New World Gaming: Backyard Monsters, the Facebook Game for Gamers Who Hate Facebook Games

Backyard Monsters is a real-time, resource management strategy game reinvented for Facebook, and it's a very compelling answer to the question, "What comes after FarmVille?" While that game still dominates the category of social games, there's been a steady evolution in the quality and complexity of smaller Facebook games, and in my opinion, Backyard Monsters is in the vanguard of social games that will make this a true, sustainable genre.

Backyard Monsters is from the developers of Desktop Tower Defense, the insanely viral epic Flash game, which means I can proudly say I had a small, very indirect hand in its creation. (See below.) The premise: You create a miniature fortress of towers, walls, and a monster-making factory in your backyard, then attack neighbors' enclaves with a savagely cute horde of beasts, while defending your own territory from meep-meep invasions. It plays like a leisurely, whimsical version of Starcraft or Command & Conquer, but there's as much emphasis on creativity and the Zen garden pleasure of enhancing and perfecting your fortress. But as you'd expect from the makers of Desktop Tower Defense, the strategy game aspects of Backyard Monsters are incredibly well-balanced and polished, yielding hours of fun figuring out the best arrangement of offensive and defensive units.

A friend of mine used his defensive wall blocks to write this message -- then launched a sneak attack on me!

And as you'd expect from a game integrated with Facebook, you can play Backyard Monsters with your friends on the network, helping them build their own fortress, giving them gifts, or (why not) attacking them too. Unlike most other Facebook games, you can also play with people not in your social network, which opens up the possibility of meeting new friends, and expanding your network. (Is there any better icebreaker than invading someone's backyard with an army of squiggly beasts?) That's what excites me most about social games like Backyard Monsters, or City of Eternals, the Facebook-based MMO I helped develop -- not just that they've opened up a new audience for gaming, but a new, globally shared play space.

My relationship to Backyard Monsters:

When I wrote about Desktop Tower Defense in 2007 for GigaOM, the main creator, Paul Preece, was still an office drone Visual Basic programmer who made Flash games in his spare time. But then Desktop became a monster hit, which led to Paul pulling down monthly ad revenues in the high four-figure range. So when his day job boss read my GigaOM article, “he was not a happy chappy,” as Paul put it to me then, and he was promptly fired. But the success of Dekstop also led to interest from a venture capitalist, who got Paul and his partner funding, and moved them to California, where they launched Casual Collective, makers of Backyard Monsters and other games.  So they got that going for them.

Comments

[ColeMarie Soleil]

You just reminded me I need to check up on my monsters XD

[Little Lost Linden]

Trying to imagine what SL would look like on Facebook. It seems it would be a little less immersive though. :)

[spyvspyaeon]

2nd place? omg, u still have time for that?

[jeremy liew]

Paul and Dave have come a long way since they first started casual collective. I'm really proud of what the Casual Collective team has done with Backyard Monsters - it has lifted the quality bar for Facebook games

[Hamlet Au]

Heya Jeremy! Jeremy's being too modest to say, but he's the VC who invested in Paul and Dave's company, so he deserves way more credit for getting this game going than me.

[shane]

how do you fight other people that is what i really need to know

[Hamlet Au]

You gotta build a map room first and then click the Map button and Attack.

[Ben]

I love BYM, but I also love Farragomate (original version) Oh how I wish they'd get the farragomate server back online, its been down 2 weeks now. Its at www.farragomate.com, when its working.

[Rv Tan]

like my yard