My Tribe Wants to Be a Complex, Engaging Facebook Game — And Mostly Succeeds
With each passing month, more casual gaming companies turn their attention to Facebook, despite previous success running their own sites or licensing out games (we listed off 10 reasons why last year). One of the latest to join the exodus is Big Fish Games, a noted developer of downloadable casual games.
Big Fish launched its casual MMO Faunasphere on Facebook in February. Last week, it added a second game: My Tribe, which is something like a cross between Settlers and Gilligan’s Island. After picking a desert island to play on, you start off with a small band of tattered refugees, huddled around a single hut. Your job from there is to build a civilization.
The island premise isn’t unusual for Facebook. But Big Fish has gone beyond the usual fare with the functionality of My Tribe, which actually offers a large number of distinct actions. There are huts and buildings to erect, and later upgrade. Villagers have ages and different skills, and wear clothing, created with dyes and gems, that modify their abilities. There are items to pick up, resources to harvest, and new technologies to research.
My Tribe’s complexity stands out from the beginning, when the game’s tutorial — slyly disguised as “quests” — guides the new player through each action in turn. An hour into playing, when you’ve finally run through all the initial quests, there’s still no shortage of things to do: collecting seashells, managing villagers, planting new crops, visiting a friend’s island. The game also drops a random special item every few minutes that you can search for.
The endless to-do list makes My Tribe noticeably different from the time management games that are currently available on Facebook. Developers using the FarmVille mechanic usually intend for players to dip in and out of the game multiple times throughout the day. Players frustrated with running out of energy or crops to harvest are welcome to play for longer, but it’s only easy if they pay.
With My Tribe, a player could certainly dip in — although it might take more than a couple minutes to tidy up the island. But Big Fish meant to go against the grain with its game. “It was a conscious decision to build a more in-depth game and bring that to Facebook,” says Will O’Brien, the company’s VP of social gaming. “It’s the richest experience on Facebook.”
O’Brien was encouraged by Facebook platform manager Gareth Davis’ call yesterday for “iconic games” that can provide a defining experience for the social network. “I think he’s issuing a challenge and a mandate to the social gaming industry to raise the bar,” O’Brien says.
So that’s what Big Fish is trying to do with My Tribe, a game that it originally released in 2008 as a downloadable. For Facebook, the company added social features, but didn’t dumb down many of the other features. A hardcore gamer might not find the game either complex or engaging; a lot of time is spent scrolling around the screen, picking up seashells and setting your islanders to the same task over and over.
But most Facebook games have all the depth of a rain puddle; My Tribe tries to offer more. What remains to be seen is how far players will want to go with the game — after playing through far enough, it’s possible to build an ark and move to another island with different possibilities. Whether they’ll want to go that far is the only question.
March 12th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
[...] I don’t have much more time to write about it, but there’s a great full write up here on Inside Social Games. GO TRY [...]
March 13th, 2010 at 8:22 am
hey is this a facebook app?
March 13th, 2010 at 11:35 am
Cameron — Yes. I probably linked above, but here it is again: http://apps.facebook.com/my-tribe/
March 16th, 2010 at 7:04 am
This game is a disgrace on time management games with its 1) insane requirements for making things, 2) never ending barrage of items which u can miss always owing to the fact that the notifier doesn’t work in a very notifying way, and the biggest flaw of all: 3) No zoom out possible…
Actually no.3 is the thing which is gonna kill this game in the long run(also short if not for the tag of renowned ‘Big Fish’)
March 23rd, 2010 at 7:49 pm
I actually thought this game was nice and engaging. The crafting is a bit OTT, especially with so much filler and filler requirements, but its a nice port of earlier Big Fish games like Virtual Villagers.
Its a real grind on your PC though. Visiting friends islands takes far too long, but at least the rewards of visiting friends are useful and worthwhile.
March 31st, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Max – I take it you’ve not noticed the map button then?
April 11th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
I used to love virtual villagers, but did not have the money to pay for it. I love this game, as it is an updated version of virtual villagers that is absolutely free for facebook users. It is nice to have a barrage of items available every two minutes – this allows the player to choose when they play rather than having to sign in at certain times.
April 12th, 2010 at 11:35 pm
I Love this game. I am so addicted to it.
April 18th, 2010 at 11:48 am
i have dropped a master farmer and a legendary scientist on the friggin bush…..am i supposed to randomly get a guaho recipe or what….its gettin aggravating..
April 18th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
ok i like thwe game. i started playing last week and now that im getting a little further in the game im getting more confused. like how do i make potions? i dont want recipes. i want to know how do i start making potions? do i click on the science lab when it raining or something? how do i collect rainwater, seawater? im confused. lol
April 19th, 2010 at 11:39 pm
[...] should note that Big Fish already has a couple titles running on Facebook, including Faunasphere and My Tribe. Both of these games are currently unconnected to Treasure Quest. Given Big Fish’s ambitions [...]
April 30th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
I love the game but I am having an issue with getting the last mystery to unfold. The other problem is not enough moondust falls and my tibes people are getting older and older I think my oldest is over 140 years old and it takes the moondust to keep them feeling younger so they do not die. but there is no place to learn more about the ap so it is all just trial and error.
but it is a fun game and I play it a couple times everyday
June 3rd, 2010 at 7:31 pm
I have the Big Fish My Tribe game so I thought I would really enjoy the Facebook one. I like that I’m not locked in to a certain time to play. I like going to “friends” islands to pick things up.
Problem with the game is it almost requires you to spend money to get anywhere. You do not have the ability to have children often, if you don’t get many friends, it’s near impossible; your people to not gain experience simply by working certain jobs – you have to “level up”, which takes loads of time. You have to BUY stars to keep your original players from dying, in order to get anywhere.
I’m hanging on until I get a scientist up to 20 to try to get the fountain of youth. I’ll try sailing to another island, but I just don’t think I’ll last at this game. It’s much too slow – not enough give and take between what friends you do have – like sending gifts as you can do on the other facebook games. The game just seems like it’s set up to almost force you to buy pearls so you can survive.
June 7th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
How can you get the seawater???
June 9th, 2010 at 1:39 am
I’ve been playing for a couple of weeks and I’m loving it.
I was getting a bit disheartened with the amount of time it took to level up a tribes person but then I realised that one stardust takes 1 hour off the level up time. This, coupled with gems used on the clothing helped me get my tribes woman to level 20 science in a much shorter time and now all my tribes people have been dropped into the fountain of youth :)
I’m now building my ark and looking forward to sailing to a new island! (yep…I have way too much time on hands and simple things do entertain me!! lol)
@ Kayla…..I’ve not needed seawater for anything. I’m assuming this comes from the downloadable version and is not used on the facebook version.
February 2nd, 2011 at 7:11 am
I’ve been playing for a few days, and I’ve got all of my mysteries figured out, but I’ll have to wait for them to grow older to solve the mysteries. With the fountain of youth my scientist has to be wiser (older) With the hair color mystery I need someone to have gray hair. All within time. Too bad I figured out too early that moon dust takes the age off your villagers. LOL
After I upgrade all of my storage buildings I’ll start on my ark and sail to new islands.
Add gems to your clothes to improve skill level.
Add moon dust to crops to advance time by 10 hours.
Add stardust to villagers to advance skill time by 1 hour.
Each time u advance your elder another level it takes a shorter time to level up.
Moon dust on villager to decrease age by 5 years.
Moon dust on child to increase age by 2 years.
Earn experience and items by completing quests and earning trophies.