What you probably don’t think about is how magnificently this vision of a) sleep and b) alcohol will translate into casual gaming on the iPad and Facebook. Well, that’s all about to change, thank God! THQ has announced Margaritaville Online, a free-to-play app “inspired” by the music of Jimmy Buffet. An iPhone version will be coming later, but you can play it right now on your iPad or on Facebook, so expect to start seeing invitations from your uncle who always posts political links to your Wall that immediately send you to Snopes.

And what does Buffet think of this electronic version of his popular, and commercially licensable style?

“The Margaritaville laidback state of mind is inherently social, and this game has captured the spirit of that lifestyle,” said Jimmy Buffett, who consulted on the game. “With Margaritaville Online, fans across the globe can party together any time and any place.”

Based on the trailer, it appears the players create an avatar, not unlike a “Mii” from the Nintendo Wii console, who wander around exploring, interacting with other parrot heads, playing mini-games, customizing (and presumably paying for) new looks and listening to Buffet songs.

Margaritaville Online is compatible with both iPad versions, and requires iOS 4.3. It’s available now.

Gameplay

Legacy of a Thousand Suns (LoTS) is based around Energy, Stamina and Honor, which you use with the goals of getting experience to level up the gear you wear, to increase attributes, and to get items to use in the Lab to make a variety of items. You can also work towards getting Legendary items. It’s difficult to do, but it rewards you with excellent gear, officers, and crew. Once you run out, you can either get more with Golden Suns (the in-game currency you buy with money or Facebook credits) or wait for them to refill over time.

Energy is mainly used for missions or quests which unlock access to raid bosses you can later summon. This is where the story progresses, as each mission tells the tale of your ragtag group as they go around the galaxy killing and destroying property along the way, all for the noble cause of protecting Princess Illaria and the Sian Empire. Missions are also useful as there’s a chance to get gear and, more importantly, items you can use in the Lab to increase your attributes. Stamina is used in general raid bosses and Honor is used in alliance raid bosses. In both cases there is a variety of gear and items you can get; the more damage you do, the more gear and items you get of higher quality. You can also get ingredients for Legendary items by fighting general and alliance raid bosses by wearing the right gear (acquired from missions and other general and alliance raid bosses) and having the right officers and crew in your ship.You can also use Stamina and Honor to fight other players. Even though there are different options (Duel, Skirmish) you only get meaningful rewards from the Galaxy Dome. You make a team of four people from your friend’s list and outfit them with the gear you’ve collected and fight against other teams up to 20 times a day using 10 Stamina each time. By winning Galaxy Dome fights you increase your level, which grants you access to gear and buffs which help you win future fights.

However, there is work that is being done on Duels since LoTS is always being worked on and expanded.

Once you get officers and crew, you can put them in a ship. Most ships have a limit to what kinds of officers and crews you can use and have a power bonus as well. You can get ships, officers, and crew from the Lab, Missions, Raids, and using Golden Suns. The benefit of having a well-stocked ship is felt in raids with the more ship power you have influencing how much damage you do. In addition, officers and crew have their own special abilities which can do extra damage in raids, increase your attack/defense, reduce damage you take, and more.

You get credits as a reward for doing missions and raids, and can use them to buy items in the shop and more faculties. Faculties are collected every few hours, and you can get gear, items, and Golden Suns as a reward. It’s different from other Facebook games where you buy land with gold that gives you more gold that you stockpile. This is also beneficial if your friends don’t send you a lot of gifts.

Accepting gifts on Facebook has always been a chore. You have to go back and forth between the requests page and the game page to accept each and every gift. Fortunately, you can now do so from within LoTS with one easy click to accept a gift and another to send a gift in return. The first time you send a gift to someone there is another button you have to click, but you only have to do that once.

