Happy Aquarium: Lady Baba brings her poker face to your tank

In a nod to you-know-who, Happy Aquarium has welcomed Lady Baba to the store. For either 52 Facebook Credits ($5.20 USD) or 62 Pearls, you can have your very own pop icon of the sea, but there are only about 2,600 left as of this writing!

We're calling it now: this one will last for about 37 more seconds, so don't wait. Just don't call her name. Alejandro ruined that for the rest of us.

Happy Island on iPhone and iPad is now free (finally)

Happy Island on iPhone
When CrowdStar first introduced the Happy Island app for iOS 4 devices in July, it cost $.99, which is weird for a social game that's free to play online. Finally the company has decided to make the app, developed by Sibblingz, free in the Apple App Store.

The Happy Island app, which allows you to access and interact with your Facebook islands much like FarmVille for iPhone, allows players to visit their friend's islands as well as collect profits from their attractions and customize their islands. The app was recently updated on Oct. 11 to improve stability and fix bugs, so hopefully the game is ready for the onslaught of downloads it's most likely to suffer very shortly.

CrowdStar, others dock in Sibblingz Spaceport for mobile social games

If we haven't driven home yet that mobile will be massive in the future of social games, we clearly haven't done our job. Luckily, news like the fact that Sibblingz has signed on It Girl creator CrowdStar and a number of other developers to use its Spaceport service helps us make good on that.

TechCrunch reports that--in addition to CrowdStar--BitRhymes, IKIGames, LuckyLabs, Fortune Planet and DeezGames have signed on to use Spaceport to create mobile versions of their Facebook games. Spaceport is Sibblingz's cloud-based game development platform that allows developers like CrowdStar to create mobile games that work on both iOS and Android devices.

Essentially, it allows developers to create a mobile game once and have it run on multiple mobile devices. The platform makes use of coding languages like Javascript and HTML5, but neither of which are known for making robust or fully-featured games on iPhones or Android phones. However, Sibblingz claims that games built on Spaceport feature an app-like experience.

What Sibblingz means is that, while these games are built using simpler code languages, they will perform like, say CityVille Hometown by Zynga. That game was built using tools specifically for iOS devices and is thus more visually impressive and feature-rich than mobile browser games. However, according to TechCrunch, developers can even create games specifically for iPhones and iPads through Spaceport.

Sibblingz also says that developers can make games for Facebook's worst-kept secret, Project Spartan--an initiative to bring Facebook to mobile devices through browsers using HTML5 complete with full-featured apps and games--through Spaceport. Jeez, on paper it sounds like Spaceport can do anything but make the cash flow.

Regardless, what's important to take away here is that social game developers realize that mobile is where it's at. Frankly, it's one area where clear winners have yet to be defined, much unlike Facebook (ahem, Zynga and EA). At this point, anyone could come out a winner on mobile, and perhaps the companies that embrace cross-platform game creation like CrowdStar will have the upper hand.

Do you think these developers have a chance at winning the mobile race these social game creators are running with Spaceport? Who do you think will ultimately win the mobile social gaming war? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment