Words with Friends – Geek Sugar’s download of the day
NewToy’s Words with Friends iPhone app has exploded since its launch in August 2009. Today the app is featured as GeekSugar.com’s download of the day.
Remember when Plants vs. Zombies was taking over my life? It’s officially been ousted as my number one time-suck, replaced by Words With Friends,
If you have an iPhone and havnt played Words with Friends, what are you waiting for? Download the free edition from the iTunes store today, just search for Words with Friends!
NewToy’s Words with Friends iPhone app nominated in Wired.com’s Top apps of 2009
Great news for NewToy their popular “Words with Friends” application has been nominated in the Wired.com “Top apps of 2009” feature. If you have an iPhone with and have played Words with Friends then show your support for the budding iPhone developer headed up by the Bettner brothers!
Head over to : http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/best-iphone-apps-2009/ for the full story.
Dave Pottingers Lego mission is complete + NewToy launch new iPhone game “Words with Friends”
Kicking off today’s ex Ensemble Studios members updates is Dave Pottinger who has updated his blog over on the Robot Entertainment with the final installment of the Lego Robot Logo design. With a bunch of new pictures and text discussing how the board came to be mounted proudly on the wall of Robot Entertainment can be found on the website.
Carrying the Logo
In case you were wondering from the last blog what the mini lego adventures were on each letter of the logo I can reveal from the blog that the list is as follows:
• Star Wars for the ‘r’
• Indy for the first ‘o’
• Medieval for the ‘b’ (hey, we did do Age2 after all!)
• Pirates for the second ‘o’
• Batman for the ‘t’
And here’s what they look like:
Mission Complete!
But of course all this wouldnt of been possible with out Mr “Lead Designer” Dave Pottinger and his family!
Standing proud with the family… away from the Bad Guys!
But thats not all!
Its been a little while but it looks like NewToy one of the iPhone development companies that formed out of Ensemble has released thier new game titled “Words with Friends” the game follows in the “With friends” series with NewToy’s last game, “Chess with friends” proving to be a real hit on the Apple App Store. NewToy is lead by the Bettner Brothers of Ensemble Studios. You can download thier latest game right now from the App Store!
Be sure to read all about it on the New Toy website!
Zynga with Friends releases “Hanging with Friends”
Zynga’s “With Friends” studio, who used to be known as NewToy have just announced their latest game to hit the iOS market – “Hanging with Friends”. Taking the hugely popular “With Friends” series further, this new game is based around the traditional Hang Man game. One player is tasked with choosing a word while the other player has to guess the word by guessing which letters match the word. The player guessing only has a limited amount of guesses before the game is over and normally that player is hanged when the game is over. That’s not necessarily very positive so Zynga have brightened up the concept and made it feel a bit more positive – say hello to pretty colourful graphics! Read more
Zynga closes Dallas studios (Formerly Bonfire Studios and NewToy)
Yesterday Zynga announced the shocking news that it was closing its Zynga Dallas and Zynga With Friends studios. Prior to Zynga’s acquisition of these teams they were known as Bonfire Studios and NewToy respectively. It was not long ago back in February 2013 that Zynga’s Chief Operating Officer, David Ko announced that it was merging all of its Texas operations under a single office as part of cost cutting moves for the struggling company. Now it seems those cost cutting measures have gone even deeper resulting in the layoff of all staff from the studios formed by Ex Ensemble Studios members. Read more
Word Chums
When I was preparing this review for Word Chums, it hit me. Word Chums is like one of the following analogies, so pick the one that applies to you depending upon your age. It’s like you went from cassettes to CD’s or home phone landlines to a cell phone or dial-up internet to broadband. When I went from Words With Friends and other word games to Word Chums there was no going back. When I first installed Word Chums I immediately noticed some things that may seem trivial when you see them on a press release or someone tells you about them. But upon further inspection there are major changes to the genre of the game. And by major I mean they improve the experience by one hundred percent. The guys over at PeopleFun took what annoyed me about other word games and they fixed them. And some of them I didn’t even know that I disliked until I played Word Chums.
First of all I can verify if a word is real before I submit it. And I was really growing tired of being rejected over and over when trying to submit a word for verification. Word Chums automatically turns the word green and gives you a point value called a scoring badge and you can see how much it’s worth. Now I can spend my time finding the best word instead of being rejected all day… I don’t do well with rejection. They also made games for 2-4 players, head to head, 2v2 teams. You and your friends battling it out and pairing up with each other is a big improvement.
Part of it is also streamlined game play. And what I mean is I don’t have to go back to a menu and select a game and go to another menu and hit a button. There are fewer steps in getting to other games. I can simply take my thumb, swipe and go to the next game. This is a very streamlined interface. I didn’t realize how much it annoyed me for me to go back and pick and hit another menu and go pick another game. So adding streamlined game play and streamlined interface into the game makes it a hundred percent better for me.
