RockYou launched the social game AMC The Walking Dead Social Game. It’s a game adaptation of AMC‘s popular post-apocalyptic drama series The Walking Dead, which is based on a comic book series. After the successful adventure game series by Telltale Games the social game is the second game available for this brand. Another Action-Shooter is in development by Activison and shows how well the franchise fits for an interactive medium.

Developer: RockYou
Genre:  RPG, Strategy
Languages: English
Platforms: Facebook
Active users (Facebook):
820.000 MAU 90.000 DAU

How to Play
The game combines mechanics of different social games genres. As a survivor of the zombie apocalypse the player is in charge of a survivor camp and has to keep it running. To do so the player goes on missions and gathers resources. The customizable avatar gains experience and the player can spend skill points to upgrade him; also new weapons can be purchased to increase the avatars fighting strength.

On missions the player moves in turns and tries to complete his objectives without being killed by the undead called walkers. His movements drain energy which restores over time. Same as weapons and other resources energy can also be purchased with a premium currency. As it is common in social games the game is titled as open beta and several features are still added to the game from time to time. One such example is the survival mini game that is fun to play but, unfortunately, t0o short and doesn’t add anything to the game, no bonuses, resources or any kind of reward, making it boring after playing it more than once.

The energy wall
A flaw in the game is how the player experiences the energy scarcity. At the beginning the player is well introduced to the game, even gets a little spoiled. He has access to several energy refill tokens; with those the player gets a first game session of 20 to 30 minutes in which it is possible to achieve a great amount of missions and level ups. But when he runs out of those tokens the real scarcity of energy and the limited possibilities without those tokens are revealed. To get the same performance as in the first session the player has to play the game over a whole day relogging several times. The result is that the following sessions feel less satisfying then the first. This would explain the game’s low stickiness (DAU/MAU ratio) of only 11% (According to AppStats).