Very sneaky, Zynga: Mafia Wars Shakedown revealed for iOS devices

Jeez, these guys are just terrible at keeping secrets, huh? (Alright, so this one looks like it was intentional, but nobody told us!) Zynga has announced yet another game, Mafia Wars Shakedown for iOS devices. However, the company went with a more low key approach for this announcement, which is far from its style. Exhibit A: Mafia Wars 2.

News of the game appeared when it replaced the Facebook page for Mafia Wars: Atlantic City, which was shuttered earlier this month in preparation for a "a much more exciting destination," the Mafia Wars Blog reads. What that implies to us is that Atlantic City may have been a failed experiment in HTML5 game creation, hence Shakedown. No other information about the game has been revealed other than it will first release for iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Well, that and these tiny pieces of artwork. It's unknown whether this new iPhone game will come within a dedicated app like FarmVille and CityVille Hometown for iOS or through HTML5 like its predecessor. Frankly, HTML5--a web-based coding language capable of game development across multiple platforms simultaneously--is capable of more than Atlantic City.
Mafia Wars Shakedown Banner
Shakedown has all but replaced the web presence for Atlantic City (even the Twitter account has been taken over). My guess is that this new game will be a native iOS app like previous Zynga Mobile games, especially considering this news comes just as Zynga Mobile's David Ko told The Guardian he thinks HTML5 is still too early. We've reached out to Zynga for comment.

What are your guesses about this brand new Mafia Wars game for iOS devices? Are you bummed at all that Atlantic City has been closed down? Sound off in the comments. 1 Comment

FarmVille Pic of the Day: Catch the winter blues at Onisuka057's farm

Click the image to make it larger.

While DaTigga's isles farm certainly beats all in terms of creating a water-filled landscape, Onisuka057's river mountain farm is a contender for the greatest number of watery FarmVille decorations used. Just like his golden oasis farm, Onisuka057 proves to be a big spender of Farm Cash items, but he does arrange them in impressive ways. By using nine Waterfalls and one Bear Fishing item, he's managed to create the illusion of a massively long river running down the crevices of his mountain. (The mountain itself is the same kind used by ombra231's Italy farm to recreate the Apennine Mountain Range.)

On the bottom of the farm, he's got more Alps intertwined with more than one Lake and Mirror Lake, which are certainly not cheap. While the Lake is readily available at the Market, the Mirror Lake is a random Mystery Box item, so he must've had to buy a lot of those before he got what he wanted.
FarmVille spelled out in hay bales
For more uses of blue, Onizuka057 planted a ton of what appears to be Forget-Me-Nots, which require at least Level 90. In an earlier version of his farm, he even spelled out "FARMVILLE" in what looks like Perfect Bunches of Morning Glory and Iris flowers. I think his farm looked better with all that blue, though the logo version that he made out of hay bales looks good, too.
Which version of Onisuka057's farm do you prefer? Sound off in the comments. 1 Comment

If you have an AWESOME FarmVille farm that you want to see featured on Games.com, please email a picture to editors@games.com, Include a few words about the inspiration for your design and maybe a few tips for people who need an assist!

Pioneer Trail Baby Bunyan Goals: Everything you need to know

You know, I've always wondered what old Paul Bunyan looked like as an infant. (Was he always that huge--was him mom even bigger?) With the new series of Baby Bunyan Goals, Zynga looks to answer these questions once and for all in Pioneer Trail.

Much like the Injured Animals of old, players Level 18 and above will soon find a Baby Bunyan of their own, all alone on their homesteads. But this will only happen after chopping trees. Get to choppin', and follow along with our guide below:

Big Food

    * Feed Baby Bunyan Super Baby Gro 8 Times
    * Harvest 50 Potatoes
    * Help 10 Exhausted Storks


Once you find your own Baby Bunyan, it's time to nurse it into the tree-choppin' tyke you always dreamed of. (Weird dreams much?) Just like an Injured Animal, you must ask your friends for Super Baby Gro. While this Goal only requires you to do it eight times, it takes 15 Super Baby Gro to nurse him completely.

