Backyard Monsters

Backyard Monsters
Backyard Monsters' logo.
Developer(s)	Kixeye
Publisher(s)	Kixeye
Director(s)
Producer(s)
Designer(s)
Programmer(s)
Artist(s)
Writer(s)
Composer(s)
Series
Engine
Platform(s)	Facebook
Release	March 2010
Genre(s)	RTS
Mode(s)	Single-player with multiplayer interaction
Cabinet
Arcade system
CPU
Sound
Display

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Backyard Monsters is a real-time strategy game released in March 2010 and developed and published by Kixeye, available as an application on the social networking website Facebook. As of June 2011, Backyard Monsters has nearly 4.6 million monthly active users on Facebook, with 40,000 users on at any given time.

Players in Backyard Monsters are represented by their yard and Facebook profile. In Backyard Monsters, the yard is initially a stretch of unused grassland. Players build buildings and defensive towers in their yard and attack other players with monsters for resources. Players can interact with each other by exchanging messages, truce requests, or "mystery sacks" of resources.

Gameplay

Players begin in an empty yard, where they are taken through a tutorial, a set series of actions which provide the player with general information about the basics of Backyard Monsters. The goal of the game is to defend the main building, the "Town Hall", from enemies while upgrading other buildings and attacking other players.

Resources

Players in Backyard Monsters use four main resources: "Twigs", "Pebbles", "Putty", and "Goo", which are produced with dedicated resource harvesters. "Shiny", the fifth optional resource, can be bought through online payment methods such as PayPal and Facebook Credits and spent on various in-game extras. Small quantities of Shiny can be acquired by completing quests and cleaning the player's yard of mushrooms.

Experience points are gained when when performing most actions, such as building new structures, collecting resources produced, or attacking other players. Gaining enough causes the player to 'level up'. Higher leveled players cannot attack low leveled players unless the low leveled players initiate the first strike. The higher leveled player can then retaliate with an equal number of attacks as was received from the low leveled player.

Combat

Players in Backyard Monsters can attack other players with a number of "monsters" which can be created by spending Goo in a "hatchery". Monsters can be strengthened by educating them in the "monster academy" or modifying them in the "monster lab". The monsters can then be sent to another player's yard with the "flinger", where they will destroy structures until they are killed by defensive towers. Defensive towers and walls can be built to defend their yard from attacking players or wild monsters. Upon building a catapult, players can then select resources to launch at the enemy player's base to further damage their buildings, or strengthen the attacking monsters. Completely destroying a yard allows the player to build an outpost on the location.

In Backyard Monsters, wild monsters are non-player controlled enemies that attack players randomly. The artificial intelligence used by Backyard Monsters looks at a player's yard and determines the weakest point in the yard's defences, what type of monsters the yard is weak against, and sends the appropriate monsters at that location. Certain groups of wild monsters have their own yards, which can be attacked and looted for resources like a normal player's. To quell wild monster attacks from that group, the player must destroy the wild monster's town hall several times. Doing so causes attacks from the group to cease, and like destroying a player yard, an outpost can be built on the location.

Player versus player (PvP) can be performed by locating a player's yard in the "map room". The player can then attack them and send a number of monsters to attempt to take the enemy's resources.

If a yard is over 50% destroyed, it will be under 12 hours of "damage protection", during which the yard cannot be attacked until either the time runs out or the protected player attacks another player, which removes the remaining protection time. 7 days of damage protection can be purchased with Shiny every fortnight.

Reception

Press reception

The game has received generally positive reviews. Gamezebo rated Backyard Monsters 4.5/5, praising it for its gameplay and graphics but criticising it for its lack of social interaction and complex interface, simultaneously stating that "[Backyard Monsters] boils an often-complicated genre down to its simplest, most fun basics." Playthisthing gave the game a rating of 5/5, admiring its PvP qualities. Unigamesity.com praised the game's graphics and challenging and competitive gameplay, stating, "The visuals of the game are really well done and the monsters are really lovable and, overall [...] Backyard Monsters is an amazingly fun, challenging and [...] for the more competitive Facebook users," but like Gamezebo, criticised its lack of social gameplay, stating, "...in terms of social gameplay the title still lacks some sense: there’s not too much interaction between neighbors at the moment." Backyard Monsters won the Mochi Award for Best Social Game of 2010.

Player reception

On 7 January 2011, updates by Kixeye drastically altered the graphics of the monsters, resulting in mixed reviews from the players. As of June 2011 a poll by Kixeye showed that 47% of the 372 voters disliked the graphics changes.

References

This article "Backyard Monsters" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Backyard Monsters. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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