Games

I recently stumbled upon a fantastic Facebook application that is essentially a full-featured arcade that doesn’t take quarters! Of course, on Facebook, the dirty equivalent to a quarter is usually the requirement to spam friends with ads for the application, which is not required of the user here!

There are tons of games on the application (1,500) and they’re as easy to use and access as any other flash game online. They’ve got the classics like pac-man and some great super-mario games, and you don’t need to do anything remotely spammy to play!

I suppose the benefit of having your flash-arcade-of-choice on Facebook is the ability to see what games your friends are playing, to invite them to play the same game as you, and to compare scores after.

Think of it as an addictinggames.com on Facebook with the added benefit of social interaction. People can also rate and comment games, making it easy for the most playable games to rise to the top, while a base of 1,500 games is enough to keep anybody busy for quite some time.

I definitely recommend this application if you’re bored. Let me know if you find a diamond-in-the-rough game I missed!

- Jonathan Kleiman runs a Canadian Professional Network called Probook and a law blog called LegalIntellects.com

I’m not a big application adder on Facebook but I have to tell you I’m loving Blackjack. At first I was annoyed because in order to get cash to play you have to harass your friends and send them invitations but got over it because Blackjack is awesome!

Here’s how it works. You send it out to 20 people and you get $200 ($10 for every invite) and then if they add the application you get $500 for a possible total of $10000 per day. I hate sending applications to friends because I know I don’t like getting them myself. Is it horrible of me that I sent it to people on my list I don’t like that much?

Anyway great application for Blackjack fans. You choose one of many tables with various buy-in amounts and then play with other facebookers. There’s also a chat feature so you can talk with the other players. During my first game there were some pretty “interesting” conversations going on. Quite off topic and fun.

There’s also a great set of instructions if you don’t know how to play.

All it’s really missing now is a way to make actual money. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Leora Zellman writes a million blogs and is also a channel editor at b5media

This morning I spent some time playing the “Who Has The Biggest Brain” game. This is definitely one of the more entertaining games on Facebook. The application enables you to give your brain a solid workout. It tests you on a number of things including basic math, memory, analytics and others. I started playing it this morning after five hours of sleep and the game said I had the brain the same size as a goat. Goats are kind of intelligent … right?

By the afternoon after a nice lunch and a couple of tries, my brain mass had moved up to that of a neanderthal. Neaderthals were the most intelligent species 350,000 years ago so that has to mean something. While I may not be a master of this game it is fun to play. Another cool part is that you can compare your results with that of your friends. Unfortunately none of my friends had played this yet so I’m not sure how they fared.

If you want to test out your brain against your friends, go grab the “Who has the Biggest Brain application.

Having an app “go viral” is the dream of every budding Facebook developer. Frustrated by the lack of interest in his existing suite of applications, one such developer is giving his putative user base one last chance. His latest app is a game whereby his users trick their friends into revealing which app ideas would launch him into the big league.

Amir Michail, creator of such well-meaning but long-winded gems as “what have my friends told everyone I’m good at” and “my friend said I’m like which fictional character”, hopes that Mindrosia will finally provide him with a selection of truly viral ideas – along with empirical evidence that users will be drawn in by them.

To play the game, a user must create or reuse a “deceptive notification message” that purports to come from a more useful application, then send it to a gullible friend in the hope that they will fall for the fictional application’s promises. The original user will receive a point if the message convinced the friend to sign up despite the deliberately obscure description provided on Mindrosia’s sign-up page; and a bonus point is awarded if the idea was theirs in the first place.

Responding to criticism that users are being fooled into adding his app, Amir counters that “people may accept some deception if it would lead to better apps” in the future. Of course, he’s right when he says users are tricking their friends rather than the app sending notifications without authority.

But Amir hints that he would be happy to drop this controversial method of idea-generation if only we could help make his other apps widely used.

In one discussion board post, he lists some of his existing apps then pleads for help: “can you see why they are not popular?”

Yesterday I questioned if Facebook has turned into a site for games and entertainment. This application supports the argument that Facebook is indeed primarily used for entertainment purposes. This application has close to 11,000 active daily users and is growing rapidly with over 30 percent of all installations using the application yesterday alone.

The game objective is relatively simple. All you need to do it build your building as tall as possible. One cool feature of the game is that the height of your friends’ tallest buildings are displayed directly within the game. I was able to build my building up to 52 stories. In comparison to the other players I did pretty well, ranking among the top 5 in the game. My score of 52 though was nowhere near the top three scorers who were able to beat me by an order of magnitude.

If you are looking for yet another time waster, this game can keep you busy for at least 15 minutes if you don’t become addicted to it. Be sure to let me know if you are able to beat my score. A combination of patience and hand-eye coordination should make it relatively easy to rank among the elite in this game. For some reason though I have a feeling that there is an error with the scoring system given the significant fall-off. If you want to have some fun, go grab the Tower Bloxx application.

