6waves Lolapps follows up Ravenwood Fair not with Ravenshire Castle as originally planned, but with Ravenskye City, a sequel packaged as a franchise expansion to its 2010 Facebook hit. The game officially launched October 7 and is built with the newest version of the Fliso Flash-based social game engine.
According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, Ravensky City currently enjoys 470,000 monthly active users and 350,000 daily active users.
The core gameplay in Ravenskye City is almost identical to Ravenwood Fair — players arrive in a location overrun with trees, vines, and other clutter and must clear the land to gain resources used to build structures that support a local population of anthropomorphic animals. The more land a player clears and the more structures they build increases the rating of the location. As the rating increases, new animal characters arrive, bringing sets of quests the player can complete to earn additional resources. Player actions are restricted both by an energy gauge and by resources available for building (wood, rope, etc.). There is also a need to build certain protection structures that keep the area safe from attacks by creatures that appear randomly as the player is clearing land.
Where Ravenskye City differs from its parent game is in its style and overall polish. Right away, players will notice a theme difference with the main cast of characters being entirely made up of bird creatures and a driving central plot around a city in the sky that fell to some mysterious ruin. There's also a slight steampunk element to the setting with characters arriving via airship and building structures that contain both crude and advanced technologies (wood beams versus metal lanterns). The visual design of the characters is striking, with elongated angular points of articulation that make the bird creatures seems like they're constantly moving even when standing in one place. All of this combined with a gentle, soothing soundtrack make for a coherent sky-and-wind theme.
As of press time, there is no cross-game integration between Ravenskye City and Ravenwood Fair. According to statements made by 6waves Lolapps Vice President of Content Constantine Hantzopoulos and Design Director Glen Dahlgren during an early look at Ravenshire Castle, this was a goal 6waves Lolapps hoped to ultimately achieve with its Raven franchise. In the meantime, however, there is a pop-up window within Ravenwood Fair that drives users to Ravenshire Castle. Given the games' similarities, it's not hard to imagine that users might abandon one game for the other over time. Readers might in fact notice a drop in MAU for Ravenwood Fair begun October 14, but that’s likely due to changes in Facebook's user-counting formula and not to migrating users.
At present, Ravenskye City’s social features are limited to visiting friends to perform several free actions within their city or sending giftable items. The game monetizes primarily through the sale of building items, energy refills, and premium decorations.
You can follow the game's progress on AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.
Source: Inside Social Games
Monday, October 17, 2011