Indie studio Red Aphid‘s new Facebook game Feed The Rocker is in a playable, open beta, but it’s more stable than plenty of other Facebook games I’ve played. (I’m looking at you, Island Paradise.) I was pretty excited to check it out, I see a lot of potential in casual Facebook games for a creative indie studio.

Gameplay Feed The Rocker blends the fun physics gameplay found in Max and the Magic Marker, Magic Toychest or Crayon Physics,  with the seedy rock backdrops you’d expect in Guitar Hero. Your goal is to pour power pellets down the gullet of a sleeping starving rocker. You’ll use your guitars, amps and the rest of your rock gear to spill or bounce the food into the rocker’s open mouth.

The first levels involve bouncing a steady stream of pellets into the rocker’s mouth, then obstacles, special food and special gear are quickly added. As obstacles are added, though, it becomes more difficult to tell obstacles from environment.  The rocker seems to have a special love for sushi, donuts and mini-pizzas, which are worth extra calories. You’ll need to achieve a benchmark in calories in order to progress to the next level. This is ideal Facebook difficulty, not too hard for a casual slacking game, with the option to replay for the perfectionists amoung us.

Gameplay video from Red Aphid‘s site.

Besides the falling food, players also try to collect falling guitars for their collection.You collect these picks by swallowing them. (Don’t think too hard about that part.) I tend to enjoy collecting in-game items, so in theory I’d like the pick collections. But somehow collecting picks fell flat when actually playing. A little design on a little guitar pick in a small window of a Facebook game didn’t really offer a lot of variation, and instead of browsing my collection or completing sets for power-ups, I was constantly hounded to send my picks to my Facebook friends.

With the completion of each level, you’ll increase your stats in the number of calories eaten, experience gained and picks collected. And then there’s your ‘karma’. This stat is where Feed The Rocker lost me, adding the same annoyances of other social games like FarmVille. Players lose karma for owning too many guitar picks, so as you defeat levels and therefore gain picks, your karma decreases, and the only way to increase it is to spam your friends with requests to exchange picks.  Yay?

Style and Story There’s not really much story here, just a starving rocker in need of falling orange food pellets, but the backgrounds progress into bigger and brighter venues for your rocker. I enjoyed the seedy bar backgrounds (“Country Bar” features a chain-link fence and tossed beer cans) and the rock theme. But social spamming isn’t what I want from a game,  even if enforced gifting is cleverly called ‘karma’.

Overall, for a few minutes of slacking while at work or on the phone, Feed The Rocker is just fine. But I think I’m looking for more than ‘just fine’.