Buzzin Games

Friday Town

Friday Town is a brand new groundbreaking social game created by a partnership between Cadbury’s Crunchie and nDreams, it launches today on the social media website Facebook.

Friday Town invites players into a virtual world and challenges them to help its inhabitants brighten up their lives with a series of puzzles that will unfold over the coming weeks and months.

On arriving in this virtual world the player takes on the role of a Friday Feeling Engineer, whose job is to make everyone feel more Friday-ish, with progress measured on a Friday-o-meter: the more fun and excitement generated, the better the player does.

The aim of the game’s first chapter is to help the Friday Engineers make the town fountain pump out chocolate instead of water, and turn it into a giant sundae!

As each additional chapter is then unlocked, players will face a whole new set of puzzles, meaning the game is constantly evolving to bring new bursts of that Friday Feeling. To add an extra level of competition, the game rewards those who recruit new players, via their own Facebook friend lists, with access to a secret area.

The theme of the game has been developed in parallel with Crunchie’s new TV advertising campaign, which sees a team of Friday Engineers helping a man singing to himself in a Monday-type way ramp it right up to that Friday Feeling with lights, fireworks and a full-on festival stage.  The TV campaign is in support of the launch of new Cadbury Crunchie Rocks, crispy Crunchie honeycomb pieces and golden cornflakes tumbled in delicious milk chocolate.

The game has been developed by an expert team, headed up by former Eidos Creative Director Patrick O’Luanaigh, who has worked on twelve worldwide number-one selling games over the last fourteen years.

Past successes have included overseeing a return to form for the Lara Croft franchise with Tomb Raider Legend, two Conflict: Desert Storm games that have sold well over 3.5 million copies, and Xi, the first console ‘Alternate Reality Game’, which had over six million visits in the first six months.

Patrick moved from Eidos to become CEO of nDreams in 2007, and has brought the same instinctive flair for creating addictive games that led to these hits to the development of Friday Town.

Ross Farquhar, brand manager for Crunchie, comments: “People are going to love this game. We’ve deliberately chosen to work with the experts behind some of the biggest gaming success stories of recent years, as we knew they’d be able help us realise our ambition: a truly immersive game with real fun-factor that brings that Friday Feeling to anyone who plays it, any day of the week.”

Patrick O’Luanaigh, CEO of nDreams, adds: “The challenge with Friday Town was creating a genuinely entertaining game that people would want to play, while also delivering an experience that reflected Crunchie’s brand identity. There are so many social games on offer now that having a recognisable name attached isn’t enough to make a game a success on its own. We’re confident that with Friday Town we’ve struck the right balance between exciting gameplay and brand messaging, and we have lots of great things planned as Friday Town grows week by week!”

To take part in this exciting new social game visit Crunchie at Facebook.