Lunch Break - Empire & Allies by Zynga

I rarely play a Facebook game. For the most part I don’t care about Facebook and I find most of their games dull and repetitive. I played Farmville for a month or so. I did the whole “add random friends for gifts” during this time. Of course, this was the first Facebook game I had ever played so I wasn’t used to their whole system yet.

I got bored with Farmville really fast. I also hated having to get on at a certain time to harvest my crops. My game, my choice of when I play. Period. Then I got tired of people I didn’t know see me post about my personal life. So at work people recently started playing Empires & Allies by Zynga. They wanted me to join them so foolishly, I did. Boy Zynga seems to have this Facebook system figured out.

The game is vastly more interesting than Farmville, it helps that it has military strategy going for it.  But it also has the exact same pitfalls as Farmville. The concept is that you are trying to grow a small island nation. You have to fend off attacks from friends and enemies. You build military bases, you build houses, you build factories all of which give supplies and allow you to build more stuff. Hey, this is basic RTS gameplay!

Once you’ve gathered some resources and built some troops you can go on the offensive and attack pre-made enemies or you can invade the people on your friendladder.

But the core game is 95% identical to Farmville. Every building is a type of crop and you have to harvest after so much real time has passed. Then you have to replant at that building again and wait for the building to be ready to harvest again. It is such a simple gameplay mechanic and it really works to suck in the casual player.

 I may not like Zynga, but I do have to respect how they make games. They are able to understand the OCD tendancies of many humans. They are able to drag people back to their games repeatedly. It is just amazing to watch.

Thankfully I am immune to Zynga games. After two days of playing I was done with Empire and Allies. I’ll stick to single player fun thanks.