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FARM TOWN
Reviewer Mike M.
Farm Town™ is a free-to-play flash game available on social media outlets such as Facebook ®. Farm Town was published by SlashKey in early 2009. As of writing, the game is still in the beta phase, despite it already production status. Social Network gamers familiar with will recognize its game play objectives , however this game was actually developed before many of its predecessors making it a grand-daddy in the genre. This experience has evolved Farm Town into what we consider is the most rewarding social network farm game on the Internet.
The game play is very simplistic and addictive. It gets you hooked really quick and makes you come back for more. It starts out with you ploughing fields, buying seeds to sow, waiting for them to grow, then harvesting and selling the crops similar to most farm games, except that Farm Town enhances the the game play formula way beyond the others. The first is direct online socialization. Here, you can meet and talk to other farmers in real time. It's like a Yo-Farm! (a nod to Zynga's ® social media masterpiece Yo-Ville ®) Not only that, but you can also go to the marketplace or the inn to hire other farmers, or help them out. The second difference is that using real life money is a complete option, with no sacrifice to game objectives. In Farm Town, every item in the game can be bought without spending a dime of actual money.
One other game play feature that is worth mentioning is a trophy system that allows you to get trophies that are a symbol of you accomplishing objectives in the game. For example, one trophy is that you've had 8 neighbors over to your farm.
Now the technical aspects of the game. On the plus side, Farm Town has optional background music, yet it gets annoying, really fast. The music is really limited to a single 8 second melody played at several tempos. The sound effects are sporadic mostly emitted from to the animals and there's a good amount of them. I recall those as the only sound effects heard in the game. Actually, the “baa”-ing of the sheep sometimes startle me because the don't make noise often, and I usually have the music muted. I would be neat to have some sound effects for ploughing fields, sowing seeds, harvesting and click sounds to knowledge input, though for now we will have to be satisfied with the animal moans.
Graphically, Farm Town is a mosaic of styles. Much of the scenes focus on the crops are detailed textures that render a more realistic look. . They look very nice when zoomed out, but when zoomed in the pixels become macro-blocks. The crop graphics appear inconsistent with the rest of the farm scene, and the cartoon style avatars characters and animals are another incongruity. This makes the graphics in this game seem inconsistent and not sure whether to be realistic or stylistic. Taken as a whole the scene is appealing from a distant perspective, however its when zooming in the texture resolution and style inconsistencies become more apparent..
Character customizations at this point in the games development is minimal, but effective. You are able to define various physical characteristics of your avatar such as skin color, eyes, ears, hair, mouth, nose and eyebrows. On average, they each have about 8 different options for each. This could be improved especially considering that you can't change clothes. For the most part peeps avatars characters customizations are somewhat limited now but that may improve as the game matures. The most unique part of your character is his name, which fortunately you can make up your own. There is a 20 character limit, though, so don't try to use Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as I did, but you can use names that are also used by other people, so don't worry about uniqueness.
The controls in the game are nimble and responsive. Click to move your character click and hold to pan the camera, etc. Its quite functional but one annoyance I should mention is that sometimes you can accidentally click when you meant to click and hold. This can cause you to accidentally plough areas you didn't mean to and waste money.
Overall, this game is really fun. It can definitely hold its own against stand alone Farm Games, but on the social networks it may be the preeminent farm game. Farm Town needs some technical polish, yet its game play and features have no rival. The main advantages Farm Town has is its game play depth, responsive interface and ability to directly interact with other farmers. These three features alone Farm Town it the most satisfying farm game on-line.
Summary Review of SlashKey's™ “Farm Town™”
Pros: The most sophisticated and fun Social Network Farm Game for the following reasons:
Simplistic, addictive and to-the-point game play
Queue able user input actions.
Graphically pleasing, crops look realistic
Meet and communicate with other farmers, enriching social experience
Trophies, which make you want to play the game more to try to get them
All items can be obtained for free with diligence, however purchased items do significantly accelerate game play and provide instant gratification.
Cons: Only a few minor complaints on the technical aspects:
Sound: Annoying, repetitive music.
Avatar: Limited character customization, however there is great potential for more.
Graphics: Realistic crops doesn't blend well with the cartoon-like animals and people.
Controls: Can be unwieldy at times, as you need to click and drag to move the screen.
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