FrontierVille Gingerbread House Goals: Everything you need to know

Gingerbread House WhackingYou pioneers are never satisfied, are you? First, it's the Buildable Snowman. Then Zynga gives you 12 days of Christmas Goals. And now, because that clearly wasn't enough, it threw in one of the most elaborate cross promotions you've ever seen this side of Rattlesnake Canyon: The Gingerbread House. Man, you FrontierVille players are just plain spoiled.

It seems that this adorable little gingerbread man is having trouble building his home this Christmas season as everywhere he's gone, people have literally eaten him out of house and home. In order to help, you'll need to go back to the three locales he's tried to build at and retrieve the essential ingredients to his home: CityVille, Treasure Isle and Mafia Wars. After placing his house on the homestead and giving it a few good whacks (that cost Food this time rather than Wood, get it?), you'll be greeted by this Building's menu. (If you're having trouble finding him, he's hanging out with the Carolers near the Toy Factory.)

Find out how to complete this Goal spanning several Zynga games after the break.
Finish your Gingerbread House
We'll get the easy--well, easier--stuff out of the way first. In addition to traveling to three different game worlds, you will need 15 Pretzels, 10 Gingerbread Slabs and 10 Frosting Tubes. All three of these items are acquired the old fashioned way: begging, of course. So, keep up on tapping your friends for these Gifts while you gallivant about three games.

Paul's Improvements
Let's start with finding a Chocolate Bar in CityVille. Clicking on the "Earn for Free" button will take you to a confirmation screen that will then launch you into your own city. From there, click on the Horseshoe icon to get started with "Paul's Improvements." Here, you'll need to do three simple tasks: place two Asphalt Roads, collect from five Residences and place three Decorations (yawn). Find the Asphalt Roads in the Decorations tab of the Build menu for 10 coins a pop. Also in that same tab will be where you can find three Decorations, so pick any three and put them any old place. Then, just click on five Residences with the coin icon hovering above them. If you're trying to save money or don't have any room for this nonsense, just delete it when your done using the Remove tool. For doing this, you'll receive 50 coins.

For some reason, completing the Goal won't return you to FrontierVille automatically nor did it instantly reward me with the Chocolate Bar. Only after jumping back into FrontierVille and following the same link that go me into CityVille from the game in the first place made Paul reappear, allowing me to jump back into FrontierVille to claim my Chocolate Bar. Next, let's take a stroll down the shady streets of Mafia Wars to get the next item, the Candy Cane.

Mafia Wars Candy Cane
Following the same process again, but for Mafia Wars, will take you where you need to be for the Candy Cane. For new or low level Mafia Wars players, this is going to be cake. For the veterans out there, have fun, OK? All you need to do in Mafia Wars to get the Candy Cane is gain one level above Level 5 through Jobs, which won't be so easy for the Level 100-plus players out there. Once you level up, you should receive a similar message to that from CityVille, prompting you to return to FrontierVille and open up your Candy Cane. Next, let's dive into Treasure Isle for the final item, the Gum Drops.

Treasure Isle Gum Drops
This Goal should be even easier than the last for most. For players above Level 4 (it's a requirement), all you need to do is find five Treasures... anywhere. So, you could probably just go about your business and work on whatever it is your currently tackling. Then, you should receive a similar confirmation as before, transporting you back to the homestead with Gum Drops in hand. If this doesn't happen automatically--this goes for Mafia Wars too--try the trick mentioned above. It worked in CityVille, so it might work the same way here. Now that you know what to do, go forth and conquer the worlds of what might soon be the misfit Zynga games, cowering in the shadow of the mighty CityVille empire.

Mafia Wars 'No Crime Like the Present': Everything you need to know

If you took a look at your Operations today in Mafia Wars, you might have noticed a massive Christmas Tree plopped where your normal group missions should be. Do not be alarmed, this is Zynga's new, elaborate holiday event to ring in Christmas mobster-style, "No Crime Like the Present." In this special, limited time event, players will have to get into the holiday spirit like any self-respecting mafia member would: hoarding and stealing, of course. Mixing a little bit of gifting, stealing and protection, this event is going to take plenty dedication and team work if you want to nab the grand prize weapon: Auld Lang Syne (110 Attack, 135 Defense).

