Another Facebook Game Review – Farmville

Another Facebook Game Review – Farmville

Farmville, yes you have probably heard it if you are a Facebook user, it is in fact a game that made it to the newspapers many times, and probably the game whose many requests (including gifts and neighbor requests) are there in your Facebook account waiting to get accepted in the Requests page (I stopped playing the game a couple weeks ago, and I have exactly 80 pending requests).

Welcome to Farmville, another game from Zynga. Well, not so astonishingly this game is also copied from an existing game (remember petville's review?) and has been changed here and there and put in different clothes (figuratively speaking). The game is copied from the concept of Farm Town, a pre existing game on Facebook which was steadily growing its fan base (and which has less clicking and is a little bit more realistic).

This is the loading screen:

The concept of the game is quite basic, it is about, managing your farm, leveling up by gaining experience by doing different stuff, buying decorations, crops, harvesting, taking care of the animals etc. You have to plough land, plant seeds, wait for them to grow, harvest them and use the money to buy more seeds and decorations for your farm. And thereby expand your farmstead.

What makes it such viral is its social adaptability. The neighbor concept is the key ingredient for the success of the game. Users can visit each others farm, keep track of each other and also help each other (and gain some extra coins in the process). This adds a concept of competition and thereby increases the chances of a user to return and play the game everyday. No other game has achieved 75 million active users in such a short period of time. Yes, 75 with six zeroes!

The graphics of the game are pretty neat and mature. The bird’s eye view of the farm makes it more manageable. You can even change your farmer’s appearance by clicking on him. You can also walk around in your farm.

Even the livestock you own can be made to move on their own will, in your farm.

Another plus point of the game is that it constantly updates and keeps in touch with its players. It usually comes up with something new in an interval of three days. They keep posting messages on their application’s wall to keep in touch. With Christmas around, they have even added Christmas trees. Decoration with snow has also been introduced. As you can see from the screenshot below, the market was updated with new items, and it is updated every now and then with new items for the game, and they always update for the celebrations coming, like Christmas and Halloween and make some special and limited items.

One of the demerits of the game is that it takes some time to load and it sometimes lags too (even on fast connections). Another problem is that it asks for permissions again and again for positing on your or your friend’s wall, the request process is very irritating and takes some time for the popup to show too. Other than that, the game gets a lot repetitive once you play it for a week or so, and the more clicking you have to make. Planting doesn’t remain as interesting as it does on the first day. Once your farmstead grows, planting and harvesting involve a lot of mouse clicking, which is very annoying and that is the sole reason people leave the game after expanding their farms, which is also why I stopped playing.

Even though the game has got some demerits, its merits are over whelming enough to make it the fastest growing application on Facebook. So grab your sickle and pull up your gloves, your new farm is calling you.

Useful Link:

http://eddiemill.wordpress.com/farmville-organics/

http://tastyblogsnack.com/2009/11/20/farmville-carnival/

http://www.crispytech.com/2009/10/29/farmville-cheats-and-tricks-using-grease-monkey-scripts/