Harvesting 50 Potatoes will cost you 4,500 Coins total, and take at least four hours, if you plant them all at once. Exhausted Storks are actually a new Injured Animal that are found either clearing debris or harvesting crops. Of course, they require you to ask friends for even more items to nurse them back to health. Your rewards for completing this massive first Goal are 500 XP, 500 Coins and one Stork.

Big Britches

    * Collect 100 Cotton Puffs
    * Tend 40 Baby Sheep
    * Collect 25 Safety Pins


The 100 Cotton Puffs required for this Goal reportedly come from harvesting Cotton, which is news to us. If the ratio is 1 to 1, harvesting 100 Cotton will cost you 6,000 Coins and take three days at the very least. Tending to 40 Baby Sheep could be tough, though Zynga doesn't distinguish between Sheep or your Homestead or those of your Neighbors. The 25 Safety Pins, of course, come from begging your friends some more. Enjoy 750 XP and 750 Coins for completing this Goal.
Need more Super Gro
Who's A Big Boy

    * Complete Feed Baby Bunyan
    * Bake 25 Cakes In The Inn
    * Collect 25 Baby Clothes


By this point, you're expected to have a fully grown (well, sort of) Baby Bunyan, which again, takes 15 Super Baby Gro. To bake 25 Cakes, you will need 50 Fire and 100 Batter. Fire is first crafted in the Wagon using seven Wood and five Cloth, which amounts to 350 Wood and 250 Cloth. (That's 250 visits to old friends, though you can also turn in the Cotton Collection for five Cloth.)

The 100 Batter will take a whopping 2,000 Food and 90,000 Coins--this is gonna' take awhile. The 25 Baby Clothes are, once more, sourced from friends. For finishing this giant Goal, you will be rewarded with 1000 XP, 1000 Coins and one Baby Giant Blue Ox. More importantly, you'll have your very own Baby Bunyan, which will prove to be a boon to your homestead.
Baby Bunyan About
Click on your Baby Bunyan after clicking "Finish" to ask him to chop trees. Here's the best part: Baby Bunyan can chop down three full trees for you at the cost of zero Energy. However, Baby Bunyan can only do this once daily. Still, that's quite the reward for such an arduous set of Goals, so use him wisely.

[Source and Image Credit: Zynga]

Have you started on your Baby Bunyan yet? What do you think of this brand new feature ... and those Goals? Sound off in the comments. 4 Comments

Adventure World Great River Expedition: Everything you need to know

Here we are again, adventurers, giving you another look at a brand new Expedition that has been added to Adventure World this week. If you've been completing Expeditions in a row from left to right across the game's menu, you'll be surprised to see that not one, but three new Expeditions have appeared fairly early on in the list, in anticipation of the arrival of Indiana Jones in the game next month. How do I know that? It's simple - all three Expeditions are tagged with Indiana Jones within the game's menu.

Still going in order, the first of these Expeditions you'll come across is the Great River Expedition. This one will see you reuiniting two villages that are separated by broken bridges. The overall Expedition has a three day time limit, and requires you to have 325 Supplies and two each of Food, Fuel and Water before you can begin. Once you do, you'll have three quests to complete in all - here's a guide to completing them.

Gather a Rubbing

    * Collect 12 Cotton
    * Collect 24 Vines
    * Repair 6 Bridges
    * Take a Rubbing of the Standing Stone


Soon after starting this Expedition, you'll see that this is about more than just repairing bridges. Apparently, Indy (or perhaps just the Society) wants you to take a rubbing (with coal and paper) of an ancient Standing Stone at the far end of this map. In order to get there, you'll need to complete these bridges as a result.

