| Ravenwood Fair | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Lolapps |
| Publisher(s) | Lolapps, Inc. |
| Designer(s) | John Romero Brenda Brathwaite |
| Platform(s) | Facebook Platform |
| Release | October 19, 2010 |
| Genre(s) | Business sim, RPG |
| Mode(s) | Single player with multiplayer interaction |
Ravenwood Fair was a social network game on Facebook [1] designed by John Romero and developed by Lolapps. Ravenwood Fair was launched on the Facebook platform October 19, 2010. The game closed down on July 18, 2013.
The object of the game was to build a fun fair in the midst of a scary forest while decorating the grounds, fending off various monsters, and completing many quests. Players built games and buildings which attract visitors to the fair, and visitors became scared if they see a monster or the forest erupts near them. Players comforted the visitors when they were scared so they could go back to their normal routine of enjoying the fair. [2]
The player selects an avatar which resembles a woodland animal - either a raccoon (named Rita) or bear (named Randy). The player then completes a short tutorial that shows how to chop trees, pick up loot drops, then build a hotdog cart. After the tutorial, the player is given several quests that direct gameplay toward accumulating materials, building structures, or purchasing decorations and placing them.
The player has an energy bar which determines how many major actions the player can take in a session. More energy can be purchased with mushrooms or Facebook credits to extend gameplay. Mushrooms randomly drop from trees that are chopped down.
Chopping trees and roots are a large part of gameplay. One chop on a tree or root will use an energy. Loot drops from the chopped tree or root and will contain coins, XP (experience points), and often materials needed for quests and building structures. Sometimes a monster, such as a Crittle Bear or Domovoi, will appear as a result of chopping a tree and the player can either ignore the monster or pummel it with a shovel to scare it away.
When the player finishes building a structure, the "fun" value attached to the structure accumulates with all other structures in the fair. At various "fun" levels, visitors will fly in on a zeppelin and roam the player's fair, playing games and using buildings and paying coins and XP for them.
All during gameplay, the scary forest erupts randomly with evil laughter, will-o-wisps, or a frightening crow. If a visitor is near a scary part of the forest, the visitor will scream and run to the player for comfort. The player must then click on the scared visitor to comfort them so they can continue enjoying the fair. If the player places a Protector on the ground, it will be able to retaliate against the forest, attack monsters, and comfort the scared visitors.
After the player gathers enough XP, they will level up and have their energy meter filled, and possibly extended. Attaining levels will affect the game in various ways, such as unlocking items for purchase in the store (called Ye Olde Shoppe), new quests becoming available, new monsters appearing when trees are chopped, etc.
As of March 2011, Ravenwood Fair had approximately 25 million players worldwide. [3]
Ravenwood Fair has launched on several other social networks such as Japan's Mixi, [4] IMVU, [5] South America's Orkut, [6] and Germany's StudiVZ. [7] The game can be played in 9 languages: English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Turkish, Italian, Indonesian, German, French, and Portuguese.
Lolapps began working on a game called Critter Town in January 2010 using Sean Cooper's fl<iso> engine. This game was redesigned multiple times over a 7-month period, until Lolapps asked Brenda Brathwaite, their new Creative Director, for help in finishing the game. Brathwaite suggested bringing in John Romero to redesign the game and lead it to completion. Romero arrived at Lolapps on August 1, 2010 and worked with a team of 11 developers to create Ravenwood Fair and launch it on October 19, 2010.
The game is full of references to popular culture. [8] The game has been praised for its beautiful painterly art style. [9] [10]
The title theme music track was composed and produced by Aaron Walz of Game Audio Alliance.
An expansion to Ravenwood Fair named Ravenstone Mine [11] was announced in February [3] and launched April 20, 2011.
In October 2010, Lolapps, Inc. was the subject of a shutdown by Facebook [12] just days before Ravenwood Fair launched, due to Lolapps using an advertising company named RapLeaf. [13] Ravenwood Fair was shut down as well a week later for 7 days before becoming fully operational again. [14] Because of the threat of another possible shutdown, Lolapps launched Ravenwood Fair on its own website off Facebook. [15]
On February 2, 2011, John Romero and Brenda Brathwaite gave an IGDA-sponsored presentation titled From AAA To Social Games - Developing Ravenwood Fair at Dolby Laboratories in San Francisco, CA. [16] On February 22, 2011, Romero and Brathwaite gave a presentation at the SF Game Developer's Workshop titled A Post Mortem of Ravenwood Fair at the Art Institute of California - San Francisco. [17]
After Ravenwood Fair, the follow-up games Ravenskye City and Ravenshire Castle were released by LOLapps. Together, these three games are referred to as RavenWorld. [18]
The music for the game was composed by Dren McDonald & Aaron Walz. It was released, together with the music of Ravenskye City and Ravenshire Castle, on the album The Music of RavenWorld. [19] A total of nine titles are from Ravenwood Fair and three from the extension Ravenstone Mine. [20] [21]
On January 19, 2011, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences announced its 14th Annual Interactive Achievement Award nominees. [22] [23] In the category of "Social Networking Game of the Year", Ravenwood Fair was nominated along with CityVille, Family Feud, FrontierVille, and Nightclub City . CityVille ultimately won the award.
