all of your magic, health and energy at once.

SkyFall will launch first on Android before eventually making its way over to iOS. While a specific release date wasn't announced for either platform, we have an exclusive opportunity for you to get your hands on the game's beta! If you're one of the first 500 gamers to head over to www.skyfallrpg.com and enter code: AOLGAMES, you'll be invited to the beta before anyone else! Have fun!

Gamer psychology expert shows where Facebook games win and fail

More than two hundred million players check in every month to play Zynga games, and yet, those and other Facebook games are often derided as exploitative "Skinner boxes", their appeal reduced to sinister mind-hackery. Ian Bogost, a professor and game designer, went so far as to create his own Facebook game, Cow Clicker, and a "cowclickification" app to drive home these points. But Playdom Design VP, Steve Meretzky, provides a counterpoint: "when you come down to it, basically all games are Skinner boxes -- meaningless activities where you're not getting anything out of it other than enjoyment." And enjoyment really is the point here.

If the mechanics to creating good Facebook games were as simple as the theories behind Pavlov's dogs and Skinner's rats, Facebook game designers wouldn't need to garner input on what works and what doesn't. This suggests that we need new models on assessing player psychology in social games. Jason Brown, who works as Zynga's VP of player insights believes that "Our games tap into some fundamental drivers of human happiness. . . They give people moments of pleasure (and) a sense of accomplishment. And they help people connect with each other."

Nicole Lazzaro, an expert on gamer psychology who's been studying player experience for two decades, breaks down just what's so appealing about games into four elements that she calls "Keys", and says that most Facebook games attempt to ace three out of the four following traits:

    Hard Fun "For many players overcoming obstacles is why they play. Hard Fun creates emotion by structuring experience towards the pursuit of a goal."
    Easy Fun "Other players focus on the sheer enjoyment of experiencing the game activities. Easy Fun maintains focus with player attention rather than a winning condition."
    Altered States "Players report that how a game makes them feel inside is one of the major reasons why they play, or 'games as therapy'."
    The People Factor "Players using this Key see games as mechanisms for social interaction."


Last week, Lazzaro was asked by the Los Angeles Times to put Zynga's games to the test. Lazarro's "fun meter" is based on a game's level of engagement, facility of socialization, "intrinsic fun" and "extrinsic fun". ("Extrinsic fun" is defined by collecting points and badges, while "Intrinsic fun", said Lazzaro, is "what I call hard fun or serious fun, relies on engagement beyond just rewarding players to click.") Her conclusion? Facebook games are terrific at the first two elements and terrible at the last two.

Ngmoco's DragonCraft gives you the power of dragons in your quest for world domination

During a demo of the game last week, we had a chance to learn more about ngmoco's upcoming mobile (and eventually) social game DragonCraft. From Brooklyn's FreeVerse studio, DragonCraft presents an alternate reality to our own, where technology advanced as in our world up until the 1500's. Sometime during the century, the people of DragonCraft discovered magic, and therefore simply combined that magic with the current technology of the time for all future advancements.

The world of Terra Vale is full of magic, distilled from dragon crystals. This magic is a dark resource that's coveted by all orders of the world, just as oil or other natural resources are in our world. The world is comprised of 12 Baronies, or colonies of sorts, each run by magic and ruled by a different Dragon Baron warrior. There's a necessary, but uneasy peace among the Council of Twelve in Terra Vale, which is only made all the more unstable by a cataclysmic event. Your city has been destroyed and your Dragon Baron is dead. Enemies of every size and shape roam freely outside your city's boundaries and you're put in charge of rebuilding your city and forging a dragon army in your new struggle for supremacy and domination of all that stand in your way.

Combining city-building and combat, you'll spend substantial amounts of time both rebuilding your city with functional buildings like Dragon Hatcheries, Farms and of course your Castle, while you'll also head out into the world, removing a dark fog as you travel through more of the 25 differently themed areas on the map, defeating enemies and interacting with the other Barons that remain, bringing them under your influence.

DragonCraft producer Kevin O'Neill told us more about the city-building portion of the game:


    Every kingdom starts with a few key structures. You'll have a Castle, Advisor's Tower, Dragon Hatchery, Training Grounds and a Farm. As you build and unlock new buildings, you'll be able to actually fill the entire map out. One of the first buildings you'll build in the tutorial is the farm, which actually produces a steady stream of food, and food is basically the fuel to power your troops. The farm is where you'll go to harvest food to build more troops, but to compete on a global scale, you'll need a few more structures than that.


Early on, you'll be introduced to the game's quest system, which asks you to build specific buildings in your city, or to venture out into the world at large to complete tasks in other lands. You'll be able to keep track of your quests via the Advisor's Tower (also called a Quest Tower), where the three main sectors of life in Terra Vale are represented: Magic, Technology and Brute Force. As you build structures, you'll be able to earn resources like lumber and gold, which can then be used elsewhere. Each city starts with a set of Pikemen, but from there, you can build your own troops in the game's three disciplines.

