Family Village Day 3

Once again my jobs had expired a few hours later and I had to ask friends to recover them. Totally lame! Seriously, how often do I have to play this game?

I was then notified of a newspaper article that the game had found about my mother, and asked if it was my relative. I said yes and it tried to make me buy the documentation for 5 village bucks. I have no village bucks, so it would cost real world money to buy it - I don’t think so. I am not even sure what that documentation would benefit me in the game, and it is kind of creepy.

I found a new business I could buy without inserting my credit card and set my avatar to work.

I tried visiting friends again, but still not sure what to do in their worlds. I tried clicking on everything, scratch that, I just got one of the other avatars to cut down a tree, and now consequently have figured out that my avatar can chop down all my crappy trees too. Progress.

I spent some time completing some goals and finding my family tree, using only my facebook friends, which made it easy to add family members with a couple clicks. I added my wife, and most of my brothers and sisters. It will be interesting to see what the game does with that info the next day i log in.

I was happy to see more goals/tutorials that were fast and easy to complete actually showed me how to play the game. It also helped me level up a little faster and make me feel rewarded as a player.

Family Village Day 2

So I turned on the music this time and it was old time upbeat music that fit well. I was discouraged to find that though I had only been away for a few hours, the jobs that I had started for myself, my mom and my dad had already expired. Made me wonder how often you have to check in just to progress in the game.

I set myself back to work to accomplish the only goal I had with the exception of buying a business I could not afford. I noticed that I had three neighbors I could visit, so I did, but when I got to their games II was not sure what to do there. There were help tokens on the left side, but as far as I could tell there was nothing I could do except invite people to visit me back. Upon getting back to my game, one of the people I had invited was already visiting me. It was cool to see them visit in real time and I have often wished that Cityville had this feature.

Something to note as well is that the other two people had not made it as far as I had in my five minutes of playing the game. The sounds were humorous when I set a village member to work as a “whisper catcher in the library”. A voice could be heard saying “shhhhh be quiet”.

Also, the game made its first attempt to locate one of my family members. It thought my dad was some dude in Minnesota, and of course I promptly set it straight.

For some reason I was awarded some village cash and I bought a school house. And that is as far as I was able to progress. The game has some serious flaws, but I must admit that Day 2 was better than Day 1.

Family Village Day 1

Heard about this game from a school mate. It was made in Lehi, Utah and is in beta with a monthly user base of 26k.

My initial thought going through the tutorial was that they are using Cityville or Farmville as a template, but adding some additional complexities to it that did not make it feel like I was jumping into the game.

Another weird aspect is that to populate my village I have to input the names of actual relatives and give them jobs, etc... I think the game is supposed to start finding relatives on it’s own to add to your family tree and population.

It only took about 5 minutes to complete a handful of goals and get oriented before it asked me to buy Family Cash to continue. This is where I called it quits for Day 1.

Empires and Allies day 7

Last review log: Unfortunately I did not post consistently each day but I think the fact that I continued to play several times a day, even when I was not posting notes, shows that this game was indeed fun.

I still refuse to pay money to speed up the process of leveling up and building out my island. I find the frequency that it asks me to invite friends to play terribly annoying and I notice that without an amazing amount of friends playing, staffing your new government buildings is near impossible without shelling out some cash. I suppose that is the point of the game.

My wife has commented about how lame my facebook wall looks with all the item requests that are spammed all over it. Yet, I still plan on playing this game - so you win, yet again, Zynga.

Empires and Allies day 6

Goals continue to be too many to really keep track of while grinding through the level.

Energy is used up pretty quickly while playing campaign mode.

I have one friend who is continually invading me, which I find annoying, but that adds to the game play because I am not mad at the game, I am mad at him, which I think is fun.

Goals and upgrades are now to the point of rebuilding your industry buildings.

Still having fun, but don’t feel like I am experiencing anything new.

Empires and Allies day 5

Ok, this is not really the fifth day of playing,. I have logged in to play for a few days but have not written about it. Nothing new in game play, just a lot of the same. Still somewhat enjoyable, but getting mindless and kind of boring. Invasion from friends seem to keep me motivated, as I feel somewhat violated when they invade my empire.

I am now at level 18 and am grinding my way up in level and along the story line. Goals have built up pretty heavily to the point where there are so many uncompleted that I am having a hard time remembering things. I need so many permits and items to progress that I can’t really focus on any, and to bypass this you need a ridiculous amount of badges that can only be acquired by paying  real world cash.

Empires and Allies day 4

Played a couple of times today - I am enjoying invading empires.

I was a little worried after not logging in for about a week while I was on vacation (I decided against taking the laptop) when I noticed that all my neighbors had leveled up, and were well above me. It was fun to see that I could still invade and beat them. I invaded about 10 all together and it was rewarding to come back later that night and collect the spoils as they had not yet been able to fend me off.

I am now at level 15. Leveling up is still pretty boring. I am trying to complete the missions as quickly as possible, but it takes time. Tonight I have been playing on a super laggy laptop and it sucks.

I am happy to see that I am able to ask my neighbors for parts today and have a list of just them, so I don’t have to search individually or spam everybody on my FB friends lists. I also found a cheat website that makes it easier to ask for parts. We shall see if this increases the speed at which I am able to build and complete goals tomorrow.