The Female Guide to Games

Lauren Omond brings us her weekly roundup of all things games - new discoveries, gossip and more!

New discovery - Social City

Social City is all about city building fun!  In this Facebook game you take on the role of mayor where you must build and maintain your very own bustling metropolis (show me someone who doesn’t want to be in charge of their own metropolis!). 

There are three main objectives in Social City:  increase the population, ensure citizens are happy and make money. It’s a juggling act that only the most level headed women can accomplish.

As you gain more experience and level up, you’ll gain money and unlock a range of new structures to build.  You need to use the money you earn to continue to expand and decorate your city. 

The layout is clean and simple; although if you are anything like me who just clicks buttons, in the hope it will somehow come together, I suggest you use the tutorial - mainly so you know how to earn more cash by hitting your goals quicker. 

Icons will pop up throughout the game so it’s always easy to keep track of what is going on. The graphics in Social City are pretty slick, very detailed and are quite frankly adorable. 

The social features available in Social City are fairly standard for a Facebook game, allowing you to gift items, share accomplishments, view leaderboards and visit other people’s cities and help them out.

(Mayor) Lauren’s verdict: Who would have thought construction could be such great fun! It’s easy to pick up the basics and is worth playing for the cute graphics alone.  If I’m honest I’m a little bit jealous of the people living in my City, it rocks!

New discovery - Monopoly Millionaires

Who doesn’t love Monopoly?  Monopoly is one of the most popular board games of our time, having sold more than 275 million copies across 111 countries. I’ve love the game, it brings out the competitive spirit in everyone - young and old - and no matter who you play with there’s always a heated debate about the rules.

Monopoly Millionaires  is the free-to-play online social version of the classic, and has a number of familiar features from the original but with a twist. Instead of playing against friends it is now essentially a single player experience which sounds weird but it does work.

Each player has their own Monopoly board and owns all the properties on it. Income is generated by building hotels on your board and paying the electric company to ensure 'power is on'.

Provided you have collected a certain number of the property cards, have enough 'investors' (friends) and money, houses and hotels can be upgraded to increase the amount of income you get from them.

When you roll a dice and move your token it now happens on your friends’ boards. You only get a limited number of throws but this does regenerate after time. The more friends you have in Monopoly Millionaires, the more chances you have to play.

When you land on a property you no longer buy it or have to pay rent, instead you’re presented with four cards and if you pick a ‘property’ one, you win it. Money can also be earned while on friends’ boards through the old classics; chance, community chest cards or passing through GO.

It’s nice to see that Monopoly Millionaires has kept many of the features from the original Monopoly like the classic board, chance, community chest and the rolling of a dice to move tokens. The graphics are nice and bright, with colours all reminiscent of the board game.

Lauren’s verdict: Give it a go! Fans of the classic board game will still love the latest edition on Facebook.  I only wish they had a 'steal from the bank' or 'flip the board over in a huff' option.

Game gossip - Gamescom

In other game related news, last week saw the return of Gamescom, an annual trade fair dedicated to interactive games and entertainment.

Over 275,000 gamers descended on Cologne, Germany, to check out the latest games and technology from the industry - yep, basically one massive geekfest.

Word on the street is next generation motion control and 3D gaming will be big in 2012 - now if you can add Brad Pitt into that mix then we’d have a game I would be happily spend hours playing!

Lauren Omond works at TeePee Games, a rapidly growing discovery platform for social, smartphone and online Flash games.