CastleVille

Lords and Ladies and castles, oh my!

Zynga’s new game, Castleville, is one of the hottest new Facebook games. If you’re an active face-gamer, you probably have friends that are playing this game already.

And for good reason. It’s a beautiful game, with simple and familiar gameplay. You build cottages, raise crops and livestock–do you get the feeling that Zynga can’t help but include Farmville aspects to all their games?–and dispel the gloom that covers the land.

Building royal buildings gets you castle points. Castle points are required for you to be able to explore into the gloom that surrounds your land. As you explore you discover new characters, who can give you new quests. The buildings you build can be taxed to give you additional revenue.

You can cut down the trees on your land, and mine the rocks as well. This gives you the raw materials you need to continue to build new buildings. Periodically “beasties” come and block access to your buildings. These beasties can be fought off and destroyed fairly easily.

The social gaming aspect of this game is high. For several quests you need multiple neighbors to complete the objectives. You also need neighbors to staff your royal buildings. There is more complex gameplay as well. You can use buildings to craft materials required for other buildings. For example, to build the kitchen you need wood planks, which you need to make in your workshop from pieces of wood you previously banked from chopping trees on your land.

To explore the gloom you need more than just the castle points mentioned earlier. You also need exploration crystals. The easiest way to get these is to have your friends give them to you, because the only other way is laborious. You can find shards of (Read more...)

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