Zynga launches Mafia Wars 2

BANGALORE, INDIA: Zynga, a leading social game developer, today announced the global launch of Mafia Wars 2, an experience that lives on the wrong side of the social gaming tracks.

According to Zynga, the new game will be debuting in 16 languages, the most for any Zynga game at launch, Mafia Wars 2 is Zynga’s first official sequel, taking one of the company’s oldest and most successful franchises to a new level of wicked fun. Mafia Wars 2 introduces an immersive world with ruthless characters and blends the photo realistic world of Mafia Wars with a modern graphic novel style.

Built by the veteran team that created the original Mafia Wars game, Mafia Wars 2 draws inspiration from the dark side of the original and incorporates the best components of other Zynga games. Mafia Wars 2 is a story-driven, social experience where players must rise up, get revenge, and build the largest crime empire the world has ever seen. Fresh out of prison, players are welcomed back with open arms by their crime boss and handed a new turf to own and run. After getting back on their feet, players are soon betrayed and must embark on a mission of revenge to seize control of what’s rightfully theirs.

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Mafia Wars 2 places a core emphasis on player vs. player combat. Familiar to Mafia Wars fans, players build their crew to help them on missions, fight rivals, take on crime bosses, and visit friends’ turfs to enhance their criminal empire and character abilities.

“Our goal with Mafia Wars 2 was to build on the Mafia Wars franchise in a way that feels familiar to our loyal players, yet provides a brand new world of criminal mischief to explore,” said Erik Bethke, general manager, Mafia Wars 2. “The game makes fighting a visceral, social experience and wraps it in a story and art style that we think our players will love. Believe us when we say that Mafia Wars 2 is unlike anything Zynga has released before. We can’t wait to let our players in on the social mayhem.”

Players progress in Mafia Wars 2 in three ways:

·         Lock Your Land: Players build their turf to collect cash and keep their hands clean by hiring in-game workers to do the dirty work. Mafia Wars 2 features over 100 decorations for players to personalize their home turf. Players can build casinos, knock-off DVD stores, banks and (ahem) “grow houses.”

·         Savage Saga: Players travel across seven worlds - Casino Row, Granite Square, Neon Strip, Downtown, Bluebird Meadows, Boxer Island and Westside Wharf - to seek revenge, take on crime bosses and build their empire.

·         Battles & Bloodshed:  The game features three fight arenas at launch — Bone yard, Badlands and Area 51 - where players fight asynchronously and attempt to rob random rivals in the game. Players call on friends (crew members) for social support. Friends help defend a player’s turf when it’s under attack and repair it after damage is dealt. After a rival is robbed, they’re added to the attacking player’s rival bar, where they can be targeted again.

Mafia Wars 2 marks one of the highest-levels of customization for a Zynga game at launch, providing players with more than 300 different types of weapons, armor and vehicles. Players outfit distinct fighting classes by amassing weapons, armor and abilities to help them in battle. Players can also generate from over 20 million unique looks for their avatar, including over 600 pieces of clothing.

Mafia Wars 2 is available today on Facebook in 16 languages (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Turkish, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Japanese and Thai).