Infinite Realms offers science-fiction real-time strategy gameplay on Facebook

Infinite Realms was launched on Facebook at the beginning of December, and has since climbed to over 42,000 users. The game's real-time-strategy gameplay is served with a science-fiction storyline surrounding you, as a galactic traveler, that must traverse the many galaxies of space on your mission of expanding your own realm, and protecting a group known as the Confederation.

Infinite Realms has some of the best graphics we've seen from a game starting right out of the gate, and also offers real-time chat amongst players. The gameplay here is complex, as is normally the case in a real-time strategy game, where battles take place with, as the genre suggests, strategy, rather than just luck. However, the gameplay seems to be setup in such a way as to be friendly to those who are lacking in experience with the genre.

Meet us behind the break for a complete preview of Infinite Realms on Facebook. Infinite Realms contains a detailed tutorial, which, while containing a few mis-translated portions, serves to show you the basics of gameplay. You'll be able to control outposts or bases, which serve as your overall command centers for a particular planet. Within these outposts, you'll be able to construct buildings like Rations Depots (rations are used to train military units), Refineries (extracts resources like gas), Armories (manufactures heavy-weaponry like tanks), Barracks (trains and outfits new soldiers with equipment) and more.

You'll only be able to construct new buildings where there are free construction plots on your Outpost. As there are a limited number of these construction plots available, you'll need to think ahead so as to give each outpost a variety of buildings, so that they are never lacking in resources or military units.

You'll be helped in your progress by a quest system, that will reward you with rations, reputation points (the game's experience points), and other items. Your available minerals and resources are listed at the top of the screen, and you'll have to build the appropriate buildings to make sure these items are constantly produced, even when you're not playing the game. Think of production as a sort of factory job - you can increase the production rate of your resources by adding workers - in this case boost items - to the production line. Most of these items will only boost production for a limited amount of time, however, so you'll need to make sure to use them when they are needed most.

As for battles themselves, once you feel that you have enough soldiers ready for battle, you can zoom from your outpost to a view of the planet's surface, where you'll see enemy outposts and bases that can be attacked. Each military unit needs to have a Hero, or general of sorts assigned to it. They will lead your army into battle, and will also advise you before you attack as to whether or not victory seems likely. From there, the battle will have an immediate outcome (you either win or lose), but you can watch a detailed view of your battle via an instant replay, showing individual units on the battlefield.

On the planet's surface, you'll be able to spot any surrounding enemy camp, along with resource bases that can be taken for your own use. Your mothership will also come into play (remember, this game is about patrolling the entire galaxy - not just a single planet), and you'll be able to upgrade this ship to add to your total available supplies in the game. That is, you will eventually come to the maximum amount of Rations or Troops that your supplies can sustain for your level. By upgrading the mothership, these caps will increase, allowing you to store more items, and ultimately become stronger.

In terms of social elements, you can head to the Consulate portion of the Mothership in order to see the "Alliance-related affairs" of the game. The higher level you are in the game, the more alliance members you can have in any alliance that you happen to create, but you can also take the time to browse through and apply to join alliances of other real-world game players.

All in all, Infinite Realms offers as much complexity from the game as you'd want. You can use real world currency to purchase items that will speed up your progress or give you access to more complex customization in the game, or you can let the in-game Cooldown Timers determine when you'll come back to the game and make progress. The game's graphics stand out in terms of the entire Facebook platform, and the gameplay is linear enough to start that you shouldn't become lost in simply trying to learn the mechanics of the game.

New Year's Guide: FarmVille, FrontierVille, Cafe World & more

Happy New Year's to all players of FarmVille, CityVille, FrontierVille, Cafe World and other Facebook games! Pat yourselves on the back, you made it through the entire 2010 Holiday Season. You survived Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the Holidays. Even more impressive is how you managed the bombardment of new Facebook game updates, features, and items that each holiday brought about. New Year's is no exception, there's new items and features in all of your favorite Facebook games, welcoming in the new year with style. So don't miss these 2011 New Year's Facebook game specials, they only come once a year.

Jump in to the 2011 New Year's Facebook game festivities below.


