Bebo's 'Social Game Experience' officially launches today, after a two-week beta period, and the social network says they've seen a 54% rise in game installs during that time.

The Bebo games page highlights a few noteworthy games, such as Pet Society from Playfish, in addition to a leader board that lists top-ranking players for a variety of games and an area where in-game updates appear. There's also a list of Most Addictive Games based on how many minutes they're played per user.



More features will be rolling out for the Bebo games hub, including the ability to challenge other players using Bebo Messenger, in the games hub page and inside the actual games. Players will also be able to see who is actively playing games, who is idle, etc.

This launch follows Facebook's announcement last week that they will soon be adding a game-specific hub to the popular social networking space. We've also seen similar game consolidation on hi5 and on MySpace in the past year, but those serve more as game aggregators than Bebo's more robust 'experience.'

We're curious to see if Facebook will settle for a simple game list or follow Bebo's model, offering a little something 'extra' for social game fanatics.

Note: Bebo and Games.com are both owned by AOL.

Related:
Two Reasons Facebook Games are About to Change Forever

Days seem shorter? Check. Weather getting cooler? Uh huh. Well now that autumn seems to be in full swing, we're hunting down new indoor activities to keep us warm and busy. Farming and playing with cute animals still rank highly versus the Friday night TV lineup but this week's arrival of Zynga's Cafe World seriously threw us for a loop. We've been playing since we first caught wind of the game.

But that's not all that happened this week as Mafia Wars players found new adventures in Moscow, Zuma's Revenge gets a new version and we discovered a buried box of FarmVille tips that you'll just have to read. So get warm, it's time for the week's best stories.

Farmville Crop Mastery Released - Earn Bonuses Just Like in Mafia Wars

Farming isn't hard and fans of FarmVille have repeatedly wondered if the game might be better if there were more depth. Now, the game that gets Facebookers out to the dirt has added mastery bonuses to the game. Borrowed from FarmVille's cousin Mafia Wars, players gain mastery bonuses for repeating the planting of seed based foods. The details on what players gain from the mastery bonus is still a bit of a mystery, but any way to add more action to Facebook's hotttest game isn't a bad thing.

Mafia Wars: Moscow Tips - You'll Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends

Notice how your Mafia Wars-addicted friends skipped any social events this week? You can blame Mafia Wars: Moscow, the newest city expansion that brings mafia managers to Mother Russia's capitol to do business. Like the previously released Cuba expansion, Moscow tasks players with using the pugilist egos of your friends to complete jobs. It's an interesting development that you too can experience, if you're level 70 or higher. If you're already there, you'll want to read our tip guide before you take you trip.

Want to pay less for the games you play? Publishers may just start dropping game prices to compete for your attention.

Pricing for casual games over the years has largely stayed between $5.99 and $19.99, depending on the novelty of the game and the availability of the game on subscription/token-based sites such as GameHouse and Big Fish.

The latter of those sites, however, has been testing out a new Daily Deal promotion where a selected game is available at $2.99 for 24 hours. The deals are visible only to users who have installed the Big Fish Games Toolbar (which displays a search bar and navigation to their new releases, top games, etc), although that hasn't stopped blog A Game For Everyone from posting each day's coupon for non-toolbar users.

New Daily Deals have been posted every day since late July of this year, including on Saturday and Sunday. Originally the promotion was scheduled to run through the end of August, but as that date has come and gone, it's possible we'll see these offers discontinued any day now.

Solitaire players on our site know that there are dozens of variations on the classic one-player card game. You may have played Klondike, Pyramid or Tripeaks, but we're pretty sure you've never played anything like Up Down Solitaire, a new game for the iPhone and iPod Touch ($0.99).

Up Down is part Free Cell, part Crescent (we've got our lingo down!) -- two decks of cards are shuffled together, then dealt into thirteen piles (each representing one of the thirteen ranks) and a draw pile. The object of the game is to complete each of the eight foundations (from Ace up to King for each suit on the right side, from King down to Ace on the left). If no cards can be played, you can draw a card, which will also let you play cards from the associated rank pile.

It's a little confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it Up Down is as addicting as any of the Solitaire variations you might have played before. The game also lets you upload your score to the game's official website, where you can compare your stats with your friends.

We spent a good chunk of last night hunched over our iPod Touch with this game instead of attacking Mafias or crop farming -- suffice to say that at 99 cents, it's a deal.