There is a core gaming experience that revolves around some characters called the Chums and I really like them. They have fun gear that you can buy as you win games. You can get coins and use those coins and buy hats and canes and hairdos and all types of stuff. I didn’t know if I’d be into it but I like it actually. You see your friends’ characters change things and add glasses, add coats, all types of things inside the game to make it a more enjoyable experience. They have taken a fun feel that many other games have and they put it into a game that usually looks academic. Most word games have a tile placing academic look and academic feel to them. The people at PeopleFun have overcome this obstacle and actually took these two and merged them. They have merged the academic fun with the personalities of these Chums. Word Chums has also been a wonderful success at expanding my vocabulary. Now I can actually touch a word and it will tell me the definition of it. It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but it really annoyed me when people played words that I didn’t think were actually words that are in the dictionary and I wanted to know what they meant. I would actually take my phone and Google it and look it up and try to figure out what the word meant. It was just annoying to me. Now with a single touch – Boom! I can touch the word and I know what it is because the built in dictionary shows what the words mean. Perfect.
They’ve also added hints so if you run into a problem you can use your hints to point you to a location of a higher point word. The good thing is that it doesn’t give you the highest word, it gives you a high point word and you can actually beat the hint word, which I think adds a great balance to the game because you don’t actually pay to win.
Word Chums has leader boards and you get experience points with each game played and you level up. They also have a ribbon system for the best word and best game of the week. That doesn’t seem like a big deal but I like that the leader board changes each week because I feel like I have a shot at redeeming myself when playing bad.
I didn’t like when games kept a continuous record of lifetime losses only. If I was losing to a friend and they were 74 wins to my 10, I didn’t think I was ever going to catch them. And so the new leader board gives me new challenges and another chance to beat them. So in short, there are weekly refreshing leader boards and ribbons making me go back in there to get revenge and beat my friends. So it has kind of a competitive game experience to it also.
In closing, Word Chums has taken all of the things I have disliked about different word games and they fixed them. And another thing, PeopleFun kept all the things that were great. I think they looked at these other games, they looked at the word games that people play and they said- These things don’t need to change, there are great mechanics, there are great things in the games that people love. Leave them alone. Now what do people dislike? And they fixed all the things I disliked.
So remember I warned you – Once you buy Word Chums there’s no going back.
Listen to the audio review:
Download from iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/word-chums-free/id517840944
By Kenny Newell
Kenny’s Word Chums review – there’s no going back!
When I was preparing this review for Word Chums, it hit me. Word Chums is like one of the following analogies, so pick the one that applies to you depending upon your age. It’s like you went from cassettes to CD’s or home phone landlines to a cell phone or dial-up internet to broadband. When I went from Words With Friends and other word games to Word Chums there was no going back. When I first installed Word Chums I immediately noticed some things that may seem trivial when you see them on a press release or someone tells you about them. But upon further inspection there are major changes to the genre of the game. And by major I mean they improve the experience by one hundred percent. The guys over at PeopleFun took what annoyed me about other word games and they fixed them. And some of them I didn’t even know that I disliked until I played Word Chums. Read more
Paul and David Bettner leave Zynga
Ex Ensembler’s Paul and David Bettner who set about forming the hugely successful mobile studio NewToy have confirmed that they have now left the mobile gaming giant, Zynga. Paul and David Bettner joined Zynga after NewToy was acquired in December 2010. Back then the brothers commented that joining Zynga made perfect sense as both parties “share the same dream of building a social treasure”. Since the acquisition the NewToy studio which was re-named “Zynga With Friends” have greatly expanded the “With Friends” series of games from the massively successful Words with Friends to including Hanging, Matching, and Gems with Friends. Read more
PeopleFun’s first mobile game “Word Chums” launching tomorrow!
Tony Goodman’s recently announced new mobile studio “PeopleFun” are poised to launch their first game on the iTunes store tomorrow. As anticipated their first title will be “Word Chums”. So what is this all about I hear you ask? Well, the premise is that it is very similar to existing word games like Words with Friends. However, what makes this game stand out is that it is very visually unique. Colourful to say the least, Word Chums adopts typical Ensemble Studios design styles with rich and bright colour palettes to help engage players and make it a pleasure to play. Take a look at the screenshots below and you’ll see just what I mean – this game is bright! Read more
Robot Entertainment announces “Hero Academy” a new iOS game!
After a teaser on the website for the last few days, Robot Entertainment have taken the wraps off Game 3.0 – Hero Academy! Hero Academy is a game for iOS which means it will be compatible with iPhone and iPad’s. So lets delve in and find out what its all about! Read more