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Farm Town – Part YoVille, Part myFarm
May 27th, 2009
| By Christopher Mack | 17 Comments » |
A while back we took a look at a Facebook sim game called myFarm by PlaySocial. As rudimentary as the graphics were, the game was still pretty fun for the genre.
Now, a similar game has become very popular on Facebook: Farm Town, from SlashKey.com. At first glance, it is a direct clone of myFarm. However, when given a closer look, it is not only prettier to look at but contains a great deal more depth too. In fact, it feels like myFarm has been married with Zynga’s YoVille.
Farm Town game has players building up and designing their own farm. You plow away ground, plant crops, care for animals, and place objects in order to make your farm better than all the rest. Each action you take gives you experience, which in turn unlocks new items for purchase, and you earn money by selling your crops or visiting and helping out neighboring farms (people added as friends). This is the myFarm side of the design.
As for the YoVille half, players create their own custom avatar (though it isn’t possible to change your clothes currently) and walk around a world. When players choose to leave the farm, they can visit the local inn, bank, marketplace, or realtor’s office. Upon arrival, you are immediately surrounded with other players also currently online and can talk and socialize with any of them.
Of course, this socialization does all come with a purpose (beyond the aspect of being…well… social). One of the more interesting features of this game is the ability to hire people to work for you (or visa versa). By doing so, actions around the farm can earn you a percentage (25% to be exact) more income.
Overall, Farm Town feels good, but not great. There is a lot more going on in Farm Town than myFarm, which means you end up checking on a lot of different things when you play. Who’s at the inn? Selling things at the market. Checking the store. Etc. However, the number of things you can do are outpaced by the speed of the game – meaning you can log on, check everything and still get nothing from it.
The biggest complaint about the game has been the balancing of crop harvesting, crop value, and item cost. It would seem that crops can go bad very quickly, so you have to be fairly astute with your log in habits. However, even if you do harvest your crops, a number of users feel items are too expensive (compared to earnings) to do anything significant with their virtual land. 90% of the fun in a game like this is designing your personal space, and it takes days before you can have more than a few plods of dirt on your acre (a single, tiny section of basic fence is $250, equating to half of what you start with in funding). Players, especially social/casual players, want some form of gratification right away, and it just doesn’t feel like you can do much of anything early on in this game.
Regardless of complaints, Farm Town has captivated a rather hefty number of users with a current total of over 7 million monthly active users, according to AppData. If you like YoVille and you like myFarm, then you will most likely enjoy Farm Town. It’s just a game that requires some steady play and patience to get somewhere. In time, and with a few updates, it is possible that this title will go from “good to great.”
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May 30th, 2009 at 3:38 am
hi some one give me a farm own
June 8th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
why suddenly i fail to log in this farm town game?
June 10th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
hey play yoville crazy funs stuff spiffin and more the dork are stupid
July 1st, 2009 at 11:24 am
i want to play
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:32 am
[...] at the start of June, we saw a number of new titles appear within the Top 25. One in particular, Farm Town, debuted at #4 with nearly 8 million monthly active users. It just goes to show that even today, [...]
July 17th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
[...] now too. The first was myFarm, but then SlashKey.com came along and had much more success with Farm Town (which actually debuted at #4 in the Top 25 two months ago and is still pretty popular today). [...]
July 28th, 2009 at 11:30 am
I keep getting kicked off of Farm Town for hours. Don’t know what the problem is.
July 28th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
I Love Farm Town. You get to work at farming, harvesting, making money and buying things for your farm. I am at level 32. close to level 33 and the highest you can go at this point in time is level 34. The largest land you can purchase is a 24×24 farm, so I do hope they will add larger plots of land to buy and improve the site, where as you don’t get booted off of the site so much, because that is annoying when you are in the middle of harvesting for someone and you get booted. If they aren’t a friend or Neighbor you lose out because you can’t get back to their farm, so please work on making the site stronger that people can enjoy it with out being booted sooo much. Love It hope we never lose this game, a lot of people would be very upset for sure.
July 29th, 2009 at 7:11 am
Farm Town is not working and slashkey.com does not either.
July 29th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Farm Town is certainly much better than yoville in my opinion. Never played myfarm but if it inspired farm town, it had to have been fun.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:49 am
[...] Wars regained its #2 spot with about 19 million monthly uniques as Slashkey’s Farm Town moved back up in the rankings to #3 with over 18 [...]
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:12 am
hi ths game was the first game i playd on facebook and is stil the best can someone please join http://www.caveages.com and join the trine u go onto explore wnu u have madeit goonto the top icon in the top right it says trines look at the top when u have clicked tribes look 4 ??littlemiss?? then click on the name next to it on the left of it then somewhere it says apply then just press it then just say the first word that pops into ur head
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:14 am
i mean ??littlemissrayner??
October 25th, 2009 at 5:31 am
this game is my first game on facebook…for me farm town is still the number one…
November 22nd, 2009 at 3:46 am
Is it good how do you get the
farm town?
help me please!!
December 11th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
this is grate game ever i’ll never torn away from this
January 20th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
i say the plage of balgen on girsscout