Up Down Solitaire [link opens in iTunes]

Check out Solitaire games you can play right on Games.com!
- Solitaire: Classic (Klondike)
- Solitaire: Pyramid
- Solitaire: Tripeaks
- All Solitaire Games

Part match-three, part hidden object, part spot the difference, 4 Elements is the puzzle game for puzzle game addicts. You can demo the game right on Games.com, but you can win a copy of the FULL game right now!

The magic of the four elements that kept an ancient kingdom running for centuries has been corrupted by evil powers and the altars no longer yield the energy of life. It is up to you to unlock the 4 ancient books of magic and collect 16 mysterious cards that will help you restore the kingdom to life.

We have five codes to for you to win!

Here's how to win:

Step 1. Join our Facebook fan page! If you haven't joined our Facebook fan page yet, now's your chance! Go to facebook.com/gamescom, and hit the "Become a Fan" button at the top.

Step 2. Leave a comment saying "I Love 4 Elements!" using the Wall Post and include your email address so we know where to reach you!

We'll pick five qualifying entries at the beginning of next week and email winners the codes.

Any questions or comments? Post them in the comments area here and we'll do our best to answer them! Good luck!

The cows, sheep, ducks and other assorted livestock of popular social game FarmVille were set loose last Thursday night when developer Zynga added the "Allow Walk" option in each animal's drop-down menu. Once enabled, the animals wandered around the farm on their own until the "Stay" option was selected.

Or at least, they would have wandered around on their own if it weren't for a few kinks that arose -- according to some users (including FarmVille tips and tricks blog, Harvest Guide), the animations were jerky, animals ended up walking backwards and many "out of sync" issues were reported (this happens when the state of your game doesn't match the version that FarmVille servers have stored for you). The feature was disabled late Saturday night, according to FarmVille's official Facebook updates. As of this posting, we were still able to see the "Allow Walk" option in the drop-down menus, although nothing happens when it is selected.

We reached Zynga for comment, who told us that the feature will be turned back on after they resolve the syncing issues on the game, which they expect to happen by the end of the week.

"As you can imagine," said Zynga's Lisa Chan, "sometimes it's tough dealing with all of the bugs that come across when serving over 15 million players a day, but it's all part of the learning process."

Did any of you get to try out the "Allow Walk" feature before it was turned off? Did you experience any of the syncing or animation issues? Let us know in the comments!

Big Fish Games is the developer behind some of our most popular game series, from the Diner Dash time management games to the Mystery Case Files hidden object games, but lately they've taken their development in a new direction: adventure games.

Drawn: the Painted Tower, which debuted earlier this month, has been one of our biggest addictions this past week. The game, very much reminiscent of the popular point-and-click adventure genre of the 90s, features beautifully detailed art, a great Tim Burton-esque storyline and original puzzles -- we were surprised to find how drawn in (no pun intended) we became to the plight of a missing girl with ability to bring her art to life.



'Drawn' takes many cues from the hidden object genre we're seen as of late -- we spent much of the game searching around scenes for items and progressing through areas to find items for use in other areas. Pretty standard stuff.

But the way the storyline ties into the gameplay is where 'Drawn' shines. The paintings that we explore are works of art created by the very missing girl we're trying to find and protect -- her magical abilities have made her a target for would-be evildoers (naturally!). They're peppered with interactive characters that animate and react depending on your actions -- Big Fish did a great job in making us feel like we had an impact on the game world. It evolved and changed as we progressed in the game.

The puzzles themselves are varied and impressive in their own right. In addition to some predictable jigsaw puzzles, we found ourselves using the mouse to draw in our own objects, rotating mirrors to shine sunlight on a plant and solving word riddles. We even transported objects (drawn on pieces of paper) to and from different paintings to use them. Yeah, it's good.

This was one of the first downloadable games that we wanted to buy even before the demo hour was up -- 'Drawn' pulled us in quickly and unexpectedly. Give it a try (download the demo here) and come back to let us know what you thought of it!

If you've found yourself struggling to make time for both your hidden object and casino game addictions, we've got your solution right here. Funkitron and Slingo have partnered up to release a brand new game, Slingo Mystery: Who's Gold? -- it combines a drama-filled storyline (you play as the broke ex-wife of a dead millionaire attempting to both solve the mystery and find as much of his money as possible) with two already popular online game genres.

We took the demo for a run earlier today -- it's essentially a hidden object game interspersed with Slingo minigames (for example, you'll have to 'win' a Slingo game in order to reveal one of the hidden objects). The storyline's pretty wacky - at one point we were breaking open vases in an attempt to find our ex-husband's money - but fun and hokey. You can download the one-hour demo for Slingo Mystery now - the full version can be purchased for $19.95.