Jump to: FarmVille | FrontierVille | Cafe World

Note: The newest posts are at the bottom of each list. Posts in BOLD are the biggest New Year's updates.

farmville new years
FarmVille New Year's

    FarmVille Party Barn / New Year's Ball Drop Event: Everything you need to know
    FarmVille New Years Clothing: Tiaras, Top Hats, Party Dresses, and more!
    FarmVille New Years Tree: Confetti Tree
    FarmVille Winter Countdown: Everything you need to know
    FarmVille New Years Items: New Year Horse, Party House, Cider Fountain & More
    FarmVille Winter Countdown items revealed - here's what to expect over the next 11 days
    FarmVille New Year Animal: Disco Ball Sheep
    FarmVille Disco Ball Tree makes an appearance in the market
    FarmVille New Years Items: Fireworks I, II, III, & New Year Gnome
    FarmVille: Get ready for a New Years Double Mastery Weekend!




frontierville new years
FrontierVille New Year's

    FrontierVille New Years Party Goals: Everything you need to know
    FrontierVille Winter Collection: Everything you need to know
    FrontierVille New Years RSVP Prizes: Everything you need to know




Cafe World New Year's

    Cafe World New Years Party Goals: Everything you need to know
    Cafe World Prep for the New Year Mission: Everything you need to know
    Cafe World New Years Party Catering Order: Everything you need to know
    Cafe World: The Saga of the New Years Goals continues, but this time with free iPads!




playfish new years
Playfish New Year's

    Playfish's New Years Event Round-Up: Catch up with Restaurant City, Hotel City, Pet Society & More!



Check out the rest of our Holiday 2010 coverage right here.

Which is your favorite New Year's Facebook Game update?

Push on Facebook: Set (lots of) time aside for this puzzling battle of wits

Push
If you hadn't noticed, Facebook games are steadily becoming more polished, for sure. But they're also growing to be more challenging, deep and visually appealing. Push on Facebook is one of those games, but it's not without a few minor flaws. This competitive puzzle game, developed by Social Spiel is a fresh take on games like Chinese Checkers and Peg Solitaire and takes a great deal of ingenuity to play well in. Push plays almost exactly how it sounds. Players are supplied with Pops, cutesy little balls with eyes that act as the playing pieces on a hexagonal board filled with holes.

To defeat your opponent you must push three of their Pops off the edge of the board using strategic movements and coordination with your team of Pops. If three of your Pops get pushed off the board, it's game over for you and those Pops are toast for good. Trust us, you'll soon enough see that it's not as easy as it might sound.

Join us after the break for more of our impressions of Push.

Push in Action
Throughout the beginning of the game, you'll be guided by Pon Du Bear, a strangely pear-shaped bear that has an affinity for post-modern furniture and high-heel boots. It's this odd creature that will tell you that you can move up to three Pops at a time either sideways or in a straight line by clicking on the Pops and then selecting their destination. It takes one more Pop than the amount of Pops you're trying to push in order to push them back one space in direction you're trying to move them. For instance, if you're trying to move one Pop, you'll need two of your own Pops to push it. If you want to move two of your opponent's Pops, you'll need three in a row to make it happen.

While the gameplay sounds simple enough, it's working against an opponent's wits that makes Push challenging. Opposing players and AI opponents alike are going to catch on to what you're up to rather quickly, forcing you to corner their Pops using feint moves and smart positioning. Unless you have a knack for puzzlers, you're going to use far more than just two Pops to push one enemy Pop off the edge.

Ranked matches, or games of Push with players in real time that contribute to a global leader board, are another beast entirely. This is because, in respect of the opposing player, you only have about 30 seconds to make each move. While you're given two time-outs, meaning you take longer than the 30 seconds to make a move (shifting the turn to your opponent), your third means game over. However, Pops double as the game's currency, which when bought in excess from the Pop Shop using Facebook Credits can be used for special powers in ranked matches.

Push Ranked Match
There are three powers to choose from: Teleport, Double Move, and Revive. Teleport allows you to move a Pop in danger to any location on the board while Double Move allows you to make two moves in one turn. Revive does just as it sounds: brings one pushed Pop back onto the playing field. Each runs on a cooldown, meaning you can't use them every turn, and cost 60 Pops each. While the game supplies players with 15 free Pops daily, big spenders could easily dominate games using these powers, somewhat trivializing the ranked system.

However, if you're just looking to add a few friends to play around with in real time and flex that thinking muscle a bit, this is a fine place to do just that. Just make sure you have a lot of time to put aside for a match as equally matched players could potential duke it out for hours, which isn't exactly what Facebook games are all about. Regardless, it's Facebook games like Push--you know, the ones that require thinking--that do well to give the genre a good name.