The materials necessary to complete these bridges are scattered throughout the map, with the Cotton being found in rows or other farm-esque areas, and the Vines coming by removing Thorns from the map. Each thorn tends to give out four individual Vines, you'll need to remove at least six to reach the 24 total. Each of the six bridges require four Vines and two Cotton, so you'll luckily have enough to build some bridges to reach other areas and collect more materials, without having to do everything at once.

Llama Research?

    * Gather 10 Hay
    * Ask for 10 Shaving Cream
    * Apply Shaving Cream to 10 Llamas
    * Shave 10 Llamas


For whatever reason, Emily (your research companion) has taken an interest in the Llamas the frequent this map, and wants their wool. Taking a rather humorous approach, you'll need to gather ten cans of shaving cream by asking your friends to send them to you. You'll then need to click on on each Llama twice: once to apply the shaving cream and once to shave them. The Hay, meanwhile, is scattered around the various islands of the map.

Grapple to the Summit

    * Recover the Mountainheart Gem
    * Gather the Feed Bag that Weighs the Same as the Gem
    * Place the Feed Bag in the Hands of the Mountainheart


Making this Expedition even more complicated, Emily has another demand: she wants the Mountainheart gem that rests along the top left hand corner of this map. This one is guarded by snakes and plenty of debris, and is compounded by the fact that you'll need to have a bag weighing the same as the Gem before you can take it. These bags are found around the map, and come in various sizes. Don't worry about having to personally determine their weight; just by clicking on a single bag, you'll be told whether or not it's the right size. This results in trial and error, sure, but it doesn't require any skill.

Once you have finished these three admittedly complex portions, you'll have successfully completed the Great River Expedition. If this is any indication as to the complexity of future Expeditions, I hope we're all ready for a struggle as we continue on.

Check out the rest of our Adventure World Cheats & Tips right here.

What do you think of this Great River Expedition? Are there too many steps required to complete it, or do you appreciate a lengthy challenge? Sound off in the comments.

Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter goes live on Facebook

Released previously only in a private beta, Dungeons & Dragons Heroes of Neverwinter has now officially gone live on Facebook. Developed by Atari and set in the Neverwinter realm, the game already has 166,000 monthly players from its time in beta, but if you'd like to join them, here's a taste of what you can expect.

When first starting Heroes of Neverwinter, you'll be allowed to create a character using either set templates of a Fighter, Wizard, Cleric or Rogue (each with their own stats and specialties), or can create a custom character to customize your gender, stats, class, race and more. In this, the game can immediately start out being as complex or as straightforward as you like.

Upon launching into the game proper, you're met with a story of amnesia and will be introduced to Edrick, a scout that was guiding you on your way to Neverwinter before a pack of Goblins knocked you unconscious. Through this introduction, you're told of Neverwinter, a place of hope and civilization that has survived the Ruining, and that you had originally wanted to travel there to purchase a home and earn your fortune. With this as a base, you're sent on your way.

Movement is achieved on a grid, with this turn-based game automatically allowing you to move at the beginning of each turn. When commanding a party, you'll be able to complete multiple actions, including attacking or opening your inventory with each character before needing to manually end their turn and start over with the next character. Once each "adventure" in the game is complete, you'll receive experience points for the battles you won and the tasks you completed in the process. For immediate prizes, you'll sometimes be able to loot your fallen enemies, selecting a prize from a list of ten. You can choose randomly from ten cards, or can use a potion to reveal items before you choose.

In terms of actual combat, you'll have a wide variety of options, depending on the classes of characters in your party. You might be able to attack an enemy from far away, eliminating them before they ever become a threat, or surround an enemy with multiple characters, giving everyone a combat advantage. There's enough strategy here to keep more hardcore players satisfied, but the initial sections of gameplay are incredibly simple and work well to help an unfamiliar player get up to speed.

Gallery: Dungeons & Dragons Heroes of Neverwinter on Facebook


Back in Neverwinter proper, you can access a variety of buildings including the Adventure Board where you'll accept new Adventures (Adventures require energy and have multiple difficulty levels), the Tavern where you can purchase energy potions or Adventure boosts to your stats, the Trade house where you'll purchase similar potions or new equipment items, and even your own home, which you'll be able to fill with treasures as you complete different achievements or tasks within the game (collecting a certain amount of gold, for instance).

