Considering all the derivatives of farming and pet-caring games launching on Facebook these days, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Feed the Rocker, a new game from indie developer Red Aphid Games, has made another follow-on.

Refreshingly enough, it’s actually a physics oriented puzzle game that tasks users with feeding a starving artist in the most peculiar of ways. Apparently, the musician character who stars in the game doesn’t like to use his hands when he eats, so you must place various musical instruments — of the rock variety, of course — in order to guide a stream of falling food pellets, donuts, and the occasional guitar pick into his mouth.

We doubt that many other developers have thought of this theme.

With each level more and newer varieties of instruments become available, but the catch is that they all come at preset angles. What makes it tricky is that players only have a few seconds to figure out how best to use the items before the food starts falling. Once in position, the food will bounce off the pre-placed, angled objects fairly accurately. This is all well and good, but a nice bit of style is thrown in as each bounce creates a nice sounding rock note that is distinct to the object being hit. For example, a bass guitar will produce a few bass notes, while an electric guitar a nice rift.

Of course, this is a bit simple for a puzzle game, so as users progress, levels become gradually more difficult. Typically, this is done by objects in the stage itself and can range from moving objects that you have to block (one such example is a rolling ball that will “choke” your rocker if you don’t stop it, and no food will be able to enter their mouth), to moving walls that can hinder your path, to wobbling and rocking platforms that alter your physics. Each stage offers its own unique challenge and actually ramps up in difficulty fairly well.

In addition to the level itself changing, players are also granted more and different objects to place that can help them as well. This includes flat vertical shapes that simply catch food pellets and virtually halt momentum, to guitars you can move freely without collision being removed, to just simply amusing elements, such as more cowbell.

On the social end of the spectrum, Feed the Rocker is a bit basic. The biggest social element it has is the prospect of gifting guitar picks. As players play each level, the occasional pick will fall, and should they get it into the mouth, they’ll be able to save it to their collection. This is a nice addition, and if players gift them to friends they earn what is called “Karma” towards their profile (this also is gained by accepting gifts it seems). Unfortunately, all Karma really does is move you up in a global leaderboard dubbed “Most Enlightened,” which only displays the top five anyway.

Frankly, the social element feels a little shallow. Granted, it is nice to share your picks to try and help others complete a collection, but there isn’t actually a means to see everything that can be collected, so you never know who needs what. Basically, you’re just sending them for the sake of sending them most of the time, just to earn a stat that is no more than just a number.

As far as other elements of this app goes, there are not a whole lot of complaints. It has a fairly realistic looking style to it, but considering the purposefully absurd concept of the game, the combination is odd. Nonetheless, it does have a nice progression curve to it, with the harder puzzles correlating to bigger and better gigs. Moreover, there are 26 different levels as well, so even trying to play straight through all of them will take a little while; especially as you will not get every puzzle on the first try.

Overall, Feed the Rocker is one of the better indie games we’ve seen. That said, it’s not a completely original title, as such physics games tend to be very popular on the smartphone platforms, but at the very least, it’s not another farming app.

We’ve covered how farming games have been evolving to focus on viticulture, monsters, zombies, safaris and treasure. Here’s a look at Fantasy Kingdoms, a Facebook app that is perhaps best described as medieval fantasy farming.

Developed by Sneaky Games, the mechanics of this app are all basically the same as other farming games, though everything has been renamed and reskinned to create a more mystical feel to the title. Instead of cash, players have “mana,” and rather than planting crops and trees, they infuse the land with said mana and “plant” with potions and elixirs (though only the former is available at the moment). Once grown, the harvest rewards the user with even more mana.

Everything you plant tends to stem from some classic reagent you may have heard in just about any fantasy story involving spell-making, including eye of newt, cattails, magic beans, and so on.