Alfonso John Romero is an American director, designer, programmer and developer in the video game industry. He is a co-founder of id Software and designed their early games, including Wolfenstein 3D (1992), Doom (1993), Doom II (1994), Hexen (1995) and Quake (1996). His designs and development tools, along with programming techniques developed by id Software's lead programmer, John Carmack, popularized the first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Romero is also credited with coining the multiplayer term "deathmatch".
Brenda Louise Romero, previously known as Brenda Brathwaite, is an American game designer and developer in the video game industry. She was born in Ogdensburg, New York and is a graduate of Clarkson University. Romero is best known for her work on the Wizardry series of role-playing video games and, more recently, the non-digital series The Mechanic is the Message. She has worked in game development since 1981 and has credits on 49 game titles.
Zynga Inc. is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its mission as "connecting the world through games".
FarmVille is a series of agriculture-simulation social network games developed and published by Zynga in 2009. It is similar to Happy Farm and Farm Town. Its gameplay involves various aspects of farmland management, such as plowing land, planting, growing, and harvesting crops, harvesting trees and raising livestock. The sequels FarmVille 2 and FarmVille 3 were released in September 2012 and November 2021, respectively.
FishVille is a defunct real-time aquarium simulation game developed by Zynga, it was available as an application on the social-networking website Facebook. The game allowed members of Facebook to manage virtual aquariums by rearing fish. As of October 2011, FishVille had 1.6 million monthly active users. The game was discontinued on December 5, 2012.
A social network game is a type of online game that is played through social networks or social media. They typically feature gamification systems with multiplayer gameplay mechanics. Social network games were originally implemented as browser games. As mobile gaming took off, the games moved to mobile as well. While they share many aspects of traditional video games, social network games often employ additional ones that make them distinct. Traditionally they are oriented to be social games and casual games.
Wooga is a German game software company based in Berlin that develops story-driven casual games for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets and social networks like Facebook. It has developed mobile games such as June's Journey, Pearl's Peril and Switchcraft. The company is part of the social games company Playtika. Their name comes from the words "World of Gaming".
The Pioneer Trail, formerly known as FrontierVille is a defunct simulation, role-playing video game available for play on social networking sites such as Facebook. Developed by Zynga, and launched on June 9, 2010, it was a freemium game, i.e. free to play, but with the option of purchasing premium content. The game was shut down on April 30, 2015.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a 2011 first-person shooter video game, jointly developed by Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games and published by Activision. The game was released worldwide in November 2011 for Microsoft Windows, the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, and OS X. It is the sequel to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), serving as the third and final installment in the original Modern Warfare trilogy and the eighth Call of Duty installment overall. A separate version for the Nintendo DS was developed by n-Space, while Treyarch developed the game's Wii port. In Japan, Square Enix published the game with a separate subtitled and dubbed version.
CityVille is a defunct casual social city-building game developed by Zynga, and released in December 2010.
YoWorld is a browser-based virtual world game which was released on May 8, 2008. It is developed by Big Viking Games. The game operates on the freemium model, and is supported through microtransactions, as well as a voluntary in-game ad program. The game itself is free-to-play, however, players can purchase in-game currencies or enroll in special programs and offers to improve their game-play experience or help them progress faster, using real money.
Empires & Allies was a social network game that was Zynga's first combat and strategy game. The game, the first release by Zynga's Los Angeles studio, launched in twelve languages on June 1, 2011. G4TV.com writer Jake Gaskill called the release the "biggest launch of any Zynga title to date". Empires & Allies became the fourth most popular game on Facebook within weeks after launch, reaching 33 million monthly active users by the third week of June. The game was a freemium game, meaning there was no cost to play but players had the option of purchasing premium content. The game was taken offline on June 17, 2013.
Kixeye is a video game company founded in July 2007 and headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The company creates, develops and publishes massively multiplayer online real-time strategy games (MMORTS) for PC and mobile devices. Kixeye gained popularity as a pioneer in midcore action games featuring real-time combat on the social networking website Facebook. Following their initial launch, Kixeye's games generated twenty times more revenue per daily active user than other social games, retaining active users five times longer on average.
CastleVille is a defunct social network game made by Zynga's Dallas studio and was released in November 2011. It combined a number of elements from the company's other "Ville" range of games. On launch it had received a million "likes" on Facebook. By the end of its first month, it had become the fifth most popular game on Facebook with 26.5 million players. The game was a freemium game, meaning there is no cost to play but players have the option of purchasing premium content.
Triple Town is a freemium strategy puzzle video game with city-building elements. It is available for social networks and mobile devices and was developed by Seattle-based Spry Fox.
Wizard101 is a 2008 massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by KingsIsle Entertainment. Players take on the role of student wizards who must save the Spiral, the fictional universe in which the game is set, from various threats. Players battle enemies by casting spells using a variety of different weapons in a turn-based combat system, similar to collectible card games.
Candy Crush Saga is a free-to-play tile-matching video game released by King on April 12, 2012, originally for Facebook; other versions for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 followed. It is a variation of their browser game Candy Crush.
Loot Drop was a social video game studio that was started in San Mateo, California. It was created by John Romero and Brenda Romero with veteran game designer Tom Hall heading up his own game. Its tagline was "Believe in fun".
Lolapps was a developer and publisher of social games on the Facebook platform. Lolapps was best known for creating Ravenwood Fair with John Romero which had 25 million players worldwide.
A horror game is a video game genre centered on horror fiction and typically designed to scare the player. The term may also be used to describe tabletop games with horror fiction elements.