In-Game Purchases

Every two-weeks or so there are four different limited duration items to buy which are better than what you can get elsewhere. Often, they are designed around a theme, and each item gets more powerful the more the set is completed. You can also take a chance with the Expedition packs, and although you have no control over which item you get from the selection, it’s usually worth it to take the gamble.

What I appreciate about LoTS is that it rewards you for being a regular player by giving you free Golden Suns (the in-game currency) when you level up and if you play every day. While you can buy more Golden Suns with real money, I appreciate that even people without a lot of money to spare can occasionally get a more powerful item just by playing.

Conclusion

Legacy of a Thousand Suns is a fun Facebook game with many goals to work towards and many ways to work with and fight against other people. It also doesn’t take a lot of time, and you don’t need to spend any real money to get powerful items or risk falling behind. The art is very well-done, and the story has excellent detail and intriguing characters.

If you want a space game on Facebook, Legacy of a Thousand Suns is one of the better ones.

• Legacy of a Thousand Suns on Facebook

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According to Wikipedia, Scrabble sets are found in roughly 1/3 of American homes. I don’t doubt that, as I often played it growing up. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to get people together to play a board game, and that’s where Facebook comes in. Being able to play with friends, family, and strangers all over the world means it’s easier than ever to play a game of Scrabble.

Gameplay

Scrabble is a classic board game that gives you seven letters, each with different points, with the goal of earning the highest score to win. It tests your ability to use the board effectively by using special bonuses which increase how many points you get from each letter and/or word. Preventing your opponents from doing the same is key to victory, adding a strategic aspect to the game.

Each game can have 2, 3 or 4 players, with each taking turns to make a word on the board. However, every new word has to be connected to letters already on the board, which makes knowing two-letter words vital. Fortunately there’s a built-in list of all of the valid two-letter words which you can filter by picking the letter in which you’re interested.

There’s also a built-in dictionary which you can check words you want to use, and since the word is checked before it’s accepted, there’s no way to challenge a word another player has used. It also calculates the score when you put tiles on the board so you can compare which word gives the most points.

Other features include being able to alphabetize your tiles or scramble their order. If you have the worst letters and can’t make a single good word, you can exchange all or some of your tiles for new ones. You can also pick which dictionary you use for the game, which determines what words are valid. However, you can’t change the rules even though there are a number of variations that are considered acceptable.

Friends

How long it takes you to play depends upon how many games you play at one time and how long it takes for you to come up with good words. When you create a new game, you can specify the game speed in case you want there to be a time limit for a faster game. Fortunately you can take days or weeks to finish your turn and the game won’t be deleted.

Facebook Credits

Scrabble is unusual for Facebook games in that it doesn’t sell anything for money or require you to buy anything to play. There are ads next to the game, but they’re easy to ignore and can probably be blocked entirely with the right browser add-on.

Conclusion

Scrabble on Facebook is a great, basic version of the classic board game. The only downside is that if you don’t have friends who will agree to play Scrabble with you, it will be nearly impossible to find public games. For that, you can go to the Internet Scrabble Club, which supports other languages, playing against the computer, observing games, and more.

• Scrabble on Facebook
• Scrabble’s Official Site

See other Social Playbook columns.

Whether for a business or hobby, having a well-designed website is the key to having people find you and keep coming back. However, not everyone has the desire or aptitude to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or the creative eye to design how a website should look. That’s where Sandvox 2 from Karelia Software steps in to save the day. Its purpose is to help you easily create web sites with professional designs, integration with social networks, multimedia, and blogs. That’s a pretty tall order, so let’s see if Sandvox 2 delivers.

The first thing you do is pick a design from several provided, some of which have different color schemes. If none are to your liking, you can purchase additional designs for about $12 each and can view what’s available from within Sandvox 2. If you do know HTML and CSS, you can make your own designs or tweak what’s provided. If you’re not prepared to dig around in the code, you’re limited to changing only a few aspects, such as whether there’s a footer or change the picture in the banner at the top of each page.