Beyond just names, however, Fantasy Kingdoms has really nailed down a beautiful visual style. From poison apple trees to elven looking walls and buildings, the game is a vibrant display of color and mythical décor. Granted, the game doesn’t seem to bring anything new, game play-wise, to the table, but the variety of decorations gives the player the capability of creating everything from a medieval castle to a dark forest.

Nevertheless, if there was one complaint to be had with visuals, it is the bizarre scale. Buildings and towers, for example, are all relatively tiny with barrels roughly a third the size and a base no larger than a single plot of land. Most odd of all, though, still falls under the fact that the character avatar is roughly the size of a tree. It’s not really a deal breaker, but it does feel very out of place. The fact that you can’t customize the outfits beyond color and that they constantly do this dozing-off nod animation is infinitely more obnoxious.

On the social side of things, everything here is also standardized. The game has your typical achievements – dubbed “Charms” – and users can visit each others’ virtual kingdoms in order to help out by “enchanting” their friend’s land (fertilizing), cleaning up “serpent vines,” and so on for some small reward of mana or experience.

As for the experience itself, this is also earned through virtually all actions and acts as your primary gating mechanism that limits what the user can buy. However, Fantasy Kingdoms actually has a rather large selection of non-gated virtual goods that can be purchased with its virtual currency, Kingdom Cash.

Anything purchasable with Kingdom Cash can be bought at any time. This includes extra money, animals (which is only limited to a cat right now), and any number of aesthetically appealing decorative items. However, it seems that an extremely large number of items cost virtual currency, and those that do not are extraordinarily expensive. As an example, a section of wall might cost three Kingdom Cash, but a similar item will cost 10,000 mana, making the latter feel very overpriced.

Regardless, it is still a fairly lucrative means to entice virtual currency purchases, but it might be prudent to balance that pricing difference to some degree. If things are too expensive in-game, players that don’t normally spend real money may not stick around long enough to ever do so. Earning rewards and growth beyond a mere level is what addicts players to online games, and while that balance is no easy task, once it’s found, players stick around a lot longer.

Overall, Fantasy Kingdoms has a wonderful visual style that will appeal to just about anyone that enjoys fantasy stories. Perhaps it won’t hook those of the Tolkien regime, but for younger audiences and those many Harry Potter fans, it ought to do well. In fact, the game has been growing rather quickly lately, earning upwards of 150,000 monthly active users, even though it’s ultimately not very different from a wide range of rival farm games.

Social gaming companies on Facebook are known for using your newsfeed to send more users back to their games. Zynga appears to be testing out a new plan, though: newsfeed items from users who “Like” FarmVille now direct people who click on it away from Facebook, to FarmVille.com.

It doesn’t appear that Zynga is using any of its other notifications to send people to its own website, and its own webpage listing for FarmVille still leads to Facebook. It’s possible that it began directing users to FarmVille.com while recently arguing with Facebook, when it seemed that Zynga might split and go launch its own game site — the idea being that it could use these email addresses to communicate with users without having to go through Facebook. On the other hand, Zynga’s browser toolbar has long sent users directly to FarmVille.com, and FarmVille.com requires you to log in and use it through Facebook.

FarmVille has also started trying to establish a more direct connection to users through their email addresses, as we spotted last week (see screenshot, below). While it’s easy for developers to request a real email address from new users, older users have been receiving in-game notices requesting that they update their email, if they originally opted to use an anonymized address.

Of course, Zynga had good reason to start using these kinds of tactics, until recently. While the social gaming company was wrangling with Facebook over platform issues, it was readying a “Zynga Live” service as a backup plan, in case it had to leave Facebook.

But even now that it has a new five-year contract with Facebook, it seems likely that Zynga will continue to emphasize its own sites on the side — both for performance reasons, and to maintain a viable escape plan from Facebook.

It’s also worth pointing out that Zynga users who migrate over to the company’s own platforms may not have to pay for their virtual currency with Facebook Credits, which would give Zynga back the 30 percent cut that Facebook would otherwise take. We haven’t seen the contract between the two companies, so we’re not sure that’s allowed; but in theory, it’s now a viable concept for any social gaming company. However, as with any application on the platform, Facebook still has full control over how third parties communicate with its users from other sites. The issue of how developer monetize virtual currency on other sites has not yet been decided.