One in five seniors is a potential Facebook gamer, study shows

Is old pappy sending you new Mystery Gifts every day in FarmVille? According to a study conducted by All Assisted Living Homes, 20 percent of baby boomers--if you born anywhere from the late 70s through the 80s, likely your parents--are on Facebook. While they could be doing anything on Facebook, Deseret News mentions that gaming could be part of those activities. And we're willing to bet on that big time.

This 20 percent of seniors logs into Facebook for at least one hour daily. Since it only takes a few minutes to get the dirty work done in a Facebook game, there is likely a large portion of these old folks playing CityVille or what have you. This trend is growing so much so that at one senior center in Sandy City, Utah holds a course to teach seniors the art of Facebook. It's one of the most popular classes they offer.

It seems that FrontierVille and the lot truly are becoming the universal gaming language for first time gamers. While many are crying foul over social gaming's addictive or exploitative tendencies, there's nothing wrong with more folks getting into games. Sure, the gameplay languages between hardcore and casual slash social games are different dialects, but they both stem from the same root.

[Image Credit: Ryan's Go Blog]

Are you a senior that plays social games? What do you think of the increasingly older, and inversely new, demographic of casual and social gamers?

Lunchtime Poll: Does Facebook game elitism exist?

Once upon a time, there was a wee little, Level 21 pioneer in FrontierVille named Pillowzillow who wanted to be friends with a much hardier Level 70 frontiersman. But with a huff and a puff, the mighty Level 70 pioneer deleted the lowly settler from his friends list and said, "The items you are asking for are beneath me."

As the hoity-toity pioneer removed PillowZillow, he let out a booming guffaw to his high-level friends. Alright, so maybe it didn't exactly like that, but its seems that PillowZillow and a few repliers sure feel that way. So, do Facebook game elitists exist in a genre that's supposed to be dominated by casual, friendly players?

Does Facebook game elitism exist?
Why yes, and my friends and I enjoy being better.I've never experienced anything of the sort, though I'm not surprised.Absolutely not! I have friends of all levels and styles.Sure it does, and I've been a victim of it.
VoteView ResultsShare ThisPolldaddy.com

Serf Wars on Facebook: Tyranny has never been this adorable (or fun)

We all like to think of the Middle Ages as a time when kings oversaw their loyal subjects out of respect for the crown, but fear of persecution, imprisonment or death is more like it. And leave it to a Facebook game to address this fact in the briefest and most cutesy way imaginable: Serf Wars. Developed by Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Meteor Games, the folks behind Island Paradise, Serf Wars puts you in the role of a castle estate inherited from your late uncle. Like most royal estates during the time period, your subjects are largely serf, or peasants. And that's about as real as this game gets.

Honestly, Serf Wars is not much different from your standard property management game at its core. Structures to build, statistics based on arbitrary factors to maintain and expansion are all accounted for. Among all of the standard tropes of social games including paid transactions, what stands out most is this studio's ability to address a very real element of the past and turn the cute meter all the way up on it. In fact, the adorable look on those eager peasants' faces as they clean up your kingdom's filth almost causes you to forget that, in reality, you're a demanding aristocrat.

Snake N Bake
It's amazing what some cheeky artwork and a bright color palette can do, huh? But back to the gameplay, which revolves around players placating their peasants to prevent revolt (I'd love to see that happen) by providing them with food and pretty things to look at. When you think about it, that sounds oddly topical. Not to mention the ability to create a force of soldiers to protect your serfs from invaders--or are they to protect yourself in the event of an uprising?

To break the doldrums of keeping indentured servants happy and healthy, there is a slew of mini games to play in Serf Wars that provide players with coins and XP. There are only two available to begin with, though six more will unlock as you level up. The first is Snake N Bake, which is little more than the traditional phone game, Snake. However, replace the snake with a sticky glob of dough in a vat. By using the arrow keys, players will have to eat up more dough and toppings while avoiding walls, bugs and running into themselves. While it's nothing but a port, Facebook games need more skill-based gameplay.

Salaboundin'
Salaboundin' is the second game immediately available. Thankfully, this appears to be 100 percent original in that players control a strange, bipedal monster that walks as if it has four legs as it jumps over enemies, cliffs and obstacles. Along the way, your mission to gobble up as many strawberries as possible. What this has to do with serfs in a mythical interpretation of the Middle Ages, I have not in the slightest. Though, it is darn fun--purely because it's refreshing amongst the sea of simulator games. If you can ignore what Meteor Games is ignoring through its incredible art style, then Serf Wars will be a treat.

Click here to play Serf Wars on Facebook Now>

Have you tried Serf Wars? What do you think of medieval social games, especially those that address slavery so directly and indirectly simultaneously?