You may have noticed that a couple of months ago we launched a new brand called Tagplay, along with a cool new logo (right). The label was set up distinct from Tag Games to allow us to separate the two main activities of the studio, namely self-publishing our own games and developing titles for others. Tag Games carries on as usual working with some of the biggest partners on the planet such as Square-Enix, BBC Worldwide, Endemol, Namco Bandai and many more, whilst all of our own content will be published by Tagplay.

The first game from Tagplay marks our baby steps into social and freemium gaming. Funpark Friends is going to be an awesome free to play game in which the player must build the theme park of their dreams. It’s due for global release on 1^st October of this year and we’ve very excited about the opportunity to grow the game over time with weekly and monthly content updates planned. It may start off small, but this is one game that has the potential to become huge! The design team are just bursting at the seams trying to stop coming up with cool game-play ideas and so we know if you have as much fun playing the game as we’ve had making it you’ll be in for a treat!

Funpark Friends will introduce a number of quirky social features allowing players to share the game experience with their friends. One problem with so called social games on mobile is that very few of them are actually all that social. We’ve tried to avoid this kind of response, after all no-one visits theme parks alone! What point is there in taming the wildest of rollercoasters if your friends aren’t there to experience it with you? This won’t be a problem in FPF. You can find out more about Funpark Friends by “Liking” us on Facebook to keep up with the latest info.

In many ways Funpark Friends marks a major shift in the studio as we gear up for games as a service rather than a product. The fundamental way in which we approach the design and development of games has had to change and the personnel and skills needed has expanded as well! So there are a number of new faces to the Tag team including talented Server Engineers Drew and Stephen, Product Evangelist Simon and HTML5 expert Steven. These guys are working hard alongside the game development team to ensure that Funpark Friends is not only the most fun social game on mobile, but also the most stable, reliable and scalable!

This is just the start for Tagplay. These are exciting times to be making indie mobile games and we can’t wait to really get to grips with making elegant social games that you can play at home, on the go or on the can!

Follow Tagplay on Twitter for all the latest on our exciting original games.

Join in the Funpark competition on TouchArcade and get your ride design in the game PLUS win a $100 iTunes voucher.