Ever since man planted his first crop of digital corn, social media games have carried with them a certain stigma. When they appeared suddenly on everyone’s Facebook a few years ago, the world was treated to a deluge of games with graphics better suited to the days of NES, and game play requiring a level of consciousness barely above “able to click a mouse button.” Despite their popularity, many consider social media games to be simply…not fun.
Nuukster, Inc., a social gaming startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is looking to change that, one adorable bird character at a time. Their aim is to make quality games for social media that are – wait for it – really fun, really social, and easy on the eyes, too. Oh, and did we mention their games will have a story? Are actually engaging? Their flagship game, Birdopolis™, combines the familiar mechanics of a building game with a cast of collectible bird characters who’ve got serious attitude, and live in your backyard. Players build up gorgeous environments to unlock increasingly rare birds, which take up residence and ask the player to help them solve quests. Sure, the birds are recognizable and yeah, the birds you’ll see in the game are based on your location and up-to-date bird population info, but they also occasionally break dance, and build time machines. In other words, Birdopolis is a fun game that has the power to convert even the most hardcore city dwellers into hardcore virtual bird nerds.
So what we have here is a fun social game that looks great, has quirky, likeable characters, science types like it, and takes more than a brain cell and a half to play? Not possible.
Nuukster begs to differ.
Leave a Reply