Wall Street Journal looks at Vostu, the Brazillian Zynga

Here at Games.com -- The Blog, we've extensively covered the rise of social gaming in Europe and Japan (and America, obviously). But the social gaming phenomenon isn't just limited to these locales. It's also making inroads in places like Brazil, as the Wall Street Journal highlighted in a recent profile of Vostu, Brazil's answer to Zynga.

Though the company is based in New York, Vostu has found enormous success in the Brazilian social gaming market, which is built largely on top of Google's all-but-defunct social network Orkut, of all things. The company has found success updating traditional social gaming genres with a Brazilian twist in games such as Mini Fazenda, a Farmville clone that lets you "grow exotic fruits from the Amazon and build a carnival float with friends," and Cafe Mania, a Cafe World clone where players "can cook virtual dishes such as feijoada, a bean and meat stew."

By targeting the nation with the world's fifth-largest Internet-enabled population, Vostu has quickly become "very profitable" according to the piece, with 8.7 million players for its top game, revenues in the high eight-figure range and $15 million in venture capital from companies including Intel. Much of this success is surely due to the relative lack of targeted competition thus far -- not many American social gaming companies have translated their games into Portugese, after all. With success like this, though, we're guessing the Brazilian copycats will be flooding the market any second now...

Source

MegaCity maker Vostu gets down to earth with Elemental on Android

As it attempts to win over the judgment of the courts, Vostu attempts to win over the hearts of Android gamers everywhere with Elemental. The Brazilian social game maker released the game from its São Paulo studio today to the Android Market for free. The game is said to be a twist on the classic puzzle game Sudoku, swapping boring numbers for more exciting elements.

Players combine various combinations of the classic four elements--earth, wind, fire and water--to unlock brand new elements within each puzzle. As players create new elements, they're guided by Professor Nicolas (or should we say Nikola?), who looks as if it could be a passerby in the Professor Layton universe.

Elemental presents its puzzles in a 4 by 4 grid, and players must create new elements by placing existing elements within the sub grids. However, like Sudoku, you cannot have more than one element in any given row or column. Nikola--sorry, Nicolas--will guide players through the more complex grids and element combinations. There are two game modes in Elemental: Story and Survival.

The former throws players into different worlds to collect certain elements and move on, while the latter is a race against the clock to complete grids. Of course, Elemental is made social via OpenFeint, which allows players to compete in real time by sharing achievements. (So ... technically real time?) Vostu said in a release that it plans to use OpenFeint in future mobile titles. If only this were coming to iOS--normal Sudoku just doesn't do it for this writer.

Click here to download Elemental on Android for Free Now >

Are you a Sudoku fanatic? Could a mobile social game like this feed your need for (annoyingly) complex matching puzzles?