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Digital Chocolate's Party Island in Facebook beta

Intriguing next step in connected gaming

Digital Chocolate's Party Island in Facebook beta
We might be a bit late on this, since Party Island seemingly opened for business nine weeks ago. But it's still worth reporting on, as it's seemingly Digital Chocolate's next Big Idea.

It's not a mobile game though. Instead, it's an island-themed community on Facebook - a virtual world, almost - complete with avatars of you and your friends. Here's the blurb:

"Party Island is a paradise where you can play addictive high-quality games, make challenges, party and flirt with people around the world, and so much more!"

So far, there are two games to play - Tower Bloxx and Solitaire - which will be familiar from their existing Facebook versions (and the mobile games that they're based on). Here's a bigger screenshot of the main screen:



At the time of writing, the Party Island app has 1,256 daily active users, who are 10 per cent of its total install base.

It's well worth registering now to see how it develops - live chat, the ability to have your avatar walk around, and a mysterious new game are the next features due to be added apparently.

We've got two questions however. First, is there a mobile angle - will Party Island be promoting DChoc's mobile games - or is it purely a web thing? Could we see Party Island itself extending onto mobile phones?

And secondly, what does this mean for the future of DChoc's Cafe community and games? Party Island seems like a potential replacement, since the publisher has clearly chosen not to use Cafe for its new Facebook virtual world (even though the Solitaire game is still branded as Cafe Solitaire).

Of course, we'll be asking Digital Chocolate about this as soon as possible, so stay tuned.
Contributing Editor

Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)