Zynga's new game CastleVille allows Facebook users to become the protagonists in their own fantasy adventures. CastleVille is kind of like The Sims Social in a medieval setting. There are also elements of strategy and role-playing games mixed in for added fun. According to Brian Ward of , CastleVille is the fastest growing application on Facebook. It has more daily users than the Washington Post Social Reader, YouTube, the music service.
After playing long enough to get hooked on it, it is pretty easy to see why the game has developed a strong and loyal following since its official release on November 14. According to Joe Osborne of , "Zynga's CastleVille has surpassed the likes of FarmVille, The Sims Social and Zynga Poker to become the second most played game daily on Facebook with 8.1 million returning every day. The game is now in the top five for monthly players, with 27.6 million, according to . And it did it in just 22 days."
After the character creation stage, players are given the tasks of building a castle in their new kingdoms and expanding into territory that has been taken over by an evil sorcerer. These long-term goals will gradually be achieved through both quests and routine chores such as harvesting crops and working on a castle wall. Players are also encouraged to create buildings such as the workshop or the kitchen that allow them to do more things in the game.
Fans of will appreciate the wide range of day-to-day tasks players can do while waiting for crops to grow or working on quests. Players can earn extra experience points and items by doing things such as tending flowers, feeding farm animals or fishing from the local pond. Getting curious and clicking on random objects often reveals more things a player can do to kill time, such as clearing out stumps or mining for rocks and minerals.
They will also appreciate the ways that people can interact with friends. CastleVille players can ask friends for items they need or send them a variety of gifts. They can also visit friends' kingdoms and do chores in return for small rewards or completing quest goals. When players are first starting out, it is helpful to visit the kingdom ruled by a friendly non-player character known as The Duke and find things to do in exchange for money and other small bonuses.
Fortunately for people who enjoy action-oriented games, CastleVille incorporates other things in addition to feeding chickens or making hemp rope. From time to time, players will attract the attention of evil beasts and have to defend their kingdoms. Players will eventually be able to explore locked areas on the map that reveal more quests and potentially fun things such as a wishing well and a friendly wizard's house.
CastleVille is free, but Zynga gives players the option of spending real money on things they need such as crowns (which are used to buy items or skip steps in quests) and exploration crystals that allow players to unlock new squares on the map. The temptation can be strong because it takes a lot of time and work to earn some of the more useful items by killing wolves or doing chores.
Being forced to progress more slowly in the game if a player doesn't want to put some crowns on a credit card can be frustrating, but it isn't all bad. Most of the time, doing routine chores is a fun and immersive experience. It is easy to spend hours on things like growing wheat or collecting ingredients for grape juice.
However, sometimes feeding cute cows gets a little old and it would be more fun to take some shortcuts. It is hard to say for certain if the creators at Zynga should be praised for making a game that people are going to want to devote a lot of time and resources to, or if they should be condemned as evil geniuses for making it seem halfway reasonable to spend hard-earned dollars to unlock things or buy more.
Facebook users in the Spokane area should definitely check out CastleVille. It has some of the same appeal as The Sims Social, but with fewer prompts to invite other people to play or share things on the user's Wall. And unlike other social games such as or Empires & Allies, where a player might reach a point where he can't advance beyond a fairly early stage without getting more friends to join him, it works extremely well as a one-player game.
In CastleVille, playing with friends is simply another way to have fun. As it should be. That is a refreshing change from The Sims Social, where a player needs just to finish some of the quests.
Source: Examiner
