The Philippine Online Chronicles

Pinoys are taking over the world of technology. After the recent production of animated Pinoy movies such as "Urduja" and "RPG, The Movie", and the creation of role playing game Anito: Defend a Land Enraged in 2008, Filipinos are now venturing into online video gaming.

Wordtrotter, the first ever Filipino-created, developed and owned video game on the social networking site Facebook, was launched November of 2009. Breaking into the world of foreign game applications in Facebook (over 2,000 of them with five word games to compete with) seemed like suicide, but not to Palmagick Entertainment, the developer of Wordtrotter. It is actually their aim to stand toe-to-toe with foreign video games on the social networking platform.

"I am thrilled to unleash, by the grace of God, an offspring of innovation on Facebook," said Gil de Palma, creator and the president/CEO of Palmagick Entertainment, upon the game's launch.

The game is described as a fusion of three popular video games – Snake, Pacman and Text Twist. Wordtrotter is a combination of a puzzle and casual action game.

Wordtrotter targets the casual gamers market, those between the ages of 13 and 65 who love puzzle, word and casual-action games. Apart from this, Wordtrotter also wants to create its niche by reaching out to those who want to learn the English language through its vocabulary-building feature.

Wordtrotter is a simple game to play, but it is not simplistic. The only thing the player has to do is to catch letters to form words – the same way Pacman eats gold coins. However, it does not stop there. According to de Palma, in order to understand the game, players must know the underlying story of how words are formed.

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Gil De Palma, President and CEO of Palmagick Entertainment, introduces Wordtrotter at the first Facebook Developer Garage Philippines. (supernerd1607)

There are three characters, or Wordtrotters, in the game - Woogly the wizard’s apprentice, and his two friends Weegly and Whaagly. Woogly and his friends live on the bug world Wordth, and are exiled by their elders for accidentally summoning an evil witch named Grimmar and a bunch of bug-eating monsters. This is difficult for Woogly, Weegly and Whaagly, as the Wordtrotters are caterpillars. The evil spell disembodies them and they become wandering letterbugs.

After some time, Woogly returns to Wordth from exile, only to find it in chaos because of a spell cast by Grimmar, which brought about darkness and the danger that the Wordtrotters will cease to exist.

Spared from the evil spell, Woogly, Weegly and Whaagly embark on a mission to reverse it. But Grimmar discovers the trio’s plans, and dispatches her bug-eating monsters (buggers).

The objective of the game is to catch the letterbugs until they form the secret magical game word that can save the world of Wordth. Catching the bugword lights up a bughood (stages in the letters of the alphabet). The player gets a clue before he/she starts to collect the letterbugs. If the player beats the time, he/she moves on to the next bughood to catch another set of letterbugs. Help is always on the player's side through the magical and power-up items than can be gotten by eating the bugstuff clusters or the Alphabet Golems. However, the bugstuff may hide buggers. The players need to be fast or else the buggers may form into letterbugs first and the player becomes their lunch.

The game comes with the full functionality of a Facebook game application, thus, players can play with their friends.

Wordtrotter fans on Facebook opine that while the game is fun to play, it is also a useful educational tool. “Some of the words formed are not the commonly used ones,” Ina Mangalindan, the Social Media Manager of Wordtrotter, said in an interview with this writer.

While only 1,000 people actively play the game, Wordtrotter is currently number one in Google page rank if you search for “the world’s coolest word game.” Looks like the strength of the Filipino herd voting all over the world is in the works again, but this time through online promotions and buzz among Filipino blogs and forums. This is what Ms. Mangalindan wants to tap. “We know those digits aren’t big that is why we need the support from the Filipino audience and from the international community as well,” she said.

If foreign game applications have done it, why not Wordtrotter?

Facebook Social Games

The games on Facebook incredibly gained momentum last 2009. Based on the AppData numbers, the Facebook application metrics, its number one game has monthly active users (MAU) of more than 73 million.

Facebook has revolutionized social gaming and has redefined gaming in the years to come. However, not all games in Facebook are popular. According to Andrew Mayer, a social gaming and user experience consultant with over 17 years of experience under his belt, “Some of these games were hits, and others were bombs, but they are all games that will have (or should have) an impact on the way we’ll make our games in 2010.

What Facebook has done is to open social ways of playing games, connecting people and sharing common interests. “Facebook games take away stress and boredom,” Ms. Mangalindan added.

Play Wordtrotter here.

Photo: Wordtrotter poster taken from Tumblr.