Based on the classic game of HiLo, Smart Or Not is an extremely simple but highly addictive game. For each card that comes up you bet on whether the next one will be higher, lower or the same. While I don’t think this game is really an accurate test of your intelligence, it is pretty darn fun. Perhaps I don’t think it is an accurate measure of intelligence based on the fact that my score isn’t on the leaderboard!

Smart or not is really well made and really addictive. The only downside to the application is that there seems to be a bug. When a King card shows up and you select “lower” if the next card is a Queen, it says you are wrong. Not really sure what’s up with that but I’m sure it will mess up any professional card counter. Honestly, I’m not sure that card counting is useful for this application given that the game could theoretically be played indefinitely if you have amazing luck.

I’m am proud to say that currently I rank first among all of my friends. While that may be a result of none of my friends adding the application, I prefer to think that the real reason is that I am just highly skilled at cards. Whatever the case may be, if you are into playing cards and want to test your luck, I highly suggest checking out the Smart or Not application.

Browsing through the Facebook directory this morning I found a pretty entertaining game called “Air Hockey.” Air Hockey is a well made duplicate of the classic Air Hockey game. This appears to be the first live application that integrates with the highly publicized Ace Bucks application (which I broke news about earlier this week). I played this application for about 10 minutes. It is a relatively addictive game but extremely challenging.

One of the players who was writing in the game chat room agreed with me that the game was difficult. Aside from being challeing this game has pretty smooth game play and the user interface is intuitive. The only problem with the game was that I had no idea how to figure out what my score was after making it to the third round of the game. There weren’t any other errors besides that. This game embraces the social graph by providing a chat room and a scoreboard that shows your friends’ scores. I think that seeing how your friends rank on these games is the primary reason for playing them on Facebook over another website. If you want to try out another game or have the opportunity to win more Ace Bucks, go check out the Air Hockey application.

This morning while browsing through the Facebook application directory, I stumbled upon a pretty interesting application called “Mars 2025.” The application is a sort of role playing game similar to the immensely popular Warbook application. When you launch the application it provides you with a thorough tutorial about how to play the game. The main purpose of the game is to create your own country on Mars.

Dmitry M. Kentsis and Andrew V. Zakharov who developed the game, focused heavily of building a solid user interface. There is a pretty cool roll-over navigation menu that enables you to browse among the main sections of the game. You can do everything from choosing your country’s government type to managing the bank, military, foreign relations, research and more. It reminds me somewhat of the PC game, Civilization. Additionally, you can form alliances, declare war and try to build your own empire.

The developers put a lot of thought into this application and I think there is a serious chance of them taking a segment of the Warbook’s user base. If you are into role playing games, then go grab the Mars 2025 application.

Yesterday afternoon I had a million things that I needed to get done. One of those things was to write a blog post. As I normally do I proceeded to browse through applications and stumbled upon the Noggin application. For the next hour, rather than calling clients or writing blog posts, I played Noggin. Noggin is a simple word game.

A matrix of letters are displayed and you need to match consecutive letters vertically, horizontally and diagonally. The coolest part is that you can watch other players that are playing at the same time. The only thing missing from the application is a chat room where you can chat in between games. I played enough that I am now one of the top players but I have the feeling that my rank will rapidly drop as more people begin using the application.

Another thing occurred to me while using the application: Facebook is rapidly becoming one of Yahoo’s primary competitors. Not only is Facebook’s page views rapidly rising, but their content is increasing exponentially thanks to the new platform. I remember playing games on Yahoo. Chances are, that won’t happen anymore as all of the same games rapidly show up on Facebook. Thanks to the social aspect of Facebook, they are going to rapidly become the top portal online. The funny thing though is that rather than linking you to outside websites, eventually all of the sites will reside within Facebook. In theory this is a relatively scary proposition.

Rather than expanding on the concept of Facebook owning a large portion of the net, I’ll get back to the topic. Noggin is an extremely addictive game! If you want to test what words you can come up with inside of your noggin, go grab the Noggin application. Below are a few screen shots of the application. You may notice that I’m on top of the daily leader board. Not bad huh?

TravelPod.com has launched a number of Facebook applications but this one seems to top the rest. The Traveler IQ Challenge currently has close to 400,000 users and is growing rapidly. There is a reason for the viral growth. The Traveler IQ Challenge application provides users with an interactive way of testing their geographic knowledge.

Various cities and landmarks are displayed and the goal is to click as close as possible to where the place is on the map. The closer and quicker you are to the location, the higher the points. This game is fun and addictive. The best component is the ability to compare your scores to your friends. I am currently ranked 8th out of my 9 friends that have added the application which is pretty embarrassing.

This application should be used by all those intending to launch a game application. Everything about it is well thought out and executed. If you want to waste some time, go grab the Traveler IQ Challenge application. This is an addictive game though so don’t say I didn’t warn you.