Cycloo: a new cycling board gameÂ…online!

[Cycloo]

Cycloo: a new cycling board game…online!

Hello to all cycling fans!

Let me introduce you a new browser game:

http://www.cycloo.net is a multiplayer dice game that simulates a live bicycle race. It is a game of chance with a small part of skill involved.

The concept is inspired from the long tradition of cycling board games which have been conceived throughout the world since the beginning of the 20th century (http://www.cyclingboardgames.net). Our idea was to bring online the best of those games which have been played offline for a very long time among family and friends.

Each race lasts between 10 and 12 minutes. Roll your 2 dice and watch your cyclist ride. The best your dice score is, the fastest you ride ; below 7 your speed decreases, at 7 you get a water bottle, more than 7 you get faster.
You can optimize your efforts by using water bottles (it enables to cancel a poor dice result like 2 or 3 and try again). You can also use boost pellets (green pellets are collective boost while blue pellets are individual boost). You can join a team and benefit from the aspiration of your teammates.
Win the confidence of the boss and be appointed manager of your team: recruitment of new riders, pellet stock management...
Win races, earn tokens and give yourself the ultimate luxury: become the owner of a team!

We hope you that you will enjoy Cycloo.net. You need a recent browser version to play it as it is a full HTML5 game.
If you have any question, please feel free to communicate in this thread. We'll do our best to reply in due time.

We wish to thank the Racingnews Admins for letting us know about Cycloo's release. This Game section is really great for small game studios like ours to communicate with cycling fans. At last, we can propose this game on a white labelled basis to any companies that wish to animate its Facebook fan page for Giro, Vuelta, Tour de France etc..

Kind regards

Jack - from the Palamax Team (http://www.palamax.com)

 

[Zam_Olyas]

I will try it out. Its a nice game.Very interesting

 

[Havetts]

Its alot of fun playing this, I agree

 

[Sylvester]

Me too. Even more fun when you're winning

 

[Zam_Olyas]

Me too. Even more fun when you're winning

u are on a roll. 3 straight race.

 

[Havetts]

Ninth to fifth, if this is a spree then I should be first by this race!

 

[Havetts]

See.. I was correct! Winner!

 

[Zam_Olyas]

See.. I was correct! Winner!

Chapeau!!! ..very good race

 

[Zam_Olyas]

Cycloo, how do we make a team?

 

[Timmy-loves-Rabo]

epic we should all do a race together.

mafioso represent !

 

[Eric8-A]

I just joined

 

[Timmy-loves-Rabo]

joined.

acf leader? haha.

 

[Cycloo]

Cycloo, how do we make a team?

There are 6 teams: the Reds, the Blues, the Greens, the Yellows, the Oranges, the Violets. You cannot create any team by yourself, but you can buy and own one of those six teams for a period o f time.

How to "buy" a Team and become the boss?
>> by placing a bid at the auction (button Team Auctions on the left side of the chat room)! The Team auctions close on each monday at 8pm local time (game time): the server is currently based in France, but we'll make sure this week to move the closing of the auctions for the US version to 8pm local time in California. Later on, we'll likely host the US version of the game on a server based in the the USA (as this is a live game, latency is an issue - you are encouraged to refresh your page browser from time to time).

The ownership lasts one week, from monday 8pm till the next monday same time.

You will understand next week that the game is much more fun when all Teams are managed. Because then you can benefit from the aspiration from teammates. But we need to grow the number of players before you can realize that. In the meantime, we can also manually give some teams to each of you, guys, as you are like Cycloo pioneers currently!

So who wants to be boss of the Greens?
Who wants the blues? The reds?

 

[Sylvester]

As I live in Europe, I tried to registrate on the European site, but I got redirected immediately to usa.cycloo.net. I can't open fr.cycloo.net without getting redirected.

Also, I figured out the bidding system, but it doesn't seem to work just yet, maybe it's the browser I'm using (Chrome)? When bidding, let's say, 10 tokens for the ownership of Les Verts, the page asks for a confirmation and then answers "*****", without registrating the bid.

