Holy Town: Facebook Gets a 'Christian Farmville'
A new Facebook Christian app game launched this month aims to simulate a real-world evangelical experience through social media, says its developer.
Holy Town is one of the few Christian Facebook apps available. Since its June launch it has gained more than 19,000 “likes” as well as positive feedback and hundreds of five-star ratings from its users.
The application’s description reads: “Do you love GOD? Ever wondered what it would be like to start your own Church and bring more people to GOD? Well find out in Facebook's first Christian game, Holy Town!”
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The game begins by allowing gamers to choose an avatar among four characters. Currently, one of the four features is working; the others are still being developed. The basic idea of the game is to create a church by earning coins through “preaching.” Preaching means typing in biblical words such as “savior,” “forgiveness,” and “sacrifice” up to five times a day. The more coins you receive, the bigger the church. The more congregation members players have, the more coins they will earn when they preach.
The game also offers “Scripture of the day” where users are allowed to share it with friends. Players will also have the opportunity to do fundraisers and charity work to build their ministry.
The idea for the game came out of a conversation about Facebook apps and how Maiko Martin, who was already a Facebook developer at the time, could use his ability to spread God’s word.
“I was already a Facebook developer, so I had experience with how things could spread across the platform. During a conversation about other Facebook apps I was developing with my family, my aunt, Janeene Ward, said that she thought it would be a great idea to use our ability to promote things through social media to create a Christian game for Facebook,” Martin shared with The Christian Post.
He added, “She thought that allowing users to create their very own church would be fantastic, and it would provide a fantastic escape for Christians on Facebook who played other popular games.”
Immediately that very same day, he began designing the game where he figured that “providing Christians with an integrated Bible-based typing game (which we call “preaching” in Holy Town) to help us improve our typing skills while being immersed in the Word was fantastic.”
The 21-year-old Christian developer shared that while making the game there were times he left discouraged, wondering if people will play the game “but Proverbs 3: 6 (In everything you do, put God first, and He will direct you and crown your efforts with success) took care of that!” he specified.
Martin began programming and hacking games at 13 but began taking it seriously at age 19. Since then he began developing iPhone and Android games but switched to Facebook in late 2010 because he thought the platform was more progressive and developer friendly, he stated.
In conjunction with the release of Holy Town he also officially released his company “mrmaiko” where he will continue to promote the Christian lifestyle through different media outlets.
New features to the game will be added every week for a few years, he added.
On the Web: Holy Town