To review Sandvox 2 I decided to make a website for a group in an online game I play. My first thought was to create a table or database with pictures of the members and information about them. However, Sandvox 2 doesn’t have a built-in way to make tables, and instead gives you a link to a website that will make the table HTML for you to then insert into Sandvox 2.

To do this, you go to the page on which you want to place the table, then create an HTML object, click on it to select it, choose “Edit Raw HTML” from the menu or the icon in the toolbar, and then paste your table HTML in the window which appears. As a plus, Sandvox 2 checks your HTML for errors and can even validate it to be sure you don’t have a typo. It’s great that you have the ability to add your own HTML with the added flexibility and power this provides, but having to do so for something as basic as tables annoys me.

Far easier was the ability to add picture albums, which can even contain other picture albums. Just drag and drop pictures from the finder or use the built-in Media Browser, which puts images, movies, audio, and links from Safari in one easy location. Adding the arrows to go from one picture to the next and back to the album index were provided by Sandvox 2 without me having to do a thing. If you use Flickr you have easy access to the pictures stored there as well.

Pictures is one thing, but what about video? Adding a YouTube object and providing it with a link lets you embed videos easily, and by adding a Media Placeholder object you can add movies, sounds, images, or Flash files you have on your computer or elsewhere.

Blogging is popular and can be used for site updates, news, or any information you want to share on a regular basis. All you have to do is insert a blog page, and presto, you have a blog. There are no restrictions as to what each entry can contain or how long they can be. If you want to allow people to comment you have the option of using Disqus, IntenseDebate, or Facebook.

However, unlike other blogs such as WordPress or Blogger, there a few features missing you may want, such as labels which can allow people to quickly find posts of the same subject. There’s also no obvious way to add a search feature, and the index function is a bit basic. There’s also no way to have different authors as Sandvox 2 doesn’t keep track of that, nor is there a way for people to work on different parts of the same website at the same time.

As you can see from the image to the below, there are many built-in objects that connect your website to social networks with the Twitter and Facebook buttons.

You can also connect to your Amazon store, let people see your IM status, and even show people how to get to your business with Google Map. If there’s a service you want to use that isn’t available, you can often insert an HTML object and still use it. In addition, there are other objects that can be installed, some for a cost, that expand Sandvox 2′s capabilities as well. All of the objects are easy to use and can be tweaked to your heart’s content.

Once you have your website finished, or just want to see how it looks in a browser, it’s simple to either upload the site to a remote host or to your own computer. It still mentions MobileMe despite its passing, but other than that, publishing is straight-forward.

While I’ve been somewhat negative of Sandvox 2, I still think it’s a great way to quickly make a website. It seems the goal was to provide the features and options that most people would use. If you need something it doesn’t provide, you can add your own code using the HTML object or by using a plug-in. Being able to connect your website to social networks and add multimedia and blogs are easily done, so I think most people will find Sandvox 2 just perfect for their needs.

Appletell Rating:

Buy Sandvox 2

Vampires

Chronicles of Blood is an adventure where you play as a new vampire who goes to various locations to kill foes in order to get better gear to kill bosses and complete quests along the way.

You can also fight against other vampires, craft powerful items, use magic, and more.

Zombies

Zombie Lane takes place in a colorful town after zombies have taken it over.

You start out with a dilapidated house that needs fixing up and a shovel you use to destroy zombies. By completing quests, you work on making a safe place to live where you can later plant vegetables and build additional buildings.

Ghosts

Ghost Trappers has you explore haunted castles and trap ghosts with candles, traps, pets, and scotch.

You can craft powerful items, battle against other people, and occasionally work on a common goal together.

Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games often come to mind when a person thinks of social games, and yet there are few of them on Facebook, which I always found a little odd. Most of the ones that do exist require a high-speed Internet connection or just aren’t fun. Fantasy Online is both playable over dial-up and is incredibly fun and entertaining with a quirky sense of humor. And best of all, it has new features added often.

