More Facebook Games – Castle & Co, My Empire and etc…
Seems like I haven’t had much time to blog about games lately since I’ve been so focused on my comic work, but recently I got a little more into some Facebook games, one of which is called Castle & Co. by Ubisoft. Like a lot of other games on Facebook, it is a town builder, except for Castle & Co., you build a little magical looking storybook town complete with farmers, bakers and blacksmiths and such. The graphics and sound are very cute, and it’s pretty easy to get into and play, but perhaps can be a little slow which can make it boring. Building and upgrading your existing buildings takes construction time, and buildings are set to collect so much gold per so many hours. However one good thing about this game is that non of the building’s collections ever “go bad” like in a lot of other town builder games, so you don’t have to worry about making it back within a certain amount of time or suffer losing all of your gold. In the end I’d say Castle & Co. would be easy to pick up and play alongside your other games to fill time, and because it really requires little effort it’s great for people who work or don’t have time to play around on the computer all day.
My Empire is another town building game created by Playfish and is Civilization-esque. You are basically trying to build an ancient roman styled empire complete with wonders that require resources which you have to gather. However unlike civilization, there is no fighting or raising armies, as the games main focus is building and cooperation between players to fulfill tasks.
In this game you don’t collect revenue from the buildings you place, but rather the taxes you collect which you can set to “go off” in 5 minutes, 4 hours, 12 hours or 24hours. This makes it more convenient for people who have other things they need to do, as it’s not a game that needs to be babysat. The graphics and sound are all good….basically they are what you would come to expect from Playfish, and so far the only drawback to the game is how long it takes you to get resources to build your buildings and wonders. You only get one each of a mine, mill and quarry, each of which only produces one product per 24 hours. In the beginning this might not seem too bad, but once you get further along and start upgrading your mill and etc…you still only get one resource per 24 hours AND you may or may not get the resource you want. For example if you have a level 2 mill and have access to both driftwood and softwood, you will get either or in a 24 hour period, not both.
Another feature of this game that could be off-putting is the fact that in order to build certain special buildings such as temples, you need to post for help on Facebook and hope you have enough friends playing the game with you to click your help link. This will wind up being a bear for people who don’t have a lot of gamer friends, but it does encourage more cooperation and you can always go ask for people to friend you on the forums.
So, these are pretty much the two big town building games, though I was playing social city for a while, which is a little bit like Simcity and set in the modern era. Anyway despite their drawbacks I would recommend both Castle & Co. and My Empire. We know we can expect constant changes and new additions to My Empire because it’s a Playfish game, so hopefully that will help keep it new and fresh, and then there is always the hope that Castle and Co. can become more as well.
Read Users' Comments (0)
This game is another hidden object/puzzle game available for download at BigFishGames.com for both Mac and PC. Again it costs you $6.99 to download the full version, but you can download a trial for free that allows you to play for an hour. As usual there are shadier ways of finding it online as well, and I know you know what I’m talking about. 
Because I currently don’t have much money to buy new console games, I’ve been investigating online games more at Facebook and other free gaming sites. I found this game at BigFishGames.com, where you can play a free trial online, and also purchase this game for $6.99 at their site, though if a coupon presents itself there appears to be the possibility of purchasing it for $2.99. Anyhow there are also other game site you can purchase this title from, or you can also find it in other shady ways if you get my drift…..
I logged into Pet Society to check on my Love Tree and it had reached full size! I’m excited that it’s a cherry tree! It looks so pretty I’m considering buying another seed and keeping it back for later. My tree still hasn’t born fruits yet, but with a tree so pretty I’m not to worried about what the fruits will look like.
So I spent some time during lunch running around to all of the houses in my village to check and see who were proud pet owners and I only came up with 8 people with petlings out of the I don’t know how many villagers I have. Anyway the pic above is just a little sampler of some of the different styles and colors available. I find it weird though that ALL of the puppies in my neighborhood are chocolate brown though, while with the kittens there appears to be more variety. I wonder if there is just more variety overall with the kittens? 
Last night I decided to log into Pet Society so I could plant a bleeding heart flower as after seeing them grown in other people’s gardens I decided I liked it enough to have one for myself. On a whim I also decided to check and see if any of my neighbors had Petlings. I didn’t check too many houses, but I did find a couple that had petlings. It seems overall that not a lot of people in my village have a Petling yet. Perhaps they too are waiting to see how things work out with them and reports start coming in. Of course you can only choose between a dog and a cat right now, and there is the promise of more types of Petlings in the future, so maybe there is a bit of holding out too.
So, we start this chapter with you sitting in class listening to your teacher lecture. You are despondent and lost in your own thoughts however, and rather than furiously taking notes like your classmates, you are finding it hard to find the energy to move your pencil. You start thinking to yourself about how the world is going on as if nothing happened, while meanwhile your remaining interest in the future and doing well on tests has disappeared. As you stare out the window at the sky you recall what had happened. It has apparently been three days now since your defeat, and every night your dreams are filled with the horrible images from the battle. The images of everyone being so handily cut down is now etched in your memory. Beyond that you haven’t been allowed to go see them since that day while they are recovering back at the house. You blame yourself for their injuries, with having carelessly called them into battle, and despite worrying over them you are afraid to see them. Because of what happened in that battle your world view has now changed, and you also now feel that your affairs are not the same as other people’s and that the only thing that connects you to the ordinary is going to school. Heavy enough for you?
As usual you are spending your lunch hour on the roof with your harem, er, I mean your guardians. XD The weather is good today too and you are feeling hopeful, but also worried about tonight, because you must meet with Aria in what will be a decisive battle. You seem to want to talk about the impending battle, at least for preparedness sake, but none of the boys seem to interested in talking about it. Either way it relieves you though to be there with your friends, and although you find fighting scary, you know that your guardians are trustworthy and so on and so forth. Around this time you notice for the second time that Mahiro seems to be taking enjoyment in something he is looking down on from the roof and you ask him what is up. He gives you an earnest compliment and tells you that he’ll do his best (in battle), and then the other boys will follow suit and tell you they will do their best too. However you are displeased that you don’t have a duty as well, and Yuichi tells you that you are their support…..and I say, some support, so far all we’ve been able to do is be scared, see kamisama and get headaches! I’ll digress though. Anyhow Shinji then tells you that he respects you and it makes you embarrassed and blushy. You want to know why all of the sudden everyone is so generous with the compliments and Takuma tells you that it helps team work go up before a battle….*shrug* Either way you are happy over their kind words.
At this point you decide you must know what Mahiro is all on about as he is looking down on the campus and you go over to look and find that he is watching Fiona sensei eating her lunch under a tree surrounded by cute girls. You give him a cold stare and tell him he’s indecent, LOL! XD And then of course he gets really angry, and says something that basically sums up into “boys will be boys” and then he looks around for the support of the other guys, because obviously looking at beautiful women is an important manly sort of thing to be doing. Takuma responds first and says that being put together with Mahiro is disagreeable, and then the other boys continue shooting Mahiro down. On top of that Yuuichi even goes so far as to say that Mahiro has been growing impudent and that his ego doesn’t stop swelling…..What’s funny is though is that Mahiro always seems to defer to Yuuichi, and rather than becoming more angry at this point, he gives it up.