Anyway, my username is txurruka, if you want to give me a team, I won't complain

This game clearly has a lot of potential (I read the essay on cycling board games, and you guys actually made an outstanding set of rules). Races with a lot of participants should really make for a great game.

 

[Gloin22]

Very nice game. In my first race I came 2nd agonisingly close less than a seconds to a bot. Damn it My last throw with 5 was a mistake, as I had 8 with 7% to the finish. Oh well, nice game !

 

[Cycloo]

epic we should all do a race together.

mafioso represent !

Hello Timmy-loves-Rabo,

Thank you for registration on the Australian Tour.

We made a mistake in fact, let me explain you why and how we will correct it:

http://www.cycloo.net/home.php here you can see the various versions of the game: USA, UK, Australia, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Brazil

The only active version curently is the French one (as it was launched mid November): 656 active players over the last 30 days, including 122 who bought tokens over the same period of time.

We are making geolocation to direct players directly to the right Tour.
If you live in Germany, you are automatically redirected to the German Tour (still under translation process) ; if you live in Portugal or Brazil, you are automatically redirected to the Brazilian Tour (partly localized/translated, work in progress), If you live in Sain or in Latin America (except Brazil), you are automatically redirected to the Spanish Tour (loclization not started yet); if you live in France/Belgium/Luxemburg/switzerland, you are automatically redirected to the French Tour ; if you live in Italy, you are redirected to the Italian Tour (game translation almost finished), if you live in Australia, you are automatically redirected to the Australian Tour ; if you live in the UK, you are automatically redirected to the UK Tour (we wish to launch a real money version for that one in partnership with a local licensed gaming operator) ; if you live elsewhere than in one of all the previously mentionned countries, you are automatically redirected to the USA Tour.

Regarding the 3 latest mentionned versions (Australia, UK and USA), we now realize we should not have splitted them. We of course need to concentrate liquidity/activity, and separate the versions later on once we will have reached a sufficient level of activity. So, we'll merge tomorrow the 3 english-speaking versions to give the best possible chance for the game to take off.

 

[Zam_Olyas]

Hello Timmy-loves-Rabo,

Thank you for registration on the Australian Tour.

We made a mistake in fact, let me explain you why and how we will correct it:

http://www.cycloo.net/home.php: here you can see the various versions of the game: USA, UK, Australia, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Brazil

The only active version curently is the French one (as it was launched mid November): 656 active players over the last 30 days, including 122 who bought tokens over the same period of time.

We are making geolocation to direct players directly to the right Tour.
If you live in Germany, you are automatically redirected to the German Tour (still under translation process) ; if you live in Portugal or Brazil, you are automatically redirected to the Brazilian Tour (partly localized/translated, work in progress), If you live in Sain or in Latin America (except Brazil), you are automatically redirected to the Spanish Tour (loclization not started yet); if you live in France/Belgium/Luxemburg/switzerland, you are automatically redirected to the French Tour ; if you live in Italy, you are redirected to the Italian Tour (game translation almost finished), if you live in Australia, you are automatically redirected to the Australian Tour ; if you live in the UK, you are automatically redirected to the UK Tour (we wish to launch a real money version for that one in partnership with a local licensed gaming operator) ; if you live elsewhere than in one of all the previously mentionned countries, you are automatically redirected to the USA Tour.

Regarding the 3 latest mentionned versions (Australia, UK and USA), we now realize we should not have splitted them. We of course need to concentrate liquidity/activity, and separate the versions later on once we will have reached a sufficient level of activity. So, we'll merge tomorrow the 3 english-speaking versions to give the best possible chance for the game to take off.

can you make it a world tour kinda thing? because i want to play against players from this forum..i want to especially drop ACF on a hill

 

[Cycloo]

As I live in Europe, I tried to registrate on the European site, but I got redirected immediately to usa.cycloo.net. I can't open fr.cycloo.net without getting redirected.

First of all, you will very quickly realize that the chat is a key element of the game. Cycloo is a social game. You need to partner with other players, manage teams and so on, play with green pellets on a clever manner....
So the game cannot really work if you mix different languages into the same chat. Have you ever participared in a multi language chat? I can tell you this is a mess!

