Game developers Ohai have been working on an unnamed project for quite a while now, and yesterday they announced the official title: City of Eternals. A vampire inspired free-to-play title that incorporates social gaming elements, Twitter and Facebook logins, for example, City of Eternals has been in a closed beta for the past two months, and has seen some pretty impressive figures. On average, beta testers, all 10,000 of them play around 65 minutes per day, and log in approximately 10 times per day.
So far, the project sounds like any number of popular Facebook games. However, where Ohai seeks to separate itself from the pack is through synchronous play (something that EA recently started exploring with Spore Islands, as well as Tencent’s ‘market research’ project via synchronous gaming). The goal of Ohai is to create a “real” MMORPG within a social gaming platform read:Facebook in a 2D virtual world where users interact via avatars. Sounds like a “real” MMORPG thus far – only the platform has changed.
Set in the Pacific Northwest, and possibly tapping into the current Vampire driven market – i.e. Twilight, Underworld, True Blood, etc., city of New Valencia, the complex storyline currently features over 20 unique missions for players to engage in. As with any MMORPG, players create their characters, customizing looks and clothing. Battles take place in combat zones, and players level up and gain virtual goods through these battles and quest completions. Check off the “real” MMORPG tenets, and enter the social side. Grabbing elements from other popular social games, City of Eternals also incorporates players’ home base, which of course can be decorated with any number of purchaseable virtual items. Players may also grow items to keep or sell, specialize in a trade, and become a member of one of four vampire houses – aka clans. Another social feature adaptation – players may also recruit their real life friends to join their fight and become a member of the main player’s vampire army.
Due to the recent shakeup of virtual goods offers being a scam, Ohai CEO Susan Wu stated in a TechCrunch interview that City of Eternals will not be incorporating ad offers, but will offer a strict ‘cash-only’ virtual currency purchase plan. Something female gamers might not take to. While Ohais, the company’s proprietary virtual currency, may be purchased while playing directly at the City of Eternals website, since the game in build in Flash, it’s possible to embed the game practically anywhere else on the web, thereby opening the door for potential virtual currency sales from just about anywhere. City of Eternals’ current virtual goods catalogue prices range anywhere from $.02 right through to $20.
While the games does not yet have an official Facebook page, Ohai states that it’s on it’s way very soon. They’ve also stated that an iPhone version of the game is currently in the works. While it won’t be “exactly the same”, Ohai states that the iPhone version will still allow users to interact with other players.
Build over the course of only 9 months with a staff of approximately 12 (including only 3 engineers), City of Eternals has the potential to be a true resounding success story, considering the title’s breakneck speed development, and limited resources. And they’ve already got a lot going for them – tapping into the once highly popular vampire genre of Facebook games, exploring the synchronous gaming method that has recently piqued the interest of two gaming giants, as well as creating a genre that seems to have found a place in recent pop culture.
