This week’s release is a pretty exciting one.  For quite a while now we’ve been discussing how exactly to implement user-defined application achievements as well as our own Sharendipity achievements.  Well we’ve settled on a plan and we’re happy to announce a new Achievements feature available to all application creators.

Achievements are a way to establish goals for playing a game or using an application.  Sometimes they’re difficult accomplishments, such as reaching a new high score, and sometimes they’re just for fun.  Either way, it gives application creators a new way to engage their users and allows your friends to see what you’ve been up to in Sharendipity .

One example of a Sharendipity achievement is the Application Creator, which you can earn by publishing your own application in Sharendipity.  As shown below, when these achievements are earned your Facebook friends will be notified through their news feeds (if you are using a Facebook account):

There are additional Sharendipity achievements for both creators and players, such as reaching a certain number of plays for one of your creations, or ranking first place in a published game.

You can create your own achievements through a new option in the Director menu under the Application heading.  The Achievements Manager dialog will display all achievements that have been defined for an application, allowing you to create new achievements and edit existing ones.

To highlight how some of the achievements might be used, I’ve also published a new game called Block Boxer.  This is the view that I see as the creator of the achievements:

The game itself is pretty challenging but a lot of the fun is in trying to unlock all of the achievements.  Here are a few more games that have new achievements :

Scramble, a sliding-puzzle game that uses the Flickr interestingness feed.

Dodge, a game where you have to avoid the enemies by moving your mouse.

For more information and discussion about the Achievements feature, check out the Wiki page.

Creating and playing Michael Arrington games is all the rage on twitter these days with the release of PopFly’s Game Creator. Folks love to add Mike’s mug shot to their games. So we decided that we should join in the fun.

With our release of a new personalization feature, we’ve made it dead simple to incorporate your own pictures and sounds into games and share them with others.

If you aren’t ready to embark on the creation of a brand new viral hit, you can start with an existing game and personalize the artwork to your liking. Every application can be personalized by pressing the personalize it button below every running applet. If you’d like to dig into the logic, add or subtract contact, use the edit it button to whip up something even more authentic.

Providing our contribution to the Arrington game genre… Fly through space and shoot down giant Arrington asteroids with Arringroids.

This is a personalized version of TJ’s Asteroids game, and incorporates high scores, friend challenges, and a discussion board. You get all of this with every game you create or personalize - without the need to program!