Though they’ve been seeped in to every aspect of social gaming, there is always still room to adapt and change the farming genre. Most of the time such games merely reskin old concepts, but occasionally, they truly take a new perspective. Or that’s what the folks over at The Playforge decided — “forget boring old corn, let’s grow zombies!” And that’s the goal of the company’s Facebook-enabled iPhone app, Zombie Farm.

Okay, okay, it didn’t exactly do away with corn and what-not. Players still have to plant crops to make money. This is all fairly standard as users use the touch screen to plow land, plant crops, and harvest them once they are ready. As you’d expect, users must check back after X amount of time to collect their grown crops lest they wilt and become worthless. Nevertheless, while this is the core and most steady means of income, there are far more interesting things to worry about.

This refers, of course, to growing zombies. Yes, “growing” zombies — and there are as many varieties of them as there are plants. These guys take a bit longer than your average crop to grow, but are well worth it. Well, worth it beyond the concept of actually growing zombies. Evidentially, your digital farming self is also in the business of raising zombie armies, and once you’ve grown at least eight, you can launch an assault on your unsuspecting, non-player neighbors (i.e. Old McDonnell).

Now, Old McDonnell isn’t going down without a fight, he and his farmhands will defend their barn to the best of their ability, trying to kill off your legion of undead. While eight zombies is the minimum to launch and invasion, it tends to be prudent to wait until you have the maximum of 16 before attacking. If your forces are too weak, then you just lost a whole bunch of zombies – something that hurts, considering most take hours, if not days to grow. It can be mitigated a bit by not feeding your zombies, making them more hungry for brains, but that is not always enough. Regardless, should you win the day, the rewards are generous amounts of in-game gold as well as the occasional brain, Zombie Farm’s virtual currency.

In addition to a chance at brains from invasions, users also earn them in a “daily surprise” whose value is determined by how many Zombie Farm friends they have. This is easy enough to enhance, as the application has Facebook Connect built in, and users can easily invite Facebook buddies as well as post their in-game actions to their feed. Unfortunately, unlike other Facebook farming apps, you have yet to be able to do anything with your friends’ farms – even visit them – but it is something the developers have stated that they want to add. Though, while we’re on the subject of adding, it would awesome to be able to invade their farms as well… just a thought.

In another other means of earning brains, besides spending real cash on them through an in-app purchase, players can collect “brain fragments” (with a sizable amount needed to make one full brain) by completing offers or even downloading other free or paid applications advertised within Zombie Farm itself.

The virtual currency, as expected, is hardly necessary, but as a free application, it is obviously how Playforge earns its fiscal keep. Unfortunately, until you reach level 10 and the invasions start to become a bit difficult, it’s not really necessary. However, at that time, the game does tend to prompt you quite a bit to make a purchase in order to make your life easier.

Beyond virtual goods and currency, players are also able to decorate their own virtual farms the way they see fit. Curiously, this is more than just for aesthetic appeal as many decorations improve what is called “Life Force.” Apparently, this stat helps prevent your zombie crops from being, well, duds (for lack of a better term), though that hasn’t happened for us yet. Likely, we’ve just gotten lucky so far. Either way, as you perform actions and garner experience, new and better items, crops, and zombies unlock.

Additionally, Zombie Farm also has a very interesting mutation mechanic. Players can actually purchase special mutations for their zombies that give them special bonuses such as increases to attack and defense. That said, purchasing a mutation doesn’t mean you automatically get it. Players must actually plant that zombie next to its corresponding crop (i.e. a Tomato Zombie) and harvest it before the plant for a chance at a mutated version. Furthermore, a few mutations, such as the Onion Mutation, act as incentives to make purchases.