This is why in the end we have decided to redirect automatically a player into the "right" Tour, as per the geolocation we automatically get from him.

Last point: Cycloo is a freemium. We cannot afford maintaining and publishing such a real time game without a 'business model' behind it. This is an element we took into consideration to decide wether we will give a free access to all geographical versions or not. Such a choice can be criticized, but we do assume it and the experience based on the first three months operation on the French speaking version shows that players do understand that we try to monetize part of of our work.

 

[Cycloo]

Also, I figured out the bidding system, but it doesn't seem to work just yet, maybe it's the browser I'm using (Chrome)? When bidding, let's say, 10 tokens for the ownership of Les Verts, the page asks for a confirmation and then answers "*****", without registrating the bid.

Many thanks for your alert about it. We'll have a look at it and will keep you posted when it is corrected.

 

[Sylvester]

I can see the benefits in geolocating the players and having different Tours, and of course it's up to you to decide which features should be available to all users and which ones are designed exclusively for paying customers (actually your current model seems to work quite well; moreover, if there would no available free version, you will probably lose a lot of players, including me, as I don't even have a credit card).

However, I'm a Dutch speaking Belgian currently living in Italy. If I understood everything correctly, you would be geolocating me in the Italian Tour, and if I returned to Belgium I would have to join the French Tour; as I'm currently an "international user", I'm part of the international, US based Tour. I actually would prefer this international, English spoken version over both the Italian and the French one (even though I do speak French and Italian; I'm sure a vast majority of Dutch speaking Belgians would prefer the English version to the French one by far, not to mention the many international expats who would be more comfortable playing the game in English than, say, in Portuguese, supposing they lived in Brazil). On these boards you will find a lot of Germans, Portuguese, Dutchmen etc. communicating in English without any problems, for instance.

 

[Cycloo]

I can see the benefits in geolocating the players and having different Tours, and of course it's up to you to decide which features should be available to all users and which ones are designed exclusively for paying customers (actually your current model seems to work quite well; moreover, if there would no available free version, you will probably lose a lot of players, including me, as I don't even have a credit card).

However, I'm a Dutch speaking Belgian currently living in Italy. If I understood everything correctly, you would be geolocating me in the Italian Tour, and if I returned to Belgium I would have to join the French Tour; as I'm currently an "international user", I'm part of the international, US based Tour. I actually would prefer this international, English spoken version over both the Italian and the French one (even though I do speak French and Italian; I'm sure a vast majority of Dutch speaking Belgians would prefer the English version to the French one by far, not to mention the many international expats who would be more comfortable playing the game in English than, say, in Portuguese, supposing they lived in Brazil). On these boards you will find a lot of Germans, Portuguese, Dutchmen etc. communicating in English without any problems, for instance.

You're typically the type of customer who will make this strategy per country difficult indeed! What we plan to do in order to take into account "international users" / "travelers", is to give users the possibility to parameter a version so that when you login (to the FR version when you are in Belgium, to the Italian version when you are in Italy), you will be automatically redirected to the US version. We will need some time to adapt to this specific case, but this is definitely the right strategy to develop on a longer run.

 

[Zam_Olyas]

who wants to play?

 

[Sylvester]

Yeah, join us, it's an entertaining game, you all should at least give it a try!

 

[Timmy-loves-Rabo]

can you make it a world tour kinda thing? because i want to play against players from this forum..i want to especially drop ACF on a hill

agreed.

I understand the region system etc. But is not possible to have a english based game (international versioN?)? thus if germans wanna play in english and chat in english they can do so, For example so many users here live in europe, yet discussion is in english.

Would've been fun to play with the different members on the forum here, for me that was the biggest appeal. But I ofcourse understand the difficulties in regards to economic feasibility. Ah well

 

[Zam_Olyas]

agreed.

I understand the region system etc. But is not possible to have a english based game (international versioN?)? thus if germans wanna play in english and chat in english they can do so, For example so many users here live in europe, yet discussion is in english.

Would've been fun to play with the different members on the forum here, for me that was the biggest appeal. But I ofcourse understand the difficulties in regards to economic feasibility. Ah well

come and join now..there is one mafia member playing