Looks like Zynga is taking things in a contrasting direction with its latest mobile game.
The maker of social network games that work standalone on mobile phone platforms, Zynga on May 5 announced the worldwide launch of its military strategy game "Empires & Allies" on iOS and Android, PCMag noted.
Mark Skaggs, a rare game creator, joined Zynga in 2008 with plans to make real-time strategy games even more popular. Skaggs spent the previous six years at EA, working on games like "Command & Conquer," but with Zynga he saw an opportunity to introduce RTS games to a whole new audience. But that never happened.
Facebook, however turned out to be a poor platform for the genre, and Skaggs spent his time working on social gaming hits like "CityVille" and "FarmVille" instead.
That said, now that mobile has emerged as a suitable platform, Skaggs is finally doing what he was hired to do with the launch of "Empire and Allies," The Verge noted.
"The idea was to take the classic RTS experience and bring it to mobile," Skaggs, senior vice president of games at Zynga, explained.
The title morphs "Empire and Allies" from a cartoon-like social game to a hardcore game with exceptional graphics and extreme combat. Plus, the game marks Zynga's foray into the action strategy category on mobile.
The worldwide launch follows a successful beta in nine countries over the last few months.
Players can team up with friends in order to form alliances starting Tuesday, May 5, and put together the best army. The army can comprise of troops, tanks, helicopters, warplanes and various other military technologies. Players will need to craft their base to guard against assaults from other players and pick up resources along the way in their quest to save or conquer the globe.
The game is now available to download for free in the App Store for iPhone, iPod and iPad touch devices, in Google Play for Android. In addition, it is available in 13 languages, including English, French, Turkish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Norwegian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, German, Spanish, and Italian.
The "Empire and Allies" release follows an executive shuffle at Zynga as former Microsoft Xbox chief Don Mattrick departed and Zynga founder and chairman Mark Pincus returned to the role of CEO.