On the negative side of things, the actual amount of real estate granted to the player fills up very, very quickly. Also, for whatever reason or another, the game doesn’t appear to support pinch zooming, which is an obnoxious issue once you have a bigger farm. Beyond this, the game is a very slow game to get going. Zombies take a while to grow, with the minimum length being four hours, so don’t expect to get a full taste for the app right away. Of course, since it’s free, that’s not too big a deal.

Overall, Zombie Farm is an interesting take on the whole farming genre. The game does come with a great deal of personality and style that oozes from the different types of zombies, and for a price tag of $0, it is a great download for fans of the slower paced farming-style game. The app is already doing pretty well, in any case, having reached the top 25 grossing apps in iTunes a couple of months ago.

Baking Life, a new restaurant-style game from Zip Zap Play, is probably most similar to games like Restaurant City and Café World. Essentially, players are tasked with the creation of a successful bakery, and in the process, decorating it the way they see fit.

It’s a game mechanic we’ve all seen before, but at the very least, this newer application comes with a few nuances that make it at least feel a little bit different.

The concept is three-fold: Bake goods, display goods, sell goods. The mechanic works pretty much the same as Café World in that you choose a recipe (which costs a small sum of money) and click the oven half a dozen times to melt butter, roll dough, sprinkle cinnamon, etc. After all the prep is done, the food takes X amount of time to cook. Obviously, the higher level the food item, the more time it takes to create.

Once food is baked, it must be put in one of your display cases for customers to browse (if you wait too long, it will burn). Based on the item placed, it will generate a finite number of servings that will continue to be bought at one of your cash registers until consumed. As expected, once all servings are purchased, the player needs to cook more.

This is actually where the first nice change comes into play. Actually, it’s not so much an interesting mechanic as it is a usability improvement. Once your display cases are full, you are not hindered from making more goods. Well, you are prevented from making new types of items, but if you continue to bake the same ones, you can add that stock to the displayed stock.

Say, for example, you have a display case of cinnamon rolls. Now, they take five minutes to bake, but only have 13 servings. However, you could bake four sets of rolls and then have 52 servings. Furthermore, you can add more at any time.

As far as interesting new features go, the most curious is the ability to actually design and sell your own personalized cupcakes. Of course, this includes more than just frosting and cake mix, but you also get to pick from some fancy linings and some rather bizarre toppings that range from sprinkles to monster tentacles. The more fancy your design, the more it costs to make, but also, the more it sells for. Additionally, up to four varieties of these custom creations can be placed into a single display case, and you can even “send” your friends (though this just means post on their wall) one in order to earn extra servings.

Regarding other social features, users can also hire their friends to work for their bakeries in order to cut down on the cost of non-player character “Temp Workers” that actually get a wage. Unfortunately, this is a mere wall post, similar to Hotel City, meaning they have to click first to be eligible employees. Beyond this, the game has your typical leaderboard system based on each users’ level and you can visit one another’s virtual spaces whenever you wish (and even cash in on some of their revenue if they don’t come back often).

There are a few other minor elements that are worth pointing out as well. As users level up, more than just mere recipes are ungated. As levels increase, players are able to buy extra gas lines, electrical outlets, phone jacks, and expansion space. Each of these are needed to add extra ovens, display cases, registers, and… expansion space respectively. Basically, this is preventing people from simply constructing nothing but production décor in order to level quickly.

On the negative side of things, for every customer you serve, your bakery’s hype increases. This is how you get more customers, faster, but it rarely seems to go down. Even when customers are waiting in line for a good long while, they don’t appear to get upset; the hype just goes up by less. Eventually, they will get annoyed enough to leave, and your hype drops, but it takes a very long time before they do lose patience. It’s almost too easy. Furthermore, NPCs have little thought bubbles to display what they think, and thus far, we’ve only seen a happy face, a ticking clock, and the occasional angry face. Frankly, there could be a lot more they could complain about.

