We’re in the thick of the gaming Thanksgiving release season. Multi-million pouind triple-A releases are falling out of the sky, but this week I’ve decided to holster my weapons and give the zombie apocalypse a rest to take a look at the burgeoning world of gaming on Facebook. There’s a daunting collection of gaming applications to spice up your social networking these days and the vast majority of the games I’ve tried over the past week have been completely awful, but are a few tasty morsels of casual gaming goodness out there, and I present them below for your delectation. To get into any of these games simply log in to Facebook and type the name of the game in the search bar, click on the application and go!
Farmville
This is an absolute gem. You are a farmer, and you plant crops in your virtual garden. Over the space of a few hours or a couple of days your crops will mature and become ripe for harvesting. Harvesting your crops gives you the money to plow more land and buy more crops. As you become richer you’ll be able to add orchards of fruit bearing trees and even buy animals to turn your little patch of land into a profitable little garden of Eden, churning out eggs, strawberries, eggplants and apples for market.
It’s perfect for Facebook. You only have to spend about five mintues a day tending to your farm. The different growing times for the crops you can plant allow you to tailor your garden to your Web surfing habits. Check Facebook regularly? Throw down a nice big Strawberry patch. They’ll be ripe when you next log on in a few hours.
The simple technicolour 2D graphics make your flowering paradise seem a lot more impressive that it really is, and day by day you’ll always be progressing, earning enough money to improve your land. There’s a simple, if slightly OCD pleasure to be taken from organising your crops into sections, fencing off your animals and generally making things look neat. It’s similar to the feeling of building a kick ass ward in Theme Hospital, it’s that simple but compelling satisfaction of making everything run smoothly.
Farmville also does a great job of integrating Facebook’s social networking features into the game. You can invite any friends who have farms of their own to become neighbours. Then, once you’ve finished tending to your patch you can hop over to their garden to help fertilise the plants, clean up weeds and slay invading Raccoons. Occasionally, lost animals will wander onto your farm, and you have the option of posting a notification to your friends asking if anyone wants to give the animal a home. This is how I became the proud owner of a certain pet I like to call MR. KILL, a pink cow that produces strawberry milkshake. Checking my farm now I can see that MR. KILL is 4% ready. When that Bovine hits 100 his milk’s gonna make me filthy rich.
One more thing. Turn the music off. If you don’t it will stay in your head forever.
Mob Wars
Do criminal jobs to net yourself cash and experience and gain favour with the Godfather. Buying tools such as crowbars and getaway cars lets you do even tougher jobs like burglaries and drug deals which will grant you even more cash experience, and even more favour with the Godfather and so on and so on forever. It’s just so damn addictive I almost hate myself for playing it. Fortunately it’s got a few extra elements to hold my interest. Buying up neighbourhoods increases your cashflow and with enough resources you can pull off ambitious heists that can take 24 hours to complete. You can use the favour gained to increase the stats of your mobster, turning him into a vicious thug capable of taking on any other player.
Fellow Facebookers can be recruited to join your gang permanently, or brought in to help with occasional jobs if you want to commit your heinous crimes that bit faster. if being pally really isn’t your thing then you can attack other players’ mob empires to steal their gold and make yourself feel ‘ard.
Horrendously for those with addictive personalities, Mob Wars gives you energy (the resource you use to commit crimes) every few minutes, and even has a little countdown telling you how long you’ll have to wait before you can play again. Don’t get sucked in to the horrible trap of watching this timer waiting the two minutes you’ll need to have enough energy to complete just one more robbery, it will only end in tears.
Warbook
Manage your Kingdom by spending your money on exploring new territory, building on your existing territory and recruiting your armies. Building mines will increase your wealth, barracks will improve your offensive capabilities and so on. Hopefully you’ll end up with a Kingdom that is both profitable and well defended, as attacks from other players are common. Waging war on your friends really is the point of Warbook, which makes being tied to Facebook a bonus. It’s not much to look at, being basically a list of numbers and percentages but the underlying mechanics are more interesting than Mob Wars, and for those of us who love the mental number crunching associated with trying to figure out the most efficient way to build up a Kingdom, Warbook’s a good ‘un.
MindJolt
This app is actually a huge selection of minigames. Most of them are clones of superior versions that exist elsewhere on the Web. But if you’re looking for a way to fill five minutes then MindJolt is a quick and easy way to do it. The ridiculously popular Crazy Cabbie is on here, so now you too can experience actual road rage as you drive as fast as possible down an endless straight road, dodging the infuriatingly sluggish traffic as you go. There’s knock off versions of Desktop Tower Defense (named Warzone Tower Defense) and Snake (Snake) as well as about a bazillion other little games that should offer up a few minutes of entertainment each.
