There’s an interesting new social networking game that sounds fascinating to play… at first:

Ever wonder what it would be like to grow trees, build houses, plant flowers and interact with other real world players all on top of Google Maps? No, I hadn’t really thought of that either, but the people at Self Aware Games sure have. They’ve brought their idea to life via Fleck, a new browser-based game that’s currently in beta at Fleck.com.

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Fleck’s gameplay can be most easily thought of as a combination of MMO and the established Facebook social game. You’ll enter into a real-time environment populated by dozens or even hundreds of other real-world players, depending on your geographical location, and can then interact with both those players, and the surrounding environment through a variety of activities. The novelty behind Fleck is the game’s world – the real world, as seen through Google Maps. That is, each environment in the game represents a real world place, but rather than seeing a completely animated background, filled with static buildings or plant life, you’ll see the white lines of streets, green shaded areas representing parks or forested areas and so on – just as though you were looking up a general location via the Google Maps service.

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While your actions in Fleck are your own, your alterations are seen by all players, just like the world of an MMO. In this is the beauty of the game. Due to its Google Maps backdrop, you can literally travel anywhere within the United States or Canada, so long as you know an address. This allows you to stand on top of your own real-world home, planting flowers on the nearby streets, or, will even let you travel to what may be a particularly shady part of your real-world neighborhood and make it a better place – at least within the game.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? You can use your idle time to help make the world a better place, at least online. That’s sort of a recreational form of the ZRC’s agitation, isn’t it?

Well, no. As it turns out, the world of ‘Fleck’ doesn’t want any of YOUR help, Zombies and Zombie allies:

Oh, and did I mention there are zombies? Every now and again, you’ll come across a grave stone in the middle of a map’s area. These don’t seem to correlate one-to-one with real world cemeteries (that would be a bit too creepy, I think), but once you find one, you’ll be able to start a new zombie battle mini-game. The Zombies of fleck are unlike anything I’ve seen – bright purple mounds of hair that chase you around the map or spit at your from afar. Your character will automatically shoot at the undead, but you need to click around the map to move and avoid being lunch.

This is a real first. The developers at Fleck.com want to make absolutely sure there aren’t any bleeding heart Zombie-coddling pacifists playing their game, no sir. They’ll FORCE you to shoot the virtual Zombies, whether you like it or not.

Take that, filthy hippies.

Honestly, what precisely is the point of automating the violence in a game? What’s the point of a game that plays itself?

I suppose these people think that shooting Zombies should be such a reflex action by now that there’s no point in making it a user-interaction. Well, The ZRC finds that attitude repulsive.

I’m in the process of reviewing another social networking game at the moment, ‘Zombie Lane’ on Facebook, but I’ll get to Fleck soon enough so as to properly register our outrage at this travesty with a full review, rest assured.

Tags: The Internet, Videogames

This entry was posted by John Sears on Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.