Other issues stem from the same complaints we originally had with Restaurant City. The décor doesn’t really do anything. It’s a great opportunity to take a page from city-building games and have it improve hype, but it’s strictly for personal aesthetics. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it just underplays the potential the feature has. Not only that, but a lot of the decorum is yet to be available.

Overall, Baking Life is not an original idea so much as it is a revised rendition of the older restaurant titles and repainted with a new premise. It’s still a decent game despite being rather easy to play, and missing out on more interesting mechanics, and its few new nuances do make it feel a little bit different from its predecessors at least (even if it isn’t a lot). Nevertheless, with almost 110,000 monthly active users the past few days, its probably safe to assume that any such qualms are either forgive, or overlooked, by many of the title’s player base.

An old American icon has just met a newer one: starting June 1st, people who buy a Slurpee from 7-Eleven will also have a chance to get an “uber” gift in FarmVille. The convenience store chain has teamed up with Zynga for an extensive campaign that includes several more of its in-store items, as well as the Zynga games Mafia Wars and YoVille.

The partnership marks the latest incursion of social games into retail stores. The most visible, of course, are the ubiquitous virtual currency gift cards that are already sold at 7-Eleven and other chain stores.

This promotion is far more extensive than others we’ve seen, though. In all, there are 21 pairings of real world and virtual goods, plus three uber gifts that players have to buy multiple 7-Eleven products to unlock. Your nearest 7-Eleven may be blanketed with Zynga material; and beyond the store, the partners are even producing video ads featuring MTV stars, and will also advertise in print and radio.

Of course, 7-Eleven is likely to benefit as much as Zynga. With well over 100 million players just between the three promotional games, there should be a steady stream of players coming into 7-Eleven to buy Slurpees — not to mention other, less well-known 7-Eleven products like the store’s branded ice cream.

And Zynga is covering its own bases, in terms of keeping players addicted, by requiring that players complete in-game tasks to get their virtual “gifts”. Some of those gifts will require pretty intensive in-game efforts to acquire, like having to achieve mastery of a new crop in FarmVille to complete the offer.

The promotion will only run until June 15th, so we’ll be able to report back fairly quickly on whether Zynga’s stats receive a bump from the partnership.

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Facebook — tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, May 17th, 2010

• Daily Messages and Profile Mods Top This Week’s List of Fastest Facebook Growers By MAU
• Reminder for Developers: New Permissions Migration Period Ends June 1st
• Facebook Increasingly Grouping News Feed Stories from Apps and Sites
• Does Facebook Traffic Data Show Any Fallout from Privacy Issues?
• New Apple Patent Also Points to Tighter Facebook Connection

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

• TV Shows and Musicians Once Again Gain Most Fans on Our Top 20 Facebook Pages List
• Mexico and Brazil Set the Pace For Latin America in April 2010
• Texas Power Company Launches Facebook Game for Local Hispanic Consumers
• Facebook Issues First-Ever Press Release Reassuring the Market It’s Still Working With a Platform Developer
• Facebook Platform Roadmap Update: Invites Moving to a “New Notification Area”
• Facebook’s Fast-Loading and Free “0″ Mobile Site Launches

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

• Android and iPhone Apps Face Off On This Week’s List of Fastest Facebook Gainers By DAU
• Visa Gives FIFA World Cup Fans The Ability To Track Games With Match Planner App
• Contact Importer Now Facilitating Mass App and Game Invites To Those Without Facebook Accounts
• Facebook Employees Debate Privacy Changes, “Simplified” Tools Coming
• Are Facebook’s New In-Game Contact Importers the Octazen Team’s First Project?
• Will Facebook Become This Year’s Political Football? (And What Would That Mean for Its Product Roadmap?)