Gameplay

In one of the oddest beginnings of any game, you start out naked and have to whack crabs with a stick to get underwear. After you do quests for the people you meet, you eventually find a village which sells skills and basic gear, and has amenities such as an auction house, storage, and more quests. You travel from town to town facing danger and finding lots of caves to explore while you complete quests along the way.

If you tire of questing, you can use gems (or buy them in the auction house with coins) to buy a Standard Lockpick to open chests for treasure or a Standard Pickaxe to mine ore to craft armor, weapons, and accessories. Or you can work on increasing your reputation with several groups in order to get cute outfits and other useful gear. You can even join a guild, and there are features in the works that will encourage people to band together.

After you do enough quests and/or kill enough monsters, you level up and get two skill points to put into stamina, strength, agility, and intelligence. This is one area that could be explained better in the game because it’s recommended you pick just one stat on which to focus. If you increase agility, it improves your damage with bows and staves as well as crit %, dodge % and health regeneration, which makes you a ranger. If you increase intelligence it improves your damage with spells and wands as well as MP and crit %, which makes you a mage. If you increase strength it improves your damage with swords and axes as well as armor and health regeneration, which makes you a warrior. Increasing stamina adds health and health regeneration and is required for some armor, but can usually be neglected for your primary stat.

Fortunately, you can reset your skill points for gems, which you can get through Facebook credits, or wait until level 60 when you rebirth and start over at level one. Rebirth also allows you buy pets and gives you an extra skill point every four levels which you’ll need to equip the best weapons and armor. You’ll need this to improve your luck, which increases the odds of items dropping when you kill monsters or ore when you mine veins.

The best part of Fantasy Online is the social aspect. Accept a quest to kill 200 skeletons and you’ll likely find other people there doing the same thing. Join their group, get to talking, and add them to your friend list if you like them. If you see them again, you can ask to group up to finish quests faster, and it’s the start of a beautiful friendship. Isn’t that what social games are supposed to encourage?

Friends

If you have friends who also play Fantasy Online, your Fellowship increases, which gives you free gifts once it reaches certain milestones. Recently, free gifts were added which you can send and receive to everyone that can’t be found anywhere else. You can also post to your wall notices when you finish a quest or level up for your friends to get a free gift and extra experience if they click the link.

However, it’s not required that you have a certain number of friends play, and you don’t lose out substantially if none of them do. Most of the important friends will be the people you meet while playing and the members of your guild anyway.

Facebook Credits

There are many items you can buy with Facebook Credits, and, unlike other games, the more gems you purchase at one time the better items you get as a bonus. The most useful are the teleport spells which enable you to quickly move around the game instead of walking. There are also limited items which are more powerful than the other items you can find or craft, as well as boxes with random items based around a theme. You also use gems for services such as backpacks to hold more items and access to a bank with many more slots, both of which are very useful if you want to craft a lot of gear for yourself or for selling in the auction house. There are also powerful transformation spells which make you a lot stronger that you need gems to buy.

Fortunately, you don’t need to buy gems to enjoy playing Fantasy Online if you don’t want to. Often you’ll be able to find an item that originally cost gems or can only be made through crafting in the auction house if you’re willing to spend a lot of coins. In addition, if you are okay with not having the absolute best gear and spells, you can do quite well with 2nd or 3rd best. On the other hand, out of all of the social games I’ve played, Fantasy Online is the first one on which I’m considering spending real money—especially since a 16-slot backpack can hold only so much loot.

Time

When you start out you’re at 100% rest, which gives you 3x the experience from monsters and a better chance at loot and gold. As you play, you get tired, which gives 2x the experience and a normal chance at loot and gold. Finally, you become exhausted, which gives the normal amount of experience and chance at loot and gold. To become rested again you need to spend about 8 hours not playing, gain a level, or spend gems to recover all or part of your rest.