Peek behind the break to get a detailed look at how this huge holiday event works.
Holiday Gifting
Before you do much of anything involving Presents, we recommend getting your tree to the max level as soon as possible for it to hold the maximum amount of Presents: 45. (This becomes vitally important later, trust us.) To make your tree shine brilliantly at Level 5, you will need to collect large amounts of each Decoration: Ornaments, Lights and Candy Canes:

    Level 2: Three of each Decoration (increases capacity to nine)
    Level 3: Four of each Decoration (increases capacity to 18)
    Level 4: Six of each Decoration (increases capacity to 30)
    Level 5: Eight of each Decoration (increases capacity to 45)


That's a total of 21 for each Decoration, which adds up to a grand total of 63 gifted items.Thankfully, you can send these Decorations to your mafia members through the Free Gifts page as well as request them, making the task slightly less tedious. However, what you can send from that page is a Holiday Sack, which may contain one of seven items: any one of the three Decorations, any one of the three Presents or a Lump of Coal. If the person you're sending the Holiday Sack too has already maxed out their Christmas Tree, then that narrows down the possibilities to one of three Presents or the Lump of Coal (a weapon with one Attack and one Defense). After you've decked out the tree with blinding holiday bling, it's time to pilfer those Presents.

Rewards List
This is done exactly how decorating the tree was, but you can send Presents directly from the Christmas Tree menu. When sending or receiving a Gift, you have a random chance at getting or giving either a Blue, Red or Green Gift. This directly effects your chances at winning the 11 available items, most of which have impressive stats, thankfully. While there are five common items that can be found inside any of the three varieties of Presents with lesser stats, there are six items that can only be inside one of the three Presents with numbers that match some Italy-grade items. Here's where you can find the rarer holiday items:

    Blue Gift: Shadow Transporter (77 Attack, 60 Defense); Bengal Tiger (72 Attack, 99 Defense)
    Green Gift: Mobile Garage (55 Attack, 79 Defense); 40mm Bunker Buster (101 Attack, 68 Defense)
    Red Gift: Achilles Salvation (69 Attack, 100 Defense); ET Hybrid (63 Attack, 75 Defense)


However, we don't recommend opening these Presents before New Year's Day. If you can't wait long enough and have the maximum amount of Presents come Jan. 1, you'll receive the grand prize. Unfortunately, that won't be so easy considering anyone can steal Presents from any Christmas Tree. Luckily for you, six friends can be enlisted to protect your Presents with their statistics contributing yours. So, make sure you recruit only your most powerful friends to keep your tree safe.

Tree Robbery
If you want to steal your own Presents, Christmas Trees will randomly appear on the Robbery Page with varying difficulty based on the mobsters protecting it, but you'll always need at least five mafia members and six Stamina to rob one. Also, Zynga added a News Feed to this Operation's home page so you can track who did what to your Presents and retaliate accordingly. With the threat of your precious Presents being stolen, we know where you're going to be this Christmas.

This Hess Toy Truck advergame on Facebook is actually ... fun?

But--but that means everything I've learned about advergames is a lie. That's not true. That's impossible! Ahem, anyone else remember getting a toy Hess truck every Christmas from gramps? At least this writer does, but that's not all that makes this brand new Facebook advergame a blast to play. Titled simply Hess Racer Game, the game throws players behind the wheel of digital versions of the 2011 Hess Toy Truck and Race Car.

And--get this--you don't click a single thing to play but the "Play Game" button to start. To guide either the Race Car or Toy Truck across a cityscape, mountain highway or an interstate, use either the "W" and "D" keys or the arrow keys on your keyboard. The goal of the game is to last as long as possible without hitting any cars or guard rails. The game allows you to take just a few hits.

Pressing the space bar activates turbo boost, which nets you more points but reduces your handling. Once your run is through, you can post your results to Facebook (with no confirmation). You'll earn coins from your races that you can spend on collectible, digital cards featuring throw backs to classic toy Hess vehicles from the last 47 years. Players can also challenge their Facebook friends to beat their high score for extra coins.

And once you reach around 30,000 points, boy is this game a challenge. Hess Car Racer, developed by Sticky Studios, is available for free on Facebook, iPhone and iPad right now. (An Android version is coming Dec. 2.) Sure, it's an advergame, but at least it's a fun one.

Click here to play Hess Car Racer on Facebook Now >

How do you feel about advergames on Facebook? Do you remember getting Hess trucks every Christmas as a kid?