Bondee - Latest Mobile App for the Metaverse

With all the hype around the concept of Metaverse, it is no wonder that more companies are developing apps to connect users to a metaverse of their own creation. The latest is Bondee, which has ranked top among the free apps chart on Google Pay with more than a million downloads since the launch on 15th Jan 2023. It is developed by Metadream Tech, a Singapore based company.

Bondee Screenshot - New User

Bondee allows you to connect with friends, chat, and visit each other's rooms in a neighborhood setting. Signing up is pretty easy and the usual process of ID creation is smooth. They do need birthday details, and officially only those who are 13 and above of age could create an account. Providing a phone number would also make it easier for your friends to locate you and "add friend" to their accounts. There is a two step verification via SMS to ensure that the phone number is indeed linked to your mobile phone.

After registration, it is time to create your customised avatar! There are plenty of options (hairstyle, accessories, clothes etc) and if a step-by-step process of tweaking every detail is too tedious for you, you could always choose one of those pre-setup options as a base to simplify the avatar customisation process. After that, it is time to add some friends! You could share your own Bondee QR codes or IDs via chats, and I've shared mine on Instagram, to make it easier for friends to find me.

There are two nice features of Bondee (at least to me), and one of them is the ability to decorate your own room. Similar to the avatar creation, there are also two more options to pre-fill a room in a certain style to speed up the process. Many of the items are marked as "Limited Free Trial" and I wonder how much would they cost (eventually) to own them. Or, having selected them now, would they be taken away past this time period? There is also an option to add / customise the items using your own photos, which is a nice touch beyond just cartoony furniture.
Once the room is set up, you could view your room in the neighbourhood setup in an isometric style. You could visit your friends' room and leave post-it notes on their walls too.

The other fun feature is a sailing option although I'm not sure what is the background story to such a 'sea sailing' feature. Upon sailing in the small boat, the user could meet other users or even pick up bottles with notes inside. Thus far I've only met 1 other Bondee user while I was sailing.

Besides these two features, the normal functions of the Bondee app as far as I can see, is to chat with friends via both a personal chat, as well as group chat. You could also indicate your current status via a number of options e.g. charging up, sleeping, chilling, playing with sparklers etc.
I guess these apps would be attractive when more and more friends use it - currently I have less than 10 friends on Bondee, and maybe I could add more in the coming days (current max of 50)! Bondee have yet to add Paid features but I guess that would be inevitable at some point.

Tsum Tsum - Star Wars: Luke, R2D2 & Yoda!

Disney Tsum Tsum has just launched 3 new Star Wars Tsum Tsum! Luke, R2-D2, and Yoda! There is a double chance to get these premium tsum tsum from now till 4th of May (of course, in celebration of Star Wars day on 4th of May). They look rather cute, and each has somewhat unique powers.

I've cut and paste the 3 powers of these Tsums Tsums, and yes, lucky me managed to get the R2-D2 Tsum Tsum shortly after it is launched (see screenshot below). It is not bad, and getting scores of above 1mil with 400-500 coins is rather easy. Of course I think I would stick to my favourite Max for now in order to earn coins to get all three premium Star Wars Tsum Tsums! May the Force be with me for this!

Myminicity after 7 years - Scraze

Anyone still playing Myminicity? I am! It is an on-off affairs over the past 7 years, and I must say I've picked up the 'game' again in recent weeks. The interest waned when I couldn't exactly see the new 'buildings' on the game map, but the minute I noticed any differences, my interest in this simple game picked up again. :)

Just a short summary about Myminicity - it's a browser game where each city is denoted by a name e.g. scraze.myminicity.com, and via the 'post fix' behind the name, any visitor could help to grow the city in terms of 'industry', ' security', ' transport', 'environment' and 'commerce'.  Without use of the 'post fix', each visit would merely help to increase the population size. Each visit is counted based on the unique IP address per day. For those who are interested to find out more about this browser game, I've done a previous blog post about the myminicity mechanics.

The above picture is how my myminicity city looks like currently - picture patched up from multiple screenshot of the growing city. :)

Related posts:
- Simple Review of Myminicity
- Myminicity Mechanics & Pictures
- Myminicity reaching 51 population
- More pictures of myminicity

Happy Chinese New Year 2016! (Sun Wu Kong from Seven Knights)

Here's wishing all readers a Happy Chinese New Year 2016! Shown below is the newly introduced character Sun Wukong from the mobile game "Seven Knights" by Net Marble. Yes this is the year of the monkey (fire monkey to be more accurate), and we have games celebrating the lunar new year theme with monkey related features, especially Sun Wukong, the famous monkey monk from Journey to the West. For those interested about Seven Knights, there is a CG trailer video below the Sun Wukong pic.