However, just because you’re not rested doesn’t mean you have to stop playing. Sure, it’ll take you a bit longer to get the same amount of experience, and you shouldn’t mine for ore if you’re tired due to the lower chance for item drops. Yet you don’t get less effective in battle, and the quest experience doesn’t change. So, unlike some other Facebook games, you can play for as long as you want.

Conclusion

Fantasy Online is a great game if you like MMOs or want a social game with social interaction, but don’t want to commit lots of time. There are many quests to complete, interesting people to talk to, lots of gear to get, and more content to look forward to.

• Fantasy Online on Facebook
• Fantasy Online’s Official Site

See other Social Playbook columns.

Collectible trading card games are a popular past-time, and it’s no surprise they made the transition to Facebook. Not only do electronic cards take up a lot less room than physical ones, it’s also easier to find people to play with and against. Clash of the Dragons, from the same people who made Dawn of the Dragons and Legacy of a Thousand Suns, is a new entry into this increasingly crowded field. You play the role of a descendant of the infamous Dragon Rider who has returned to West Kruna to make a name of yourself and your family. Coincidentally you arrive in the middle of another invasion by Beastmen, which is the perfect opportunity to show off your card-playing skills.

Gameplay

You start out by customizing your avatar by picking gender, hair style and color, facial expression, and skin color. You then pick your starting class from Sentinel, Assassin, and Pyrelord. Each class has different values in the basic attributes, as well as different clothes to wear which have bonuses suitable to the theme of each class. When you get to level 25 and have 25 skill points, you can unlock an additional class as well as the Druid class.

The basic gameplay is simple. You have two attributes that add to physical damage (strength and dexterity) and two that add to magic damage (intellect and wisdom). If you use a card that is melee or ranged then the card’s damage bonus is added to your physical damage along with any buffs you have from your gear or other cards for your maximum damage. Then your enemy’s defense, both from the last card they played and from their statistics as well as buffs, are subtracted to determine how many cards from their deck are put into the depletion pile. To win, you have to do enough damage to deplete all of their cards while still having cards of your own.

This is rather straightforward, and fortunately Clash of the Dragons eases you into all of the other types of cards via a tutorial and help provided throughout the game. The other cards include potions which give you benefits when they’re depleted, and talismans which only work when they’re in your deck. NPCs (non-player characters) don’t get bonuses based on your attributes, but when you use them they go back into your deck instead of being depleted. Locations provide a variety of benefits, but you can only use one at a time, and combination cards get more powerful the more you use them. You also have magic counters which are especially useful for Pyrelords and can be used for a powerful magical attack or to defend yourself from magic.

Where do you get these cards? You can get many by collecting components and crafting them, beating bosses in brawls, spending the gold you get after each battle in the store, and by spending real money. In addition to getting stronger cards, you have other ways of making your deck more powerful. When you get enough experience you gain a level and get additional energy and skill points to add to various skills, such as the ability to use more cards, additional duplicates of the same card, and being able to use more than one potion, talisman, and NPC among others. Right now, there’s not a lot of equipment for your character to wear, but in the future it may be possible for equipment to add power to your deck as well.

There are two other ways to play Clash of the Dragons in addition to questing against the computer: fighting against your friends in PvP or against strong bosses in brawls. In PvP you can fight against your friend’s deck (although controlled by the computer), challenge a friend if the player’s online, or start a fight anyone can join if that player’s level is close to yours. You do much the same thing with brawls in that you get access to a boss after you’ve completed enough of the quests. You can fight the boss by yourself with the other players controlled by the computer, or you can open it to other people. When all of the slots are filled, the fight commences with rewards you can’t get anywhere else.

Friends

You can send gifts to all of your friends, including components you use to make unique cards as well as a variety of cards. Having more friends who play means you have more people to battle against in PvP, but since anyone can join your PvP and boss fights, you aren’t limited if you have only a few friends who play.