Check out other hidden object mystery and Slingo games you can play right on Games.com!

Slingo
Mystery Case Files - Madame Fate
Women's Murder Club: Twice in a Blue Moon
Slingo Deluxe
5 Card Slingo

Last year's release of Spore did the near-impossible. It let players create cute, ugly or bizarre creatures with just a few clicks, and then take those little buggers into a game where they would evolve from into civilization makers and space conquerors. Now, Spore Creature Creator 2-D gives potential Spore players a free hands-on sample of how much fun it is to create... just in one less dimension.



Users can create a creature from 250 eyes, noses, limbs, feet and other evolutionary accessories along with altering their creature's colors. Once complete, the creature is easily saved as a PNG image file that you can use to decorate your desktop, Facebook page or merely save for later bragging rights.

To discover how much of a Spore Hero your creature might be, bringing it into the Creature Trainer pits your new best friend through training exercises where you'll use your mouse to manipulate mouth/beak, hands, feet and tail weapons against orbs, skulls and clay pots that come in a constant barrage. Completing each level requires a certain point score and you don't gain coins of tokens but it's well-produced and with the ability to use different parts to defend, there's some replay value.



Once you hone your fighter's heroic qualities, you can change its appearance or start again. While you're unable to upload the unique creatures to the Sporepedia network, you can import several creatures.

Mafia Wars players have known for some time that Zynga was planning on releasing a brand-new city, Moscow, for the Facebook/Myspace/iPhone social game. Like the Cuba release before it, Moscow will bring new missions, businesses and items -- those who played during preview weekends in August and early September even had a chance to grab some of the new loot items debuting with the expansion.

But it looks like Mafia Wars isn't stopping at just Moscow -- when we logged into our account today, we found two additional destinations under the 'Travel' menu: Asia and Western U.S.

We reached out to Zynga for comment on the previously unannounced cities, but did not hear back by the time of this posting. That said, we're wondering if Asia will take any cues from rival Facebook game, Yakuza Lords - set mostly in Asian cities.

Check back for more updates on all of the Mafia Wars expansions as you wait for your energy to replenish.

Sulake, the Finnish company behind the early social game, Habbo Hotel, may have not entered the current social networking craze on places like Facebook and MySpace, yet it still boasts a whopping 13 million players. Yet, the nine-year-old game is starting to show its age and with a worldwide economic crisis, about 10 percent of its audience pays for in-game objects. Finally, it's getting ready to launch a new teen-targeted virtual world called Bobba.com.

The "casual virtual world for mobile phones," is already out in testing form for Symbian OS-based phones (owned by fellow Finnish mobile powerhouse, Nokia) and will arrive for iPhone and iPod Touch later in September. With colorful 3-D environments that appear to allow level construction, players are limited to more of a virtual space like The Sims and less of the leveling up play than social network gamers are accustomed to. Yet, it still has room to grow.

"Bobba is still very much in the early development phase ... Our aim is to build a virtual world, which is virtually platform free -- it can be accessed practically anywhere, with all kinds of devices," Timo Soininen, chief executive of Sulake said.

Could Bobba represent the next wave of social mobile games? Stay tuned for when it arrives later this month in the App Store.

More Information on Habbo Hotel:

Habbo Hotel

Source: Reuters

Your favorite TV shows just might be headed to Facebook.

USA Network, the cable channel known for hit original series like 'Monk' and 'Burn Notice,' has launched the new version of its Character Arcade, a portal for online casual games based on its shows. The site already features Facebook Connect integration, which means that new users can simply register/comment with their existing Facebook logins.

New partnerships with social gaming companies are already underway -- soon players could start to see more integration between the site and social networks in the form of friend leaderboards and achievement-based incentives.

Standout games already live on the site include 'Monk Shuiborhood' -- players must organize and straighten out Monk's house and neighborhood to match the OCD detective's standards -- and 'Psych Office' -- a collection of minigames set in Shawn and Gus' crime fighting headquarters.

With USA Network taking cues from big social game players like Zynga and Big Fish, we wouldn't be surprised to see those TV-show branded games embedded within Facebook in the coming months. Will other TV networks follow suit with their own social games? Only time will tell, but we suspect it'll be hard to resist tapping into the multi-billion dollar online gaming industry.

[via VentureBeat]

Google and Hasbro recently launched Monopoly City Streets, a free online version of Monopoly that gives players a chance to go from average Joe to real estate tycoon.

This game is different than traditional Monopoly. Instead of using the traditional game board, Monopoly City Streets works with Google Maps, meaning you can buy and sell real-life streets across the globe.

