FunOrb

FunOrb is a casual gaming site created by Jagex Games Studio. Launched on 27 February 2008, it was the company's first major release after their successful MMORPG, RuneScape. All of the games are programmed in Java.

Jagex has announced that this site is targeted towards the "hard casual", "deep casual" or "time-pressured" gamer market and that it intends to expand into the mobile phone games market.^[1][2][3] On 3 December 2009, Jagex released its first mobile phone game, Bouncedown, for the iPhone and iPod touch,^[4] followed by StarCannon on 15 April 2010,^[5] Miner Disturbance on 8 June 2010,^[6] and Undercroft on 16 September 2010.^[7]

Summary

A screenshot showing Arcanists, one of the games on FunOrb.

FunOrb offers single-player and multiplayer games. Multiplayer games allow players to communicate with each other through a public lobby, game chat, which can be used while playing in a game, or through private chat, which can be used to talk to people on RuneScape, and vice versa. In all current multiplayer games, players receive a separate rating for each game, which symbolises their experience with the games and can rise or fall based on their rated game performance. In all current multiplayer games, with the exception of the persistent-world game, Dungeon Assault, players may play "rated" games, which finds random opponents and adjusts their rating based on their performance, or they can play unrated games with people of their choice, which have no effect on their rating.

The site includes an achievement system which gives awards for completing challenges in single-player and multiplayer games. These include "Orb Coins", which players are able to spend on a variety of game content including desktop wallpapers, music, icons, and more.^[8] Also awarded are "Orb Points", which can be compared to those of other players.^[9] The site has been launched in English, German, French and Brazilian Portuguese, with more languages planned.^[10]

Jagex stated that FunOrb would be updated every two weeks, either with a new game, an update to a game or an updated site feature,^[11] but the last website update was on 2 December 2014.^[12][13] Currently, only Jagex games are available on the site, but Jagex stated in 2008 that they were considering adding third party games to the site.^[14]

Cost

Another screenshot showing the game Armies of Gielinor.

Limited versions of all FunOrb games are available for free, with costs covered by advertising. Some games are completely free, with the exception of fullscreen mode. Players have the option of becoming paying subscribers, which gives them access to more ingame content, among other things the option to play games in fullscreen mode and an increased amount of achievements.^[15] Subscribers are also granted immediate access to the FunOrb forums, whereas non-subscribers are required to have obtained at least 42 achievements before being allowed to post.^[16]

Holiday events

From 22 October 2008 to 5 November 2008, special Halloween Achievements were spread across 10 games, with each of those games having a temporary Halloween theme.^[17] These were re-released on 28 October 2009, along with Achievements and Halloween themes for several other games.^[18]

On 18 December 2008, an update for the game Arcanists was released in celebration of Christmas, in the form of several costumes that players could buy with Orb Coins.^[19]

Awards and accomplishments

In November 2011 the FunOrb game Arcanists won game of the month on MPOGD.^[20]

References

External links

• Official website