Facebook Credits

Clash of the Dragons uses Dragon Coins which can be purchased with real money, Facebook credits, or by completing special offers, as well as getting one free every two levels. You use Dragon Coins to buy limited time cards and equipment, booster packs which contain the most powerful cards, and starter decks. While you do gain an advantage over using Dragon Coins, you can enjoy the game by using the cards you get by spending gold and winning brawls.

Time

Each play session—that is, the amount of time you can play before running out of energy—is only a few minutes, so it’s not very time consuming. You’re also not punished for not playing for days or weeks at a time, so needn’t feel pressured to play every day if you don’t want to.

Conclusion

Clash of the Dragons is an interesting mix of a collectible trading card games with role-playing aspects of leveling, getting equipment, and spending skill points to make your character stronger, which means you have a lot more to do to be strong beyond simply making the perfect deck.

There are a few minor annoyances, the biggest of which is a lack of guild support right from the beginning. There’s little doubt in my mind that it’ll be released soon, but I think guilds and giving people an incentive to play together is not something that should be added at some later date. Another annoyance is not being able to easily see what magic counters are active in a game, or what the magic counters do, which could be bad if you accidentally do something to set them off. Along the same lines, it’s not easy to tell when a potion or talisman has been discarded so you can take advantage of a potion’s effects or use a card that heals in order to try and get your talismans back in your deck. It is listed in the log, but I would like something a bit more obvious.

Overall, though, the rest of the game is very good. I think that whether you’re new to collectible trading card games or a pro, you’ll find something to enjoy in Clash of the Dragons.

• Clash of the Dragons on Facebook
• Official Site

See other Social Playbook columns.

This Google+ isn’t anything special, as it is simply the web-based version that users will be familiar with. Clicking links with the app will open them in a new browser window though, indicating the app doesn’t function as a web browser for any purpose other than for Google+. Although certainly far from a native app, it is something for OS X Google+ users to enjoy until Google rolls out its official apps for the service. The app is available as a quick, free download through Cloud App.

Via [TUAW]

Nival has announced beta testing is open for King’s Bounty: Legions, a turn-based social strategy game appearing initially on Facebook. It will later be available for free on the iOS and Android platforms for mobile and tablet devices, with the ability to purchase in-game items.

King’s Bounty: Legions puts players in the role of a young warlord who gains experience while commanding troops from three distinct factions on the battlefield. The three factions, with more than 30 units, include:

• Kingdom: Noble knights, scurvy pirates and powerful magicians are all part of this mighty class that fight for the king.
• Chaos: Necromancers, zombies and possessed bears will fall under players’ control after players conquer them in battle.
• Beasts: Giant serpents, dragonflies and monstrous plants unleash wicked attacks under players’ command.

Nival plans to regularly update King’s Bounty: Legions with new features including fighting units, maps, quests and social elements.

For screenshots and more information on the game, go to the King’s Bounty: Legions Facebook page.

Product [King's Bounty: Legions]

Late last week, Corel announced new photo software for iPhone, iPad and Mac users: Slingshot, a free photo-sharing app for iPhone; PostCard, a free app that turns photos into printed postcards; and QuickSort, a free Mac app that organizes photos and lets you link them to Facebook. We’d tell you more about it, but why do so when our friends at YourDigitalLife have already done the work?

Slingshot:

“With Slingshot you can share images from the program to Facebook or email to pre-selected groups of family and friends. All the photos you take in Slingshot are backed up in a private Facebook album as well.”

PostCard:

“You can customize your card with your own text and it’s printed on heavy card stock and mailed within 24 hours of placing your order. There’s delivery tracking too, so you can be sure it got where it needed to go.”

QuickSort:

“You can create customized keyboard shortcuts for controlling the program.”

In addition, Corel has released Beep Beep, another free app which turns the iPad into a virtual coloring book.

For additional details on the new Corel lineup, read YourDigitalLife.com.