Once you've bought a street, spent your virtual cash building houses and other buildings, their rent will keep cash flowing into your coffers. After all, the ultimate goal of any Monopoly is to have the biggest bankroll by game's end.



Monopoly City Streets is relatively easy to pick up and play. Find out how to get started in our eight-step Quick Start guide:

Monopoly City Streets Quick Start Guide:

1. Go to the Monopoly City Streets site (monopolycitystreets.com)

2. Click the cash icon at the bottom of the screen to search for and buy a street. That will open the Google maps to the city/street you selected, along with a list of streets for sale in the area. All streets are color coded: purple streets are for sale, yellow streets are locked and not for sale, blue streets are already sold and the streets you buy will be highlighted in red.

3. Once you buy a street, you will be prompted to register and create a profile for the game. It's a relatively painless process, and doesn't require you to dole out any personal information.

4. You start the game with $3,000,000 in Monopoly money. After buying your first street, there are two options: buy more streets or start erecting buildings on your street and raking in the rent.

5. You can build buildings by clicking on your street, which pops a window containing information on your street. Select the Build Property option. When prompted, select the building you want to buy, then click on a traffic cone to place it on the street. Note: Once you place a building, you will not be able to move it later.

6. If you want to buy a street that's already taken, negotiate a sales price with the owner. Start by clicking on any taken street, which will pop a window with the street's information, owner name and a box to enter a bid. Enter how much you're willing to pay for the street, and the owner will approve if the price is right. Note: If the current owner does not respond to you in seven days, you automatically take over the street.

7. To keep things from getting too predictable; the game also doles out random Chance cards, that can give players an edge or take them down a few notches. Soon after signing in, we received a card that said we could bulldoze an opponent's building of our choosing. Score!

8. Log in to the game daily to pick up your rent and buy and sell buildings and property, then grow wealthy enough to register on the local, national or global leaderboards.

Another important note, Monopoly City Streets has been overwhelmed with players and has started crashing often. That means, you might find yourself coming back later to play again. The official blog says once the game stabilizes, they will restart the game, meaning everyone will have to start over from scratch (and ends January 31, 2010). That means if you've been dreaming of building high-rise condos on the streets of NYC, you might get your chance.

If you're yearning to play some more traditional Monopoly, check out these four Games.com games:

Monopoly by Parker Brothers

Monopoly Here & Now Edition

Monopoly SpongeBob Square Pants Edition

Monopoly Downtown (Cash Competition)

What's the AOL GameShow Podcast?

It's the best idea we've had since the last best idea we had.

Hosts Libe Goad, Laurent Courtines and Robin Yang are joined weekly by an ever-rotating cast of games industry friends/cohorts to talk about video/casual/social games -- we'll do a quick run-down of the week's big news and hit a few interesting discussion points.

You should also expect such recurring segments as Spanish Word of the Day (where we translate popular gaming terminology into Spanish) and What You Should Be Playing This Week Or Else You're A Big Dum-Dum (this one's pretty self-explanatory).

Awesome! How do I watch/listen to this show?

We're so glad you asked! We'll be posting each episode (video and audio) on this, the Games.com blog, every week as it debuts. But there are also multiple ways to subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode!

Subscribe in iTunes

(links will open in iTunes, make sure you click 'Subscribe'!)

AOL GameShow Video Podcast
AOL GameShow Audio Podcast

Subscribe using RSS

Video Podcast RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/aolgameshow
Audio Podcast RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/aolgameshow_audio

Hey, I've got a great idea/shoutout/question for your show!

We'd love to hear it! You can email us at podcast@games.com, or you can send us a reply on Twitter! Just include "@AOLGameShow" in your update and we'll be able to see it on our super computer controller panel screen. :)

Fishdom is one of our most popular match-three puzzle games -- you can demo the game right on Games.com, but you can win a copy of the FULL game right now!

Build up and develop your Fishdom! Progress through challenging boards and solve immersive puzzles to earn cash. Use the money to buy eye-candy fish, attractive ornaments and accessories and create an award-winning virtual aquarium of your dreams.

We have five codes to for you to win!

Here's how to win:

Step 1. Join our Facebook fan page! If you haven't joined our Facebook fan page yet, now's your chance! Go to facebook.com/gamescom, and hit the "Become a Fan" button at the top.

Step 2. Leave a comment saying "I Love Fishdom!" using the Wall Post and include your email address so we know where to reach you!

We'll pick five qualifying entries at the beginning of next week and email winners the codes.

Any questions or comments? Post them in the comments area here and we'll do our best to answer them! Good luck!