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

• Africa’s Growth on Facebook Rose Again For April 2010
• Pakistan Shuts Down Facebook Over ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed’ Page
• Facebook Creates, Removes Restriction on Landing Page Tabs
• Facebook Developer Site Updated With New Documentation, Tools
• ChatVille Wants to Be a Facebook-Friendly Version of Chatroulette

Friday, May 21st, 2010

• Real-World Consumer Goods Come to FarmVille with Green Giant Partnership
• Police in Delhi, India Use Facebook Pge to Address Traffic Problems
• Facebook Impact Tracks Who You’ve Invited to Sign Up, Ranks Your Referrals Against Your Friends
• Security Issues Could Force Facebook to Slow Down Product Development
• Facebook Roundup: Privacy, Pakistan, FriendFeed, Photos and Apps

Booyah Lands $20 Million, Partners with Google - Monday, mobile and social game developer Booyah announced the closing of a $20 million round of financing led by global venture firm, Accel Partners. Additional investors included Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and DAG Ventures. Moreover, investor Jim Breyer was added to the company’s Board of Directors.

Not two days later, Booyah also announced a new partnership with Google at the I/O Conference, making them the first partner of Google’s Places Web Service feature. To add to the company’s successes, the mobile developers popular location-based title MyTown is also noted to have, now, over 2.1 million users.

Hands-On Mobile Expands – Mobile games company, Hands-On Mobile, Inc. announced the hiring former Linden Lab Vice President of Strategy and Emerging Business, Judy Wade, as the company’s new president and CEO where she will be tasked with growing the developer’s presence on both mobile and social platforms. Additionally, Hands-On Mobile has also announced that it will be moving into the the latter platform with the help of social developer FunClick.

Pre-Paid Cards Top Sales – NPD Group released an interesting bit of information this past week, stating that of all video game accessories in the United States, pre-paid points cards for online games and services (i.e. virtual currency on Xbox Live) are the number one seller. Among these cards, the top tamale was the 1600 Microsoft Points card that costs $20. Considering the US spent over $1 billion in virtual goods last year, the high sale of virtual currency cards is hardly surprising.

OpenFeint Partners with Hudson Soft – News from across the sea as Japanese developer Hudson Soft announced the addition of OpenFeint to its collection of iPhone titles. With the new partnership, Hudson will not only integrate the standard achievement and leaderboard systems that come with the social platform, but will also add five games to OpenFeint’s FreeGameoftheDay.com including Aqua Forest 2, Catch the Egg, Haunted Pics, Shooting Watch, and World RPS.

iPad Store Goes Global – Though the international release of the iPad was delayed initially, it looks like the Apple iPad Store is now appearing across the globe. According to TechCrunch, it looks to be a worldwide release and there has been confirmation in the UK, Belgium, Spain, Israel, France, the Philippines, and New Zealand.

PayPal Announces Mobile Payments Library for Android – Online payment service, PayPal, announced the Mobile Payments Library for the Android mobile device. Through the platform, developers can integrate PayPal payments into their Android apps, effectively allowing for in-app transactions. As far as credit card transactions go, these will, of course, be handled through PayPal themselves.

Eliminate Offers Double Credit Weekend – According to TouchArcade, mainstream first-person shooters (i.e. Call of Duty) have often offered their players extra experience points for playing multiplayer bouts during certain weekends. Well, developer ngmoco is taking a page out of this book offering its players “double credit compensation,” until Monday at 12pm PST, for the popular, freemium iPhone title, Eliminate. Players that play over the next few days will earn double points per deathmatch. However, the same cannot be said for cooperative play.

Apple Selling Over 200,000 iPads a Week – Here’s a little tid bit of information from All Things Digital that has come to light regarding the impressive success of the new Apple iPad: Apparently, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, the iPad is selling over 200,000 units per week. Already, this is greater than the Mac in the U.S. and is closing the gap on the iPhone 3GS. As for the data behind these numbers, it is noted that it will be revealed at the iPad Games Summit this June.

As part of its drive to make social games a central part of its network, MySpace is launching a new program called Games Lab today, in which it will invite game developers to work in its Seattle and Los Angeles offices alongside MySpace employees for weeks at a time.