At launch, there will be 16 different buildings to create and upgrade (you can use premium Dragon Crystals to speed up the building process), allowing you to place your focus in one discipline or another, and troops are separated in the same way (and unlocked as you become more capable in each of the three areas). Magic troops use Dragon Crystals for power, and come in the form of adepts or acolytes, while Brute Force troops are archers or swordsmen. As for Tech troops, O'Neill described these as "a combination of technology and magic like a Steam Tank or a Sky Gallion or a Bombadier which kind of fuse together Dragon Crystal magic with technology. So, you have a Sky Gallion that didn't bother learning aeronautics because they just put a Dragon Crystal in it and it shoots them up. That's the theme of our world. In the 1500's, technology just stopped developing because you could augment it with this magical Dragon Crystal power. So it's just variations on off of things that would exist back then."

While exploring the world, you'll be able to experience combat that O'Neill says is "deep, but tailored to a mobile play experience." The game offers Portrait mode, allowing you to hold your device upright for one-handed play (while on a bus or otherwise occupied). You'll come across two types of battles, one of which is incredibly quick and sees you patrolling your lands for any enemy units. These enemies are seen on the map, and you'll simply tap on them to send your forces in automatically to receive instant rewards. If you're in the mood for more in-depth combat, or just want more of a challenge, you can enter into "story missions," which are triggered by discussions with your advisors or other NPCs. These move the game's overall story arc along and can even allow you to uncover new, unexplored areas in the game. O'Neill compared this form of combat to Advance Wars, with one on one combat, with some units being in the air while others on are the ground.

When getting into the specifics of combat, we asked O'Neill whether the combat contained a "Rock, Paper, Scissors" element, causing different troops to be stronger (or weaker) than others:

    There is a rock, paper, scissors mechanic, not for the specific troops, but for the different schools of warfare. So, the Technical troops have an advantage over Medieval troops, but they have a disadvantage against the Magical troops, so you kind of have to mix and match and make sure that you're appropriately fitted for the encounter you're going into. It's going to be a little bit of a learning experience, as there are some enemies where it's not immediately apparent [what kind of troop it is], like a Bear, but I think after just a couple of play-throughs, you'll pick that up pretty quickly.


As for Dragons, the game makes these creatures incredibly powerful, but also rare. You'll be able to hunt down Dragons and gather their Scales, and then combine those scales back in your Dragon Hatchery to form different Dragons for use in your army down the line. While you might be able to come across the same kinds of dragons multiple times in the game, O'Neill did tell us that the game has the ability to make specific Dragon Scales a one-time-only opportunity, encouraging players to keep coming back for more. When interacting with a Dragon, you'll also be able to use premium items to guarantee you'll receive a Scale, rather than relying on chance.

Gallery: DragonCraft Android / iOS Preview


To finish off our look at the game, we asked O'Neill whether we can expect social features to come to the game at some point in the future.


    We do have a lot of social features planned. Right now we want to focus on the core game experience because if that doesn't hold up then no one's going to stick around to talk to their friends, but for launch we are going to have dragon encounters being social. So, instead of you just running into a dragon, it's actually going to be a Mobage friend that's being attacked by a dragon, and then you're coming into help them. You can add them as a friend, and if you're already friends you can exchange gifts at that time. We also have a fully built-out PvP system for battling between people ready to go. We're focusing on the single player now and then expanding later on.

Just like SkyFall (check out our full hands-on preview), DragonCraft is without a release date as of this writing, but it will debut on Android (including Mobage connectivity) before eventually making its way over to iOS in the coming weeks and months. We'll make sure to give you more info about both games as we learn more.

Are you excited to try out DragonCraft on your smartphone? What do you think of this combination of city-building and combat gameplay?

FarmVille fans speak up on campaign signs on their digital farms [Video]

It's been over a month since it was first reported by Bloomberg Business Week and the San Francisco Chronicle that 2012 presidential candidates might plant their own virtual campaign signs into FarmVille. Now, Ohio-based news network WKYC-3 (an NBC affiliate) has talked with two fans of Zynga's iconic Facebook game to get their thoughts on the matter.

Of course, there are mixed feelings, but neither mother seems particularly thrilled about the possibility. They sound almost begrudged about the ability to endorse and campaign for a presidential candidate within FarmVille. "I don't want them telling us what to do," Jen Haney, a married mother from Barberton, Ohio, told WKYC. "If I could choose which candidate, then [placing virtual yard signs] might be a possibility."

The other mother interviewed appeared to be on board with the idea, but not terribly thrilled about the ordeal. "Some people might not like it, but I'll do it," Akron, Ohio-based married mother Sandy Dullen said. "A lot of people do things just because it's on Farmville."

Players of Zynga's games have endorsed many a brand, but bringing politics into the mix is another monster entirely. Should this plan go through, who knows what effect it might have on the community. But for an idea of how virtual farmers might feel about it, check out the video below.


Would you endorse or campaign for a presidential candidate through FarmVille, if given the chance?

Spielberg directs Tintin with a supersized game controller

In the film adaptation of the beloved children's book series Tintin, Steven Spielberg says he used a giant game controller to direct the animation onscreen (pictured above). Just imagine trying to play the new Call of Duty game with this unwieldy thing.

See the controller in action (skip to 1:47) and learn more about the film in the video featurette below.


> How Spielberg directed Tintin [Roger Ebert, Chicago-Sun Times]