Fable III: Kingmaker. Seen in Gorblimey, yesterday

I was in London/Gorblimey yesterday (for non-UK readers, 'gorblimey' was a common (in at least two meanings of the word) exclamation of surprise in 19th Century London, derived from 'God blind me') and, while strolling through Bloomsbury,  walked past the McCann Erickson building.

The advertising agency always displays its wares in a large picture window by the entrance and the current one is Kingmaker-themed (it has the Microsoft account) -

There's treasure worth 2000 gold here. Win!

The main display has two inset monitors, with each displaying flag-planting auto-tweets from the two factions.  I planted a couple of flags while I was there but I didn't see mine pop up - even though the onscreen tweets were coming in thick and fast, there must be plenty backing up.  

Microsoft gave a press release a couple of days ago that said there were 60,000 users who between them had planted over a million flags.  I think this is pretty good going, particularly given that, for the first week or so of release, it didn't really work.

Rebel scum are everywhere

I've currently 'earned' over 30,000 gold, to be put to good use once the game is released in the UK on 29 October.  

Fable III: Kingmaker - iPhone review

Just when I was beginning to think that it was itself a fable, the Fable III Kingmaker app was released on the iPhone yesterday.

As I've written before, the app is part of the Fable III marketing campaign. The app credits state that it has been developed by McCann London, the uber advertising agency that holds the Microsoft account (and whose beautiful art deco offices I walk past on the way to work).

Players register and are then allocated to one of two teams, the Rebels and the Royals (representing factions in the game). I'm a Royal, which would not have been my natural inclination - what with rebels being cooler -  but I figure if players were allowed to choose, we'd all be rebels.

The aim of the game is to have your faction control the most 'territories' (compartments of real-world locations). Each player can aid their team by 'planting' flags on their phone, with that flag equating to their location at that time. The faction with greater number of flags in a territory controls it.  Each day, players are given 10 flags to plant in the 'real world'. I commute between 'Middlinglande' (Herts & Beds) and 'Gorblimey' (London - all regions have comedy names bestowed upon them) for work and spread my flags around them both.

As well as aiding your faction, each flag you plant gains you gold, which you can upload to the game once it's released (and once you've linked Kingmaker to your Live ID). The flags are worth 50 gold each but that increases by multiples of 50 gold if the player links their Twitter and/or Facebook accounts. The app does then tend to spam your accounts, so you may prefer to link them to dummy accounts.

There are additional treasure sites, which the player can visit to claim the booty (first 100 players only at each location though). All of these are in GAME stores, possibly the first example of treasure being found in those locations. The app tells you where your nearest treasure site is - mine is 45 km away!

The app has been a little bit buggy for me at times, kicking me out while logged in and occasionally not calculating my gold properly (my last two flags today were only awarded 50 gold, rather than 150).









The app allows you to monitor how many flags you've placed and how many are remaining, together with an update on who controls the most territories.









There's further detailed analysis available from the Kingmaker website , (I'm currently rated 2435 for gold collected, apparently).










There isn't really much else to it but, for a free download that will provide an in-game benefit, I think it's a nice little app - kudos to Lionhead for coming up with it.

EDIT 17 October

I've had a few days to play around with the app now and think that it has serious problems with its functionality.  My app is linked to my Twitter and Facebook accounts - so, each flag should deliver 150 gold - but, after doing this for a couple of days, it has returned to only giving out 50 gold for each one.  The 'treasure' tab to the app - showing pots of gold near to the player, where a planted flag will deliver 2000 gold - no longer works (nothing appears when it is selected).

I still think that  the app is a good idea but it would have benefited from far more testing prior to release.  That begin said, I would sooner Lionhead concentrated on getting Fable III itself bug-free, than on using finite resources in polishing an app that only European smartphone owners can use.

EDIT 19/10/10

I've noticed that the 'Treasure' tab works  fine in Gorblimey (London) and I used it to rinse 11,000 gold during my lunchbreak.  It seems the streets of London are paved with gold, after all.  On returning to Middlinglande (Herts) it stopped working again.

FINAL EDIT (hopefully) - 20/10/10

The app updated this morning and now everything works - the extra gold for Facebook/Twitter linking; the Treasure tab in all regions; locations of all treasure shows up in the Treasure tab and the log-in/log-out process is streamlined.

Fable III Kingmaker

This morning I received a Fable III flyer from Game.  As well as drawing the Fable III-branded 360 controller  to my attention (can't really see the point of that, though it looks pretty and if I needed an extra controller, I'd consider it), it also revealed an app-based game, Fable III Kingmaker -

If anything, I'm now more excited about Fable III

I'd not heard anything about this before in any of the magazine previews for Fable III  but it seems a really good idea.  Available from either 2nd October (according to the flyer) or 1st October (according to the website), it is a way for the player to accumulate 'treasure'/gold (and for Microsoft to increase gamers' expectations) before the game's release at the end of October (as with Pub Games before the release of Fable II). The flyer only refers to the UK but the website shows French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish and Italian flags (go 'O' Level Geography!), so presumably localised versions will be available in those countries. There were no details on similar products for other territories.

Roll on Friday (or Saturday).

EDIT 2 October 2010 The Kingmaker website has been updated and the App will now be available from 'October'.  Elsewhere on the internet, it suggests that the App will be available for Android phones on 4 October and iPhones a few days after that (no release date given).  There's a trailer here .

And it has also been confirmed that the App will not launch in North America.