Games Lab is the result of a collaboration between MySpace and Playdom, as well as a few other social gaming companies, according to MySpace’s brand-new head of its gaming platform, Manu Rekhi.

“The typical relationship involves an evangelist, but we’re trying to get developers behind closed walls and make sure we have the right level of communication, rather than playing a game of whack-a-mole,” Rekhi says. “We’ll have developers come in in waves, and plan it out so that we have a strong ongoing relationship.”

MySpace has been working hard to get social gaming companies to focus in on its platform instead of devoting all their time to Facebook. While talking to us, Rekhi was careful to distinguish MySpace as a place to discover new content, while defining Facebook as a place to keep in touch with old friends — an angle we’ve also heard from smaller social networks like Tagged, which is also pursuing social games.

One key to that, of course, is making the MySpace platform substantially different. With Games Lab, they might actually succeed in doing so; Rekhi says that his developers are hard at work finding ways to customize the platform for users. The company has also employed a social scientist to help design around users.

Developers coming in to work with Games Lab will stay for four to six weeks, spending 70-80 percent of their day on their regular work and the remainder working with MySpace developers, according to Rekhi. The program is already open and, he says, has “plenty of space”.

In the past, the closest we’ve gotten to a medieval city-builder on Facebook has been the Facebook Connect enabled Evony and the equally complicated Kingdoms of Camelot. Of course, while there were city-building elements, the games were more oriented around strategy and conquest and not so much the sole prospect of constructing a thriving city. Well, a newer Facebook app called Castle & Co. – surprisingly from Ubisoft - appears to be filling that empty void with a perspective of medieval times that is certainly far from typical.

Filling the empty void, in terms of theme, because there are many other city building games on Facebook already.

Essentially, players are tasked with the construction of a happy and flourishing kingdom under their rule. It’s actually an extremely simple game: Players construct different workshops and their citizens automatically begin working – farming, chopping wood, collecting apples, etc. Initially, each structure will only produce one citizen but as you upgrade them (done by a magic fairy who apparently charges a pretty penny) more will begin to scurry about.

Everything is done in real time. Citizens wander a short distance from their home, do a little work (represented by a simple, yet believable animation) and return home to drop off their goods. Each trip earns one coin, and they will continue to do so until the maximum number of coins the workshop can hold is reached. Once capacity is full, then the user can collect income.

What makes everything go faster though is keeping your citizens happy. This is actually where décor comes into play, as depending on the citizen, they will like different things. As an example, a collector from your apple grove will like wood and fruits, thus placing decorations such as an apple tree will make them more happy.

This is where another level of cute comes into play. Beyond just placing decorum that satisfies one or more requirements, you can manually cheer up each non-player character by literally cheering them. When you click on an NPC, you can see just how happy they are, and clicking “Cheer” will have them let forth an overly cute yelp of joy and fill happiness back up to full.

Though it is not entirely clear, even when you place decorations that the NPCs like nearby, and their happiness increases, it still will decay over time (they are working after all). However, we’re running under the assumption that the more décor you have, the slower that decay will become.

In the complaint department, the biggest issue feels like there is not a whole lot to do. There’s only two types of things to build in Castle & Co: Workshops and decorations. Players don’t have to worry about leisure, or required systems, or anything beyond work and some trees. Part of the fun of these games is building out that balance of everything that is fun versus what is needed. It’s what made SimCity so addictive. That said, however, considering its medieval, fairy tale’ish aesthetic, Castle & Co. does not feel like a game tailored for your average SimCity player anyway. Even though it is still fun for older demographics, it feels more centrally targeted at a younger audience.

If that is indeed the case, then this Facebook app is actually pretty well rounded, with the only qualm being a relatively low number of objects the player can build. Nevertheless, as with any Facebook virtual space, that will almost certainly grow with time. Already, the game has been making minor improvements here and there, and earns around 177,000 monthly active users. That in mind, if you like simple games