In our continuing coverage of the fbFund second round participants, we’re taking a look at the Social Arcade application. Developed by Rick Vanner and Dave Milton of The Game Creators LTD, the application contains a library of simple games that you can play as well as “gift” to other friends. I went ahead and tested out a few of the games which reminded me of the days of playing the simple TI-82 games back in middle and high school.

I tested out three games which are pictured below called “Cool Egg”, “Bird Hunt”, “Extreme Jumper”. The applications were amazingly simple and appeared to be generated from a single game engine that the company had most likely developed internally. I started off with Cool Egg, and immediately was frustrated. Every time I started off jumping across from one ledge to another, I would miss the other ledge and die immediately.

The game required pin point accuracy, and when I’m playing a game to blow off some steam, getting frustrated is not something I look forward to. The second game, “Bird Hunt”, was reminiscent of Nintendo’s Duck Hunt sans the handheld gun. Using the mouse on my laptop was relatively challenging but calculating the direction of the ducks was not since they all moved in straight line.

Extreme Jumper was the best one I played. The only problem? There is only one level! I was done playing in about 40 seconds and then tried to beat my own time which I succeeded at the second time around. After that I was done! I think the application has a lot of potential but rather than churning out a ton of simple applications, the company should focus on building a few high quality ones.

I understand the value of building a gaming engine, but the engine can only be as valuable as the games it creates. If you want to vote for Social Arcade, you can vote here. Also, make sure to first check out the Social Arcade application.

UPDATE
Wow … so it looks like I totally missed the point of this application. Apparently users are able to create their own games using this company’s game engine. While users aren’t building the next World of Warcraft using the engine, it’s cool because users get to create and share their own custom games. I definitely should have looked into this one better.