That being said, the main focus here (understandably) is in the Adventures themselves. There are plenty of them to undertake, each with an additional focus on bringing your friends in to help you (early on, it's entirely possible to fail even the most basic of Adventures by simply going it alone). The lore within the game is presented through text boxes at the beginning and end of most scenes and encounters, and will likely satisfy current D&D fans. Still, this isn't the first game of its kind of Facebook, so hopefully the D&D name alone will help draw more followers into the fray.

Will D&D Heroes of Neverwinter win over the "Zynga" crowd with its fairly in-depth, and somewhat slow-going gameplay? Likely not, but there's plenty of content here for fans who go out specifically in search for it.

Play Heroes of Neverwinter on Facebook -->

Have you tried Heroes of Neverwinter on Facebook? What did you think of it? Sound off in the comments.

FarmVille Horse Paddock: Everything you need to know

Back in the middle of August, FarmVille saw the launch of the Wildlife Habitat breeding building, and at the time we were told that six (and then seven) new buildings would be released in all. We didn't know when those buildings would eventually release, but as time passed we've been led to here. The final animal breeding building has launched in FarmVille, the Horse Paddock.

Similar to the Cow Pasture, this Horse Paddock is specifically for Horses, and it gives you an opportunity to store those horses and randomly breed those that are inside. You'll only need to have a single "type" of each Horse for it to be possible to breed a matching Foal when harvesting the building, but as of right now, a few Horses or Unicorns may not be able to be stored. (This is probably because either they're coded differently, or Zynga just forgot.)

Of course, before you can actually use your Horse Paddock, you need to build it. You'll need three building materials, two of which are new: 10 each of Logs, Saddles and Bridles. These Logs are the same logs that are used to repair/upgrade the Lighthouse Cove on your new farm, so it will be up to you to decide when exactly to divert your efforts there into building this Horse Paddock. As for gathering these ingredients, you can do so by asking friends through individual gift requests, or you can purchase them outright for 1 Farm Cash each.

Once its construction is complete, you'll be given a free Cream Draft Horse. You can store up to 20 Horses in total inside your new building, and you can have as many Paddocks as you like, provided you collect the building materials to build each on individually. With this feature also comes the ability to grow individual Foals into adults with Farm Cash. You can keep them as babies forever (as before), but if you've received a free Foal from a friend and can't wait for the Nursery Barn to grow it into an adult, you can now pay to do so outright.

Remember, both Foal and Calf mastery are coming soon to the game, if you need any extra incentive to build one of these buildings--and fast! Also, with the release of the Horse Paddock, the Horse Stable is now unavailable to buy/build from the market. You can keep your existing Horse Stable(s), but you'll also be given the option to trade in all of your Horse Stables to receive exclusive Horses and Animal Feed. Then again, as so many users lost their Cows entirely when doing the same for the new Cow Pasture building, I'd suggest holding off on that for now ... or forever.

Check out the rest of our FarmVille Cheats & Tips right here.

What do you think of the Horse Paddock? Do you prefer it over the Horse Stable, even though it has less storage capacity? Sound off in the comments.

FarmVille Horse Paddock Goals: Everything you need to know

With the launch of the Horse Paddock in FarmVille, many farmers are probably wondering just when the matching set of goals will arrive. If you're like most, you probably don't have them in your game yet, as they are on a very slow rollout. For those that do have them, however, you'll see that this set of six goals has a 16-day time limit (perhaps less by the time these roll around to everyone), and will reward you some Horses for completing them. Here's a guide for doing just that:

Horsing Around

    * Get 6 Horse Combs
    * Place 1 Horse Paddock
    * Buy 3 Orange Hay Bales


The Horse Combs are earned through a general news feed post. The full six people can click on this post to actually send you rewards, so you shouldn't have to ask for it twice. As for the Horse Paddock, note that this goal doesn't require you to have completed the construction on the building - just place its base. Finally, the Orange Hay Bales are available from the store for 125 coins each. Finishing this first goal, no matter how simple it might seem, actually gives you some great rewards: 50 XP, 2,500 coins and a Pink Saddled Horse. To be specific, the horse's body is white, but the saddle is pink.