Happy New Year!

Mazda Website Hacked - Singapore

I was looking for Mazda car price and keyed in Singapore Mazda in Google search when I saw that it was being hacked, i.e. the text for the website appeared as shown below (see red box):

I chose to clicked on the Mazda website, and it appeared fine. Apparently the website was restored, i.e. I found some news article about it, but the search result text still shows the hacked version. Hopefully the crawl bots would crawl the restored site, and revert with the original non-hacked text.

ArcheAge - CBT started!

I'm waiting with great anticipation of a good game when ArcheAge's Closed Beta starts within the hour. After hearing so much about it, I've decided to purchase a Silver Founder's pack.

Progress from the CBT would be wiped, but it does give a great chance to try out the game's many features without worrying that the game progress will be made permanent. I understand there has been much discussions about the Labour Points and how slow it is in regenerating. Thus the CBT will be good to try out things that gamers might not want to do in the actual launch servers.

Glyph - ArcheAge CBT

Not sure which race will I chose as a starting character but the Harani seems interesting with the boost for logging / gathering speed.

Ok, time to go try out the game! :)

A Dark Room by Double Speak

A Dark Room is a text based browser game that is surprisingly fun. The game is developed by Double Speak, with a minimalist design that reveals more as the game progress. A Dark Room starts with a player in a dark room (no surprise) and the sole option to stoke a fire. With fire burning hot, the game introduces a builder and another game ‘area’ outside the room, where player can gather woods. The area is initially named ‘Silent Forest’ which will become a Lonely Hut, and eventually A Raucous Village.

Builder will subsequently introduce more options, e.g. a cart for more efficient transport of woods, and huts to build a simple village. With more gatherers, other options start to appear, e.g. building a lodge (for hunters to gather more fur and meat), a workshop where crude weapons and torches can be built.

Without spoiling the game, here’s a couple of quick tips:

Build up the Village

In my first try, I did not max out the number of huts. However, the hut houses the important resources of villages (indicated via a number and each hut can house 4 population) that generates more woods and eventually workers to manufacture things.

There is a maximum of 20 huts (huts get progressively more expensive to build in terms of woods) and that gives the player a cap of 80 population. When the maximum number of huts are built, the game will display a ‘no more room for huts’ message.

After the Huts, do build the traps to maximum. Baited traps work better of course, and doesn’t cost much (1 meat for each bait).

Resources management

Resource management is a key component for ‘A Dark Room’ where each villager assigned to produce some resources, will also consume the primary resources e.g. fur to leather, meat to baits. With a maximum of 80 villagers it is much easier to increase production for the needed resources. Try adjusting the number of villagers assign until the game sort of balances out, e.g. 2 hunter will generate 1 fur and 1 meat every 10 second, while a tanner takes 5 furs for a leather. So 10 hunters will support a tanner (5 furs to give 1 leather) and a charcutier (5 meats and wood for a cured meat).

A Dusty Path

Once the player buys the Compass from the Trading Post (or cheaper from the Nomad, which is a random event), another game segment will appear – A Dusty Path. This new area allows the player to explore beyond the village, fight enemies and eventually reach an important game objective (sorry – not spoiling the game for you). The location of this ‘objective’ is roughly along the direction pointed by the Compass when you first bought it.

While tempting to immediately explore the Dusty Path, try not to do so until you have a couple of important items e.g. the basic bonespear (weapon), waterskin and rucksack. I will suggest taking along 4-5 torches, and about 10 cured meat as well. Each step on the Dusty Path will consume 1 water unit and 0.5 cured meat. These can be replenish at various points e.g. encounters and caves.

Mines

The initial objectives are to find mines e.g. an iron mine (and later coal, and sulphur). There are only 1 of each mine and the location is random. Dying while fighting (or due to thirst / starvation) means everything that is carried will be lost – not a good idea. Thus take exploratory steps to find rest points for water / cured meat replenishments before you venture far into the map.

Finding the mines unlock more resources, and more objects to build e.g. better armour, better water container (e.g. water tank) that allows you to explore and survive longer trips.

Once you find (or build) different weapon types, they can be used (subject to cool down) simultaneously in the fights. Only 1 weapon of each type is needed, i.e. no point bringing along 3 bone spears for example.

All these explorations is for the sole purpose of finding the ‘objective’ as earlier mentioned. Once you find it, gather more resources e.g. Alien Alloy, and then the player can embark on a final trip… that requires nimble fingers i.e. quite different from the main bulk of A Dark Room’s wait for resources type gameplay.

A last tip – random events occur (e.g. the Nomad) and some of these events offer a chance to impart important Perks (e.g. Scout) that will be useful for playing A Dark Room.