There She Is, Miss Equestrian...

    * Get 6 Horse Tiaras
    * Buy 2 Horse Topiaries
    * Harvest 10 Horses


For this one, we're not sure if Horses placed inside your Horse Paddock (or previously owned Horse Stables will count), so if you try it once and they don't, just pull some Horses out of storage and wait for them to become ready to harvest on their own. To collect the Tiaras, you'll post another item to your news feed asking all friends to help at once. You can then finish this goal off by purchasing the Horse Topiaries, which cost just 100 coins each in the store. For completing this second goal, you're given 50 XP, 2,500 coins, a single Animal Feed and a Fancy Hitching Post decoration.

Sugar High

    * Get 6 Sugar Cubes
    * Complete a Horse Paddock
    * Harvest 100 Vegetables


It doesn't matter which vegetable crop you harvest, so long as you harvest 100 individual squares of them. While you wait for those crops to grow, you can collect the Sugar Cubes via a general news feed post, and can complete the Horse Paddock by collecting its 30 required building ingredients. Check out our guide to the Horse Paddock to see exactly what we mean. Finishing this goal gives you 50 XP, 2,500 coins and a Cream Stallion.

Horseplay

    * Get 9 Carrots on Sticks
    * Harvest a Horse Paddock
    * Harvest 75 Wheat


Each Horse Paddock is available to harvest once every 24 hours, so if you happen to collect from one right before you receive this goal, just wait until the next day to finish this one off. In the meantime, you can post a general news post asking for the Carrots on Sticks and can harvest the wheat as well. For finishing this goal, you'll receive 50 XP, 2,500 coins, five units of Animal Feed and a Blingy Water Trough decoration. Apparently, these horses are fairly high maintenance.

Giddy Up!

    * Get 9 Stylish Horse Shoes
    * Master Cream Stallion to Level 1
    * Harvest 50 Mint


The fastest way to master any Horse will be to make sure they're in storage, so that they can be collected from once per day (rather than once every few days when they're outside of buildings). Just place the Cream Stallion into either Horse building on your farm (that is, if you didn't trade in your Horse Stable for feed and prizes) and collect from it routinely to reach Level 1 before this goal series expires. Oh, and you guessed it--the Stylish Horse Shoes come from a general news post on your wall. Finish off this goal and you'll receive 50 XP, 2,500 coins, five units of Animal Feed and something for your avatar: a Jockey Outfit.

Saddle Up!

    * Get 9 Horse Saddles
    * Place 10 Horses in a Horse Paddock
    * Harvest 50 Spinach


If you already have 10 or more Horses in a Horse Paddock and this step doesn't automatically complete for you, just pull them back out and replace them in the building. That should clear up any "bugs." One final news feed post will help you earn the Horse Saddles, which you can collect while waiting for your Spinach to grow, which takes 14 hours. When finishing this goal, you will have completed the Horse Paddock goal series in its entirety, and will receive 50 XP, 2,500 coins and a Chestnut Mini Stallion (a dark brown miniature horse) as your final rewards.

Just remember--these goals are on a time limit, so if you like these prizes more than those, say, for completing the Chapter 2 Goals in the Lighthouse Cove farm, feel free to prioritize any way you'd like to receive the best prizes in your eyes. Happy farming!

[Source and image credit: Zynga]

Check out the rest of our FarmVille Cheats & Tips right here.

What do you think of these Horse Paddock goals or the prizes therein? Have you received these goals on your farm(s) yet? Sound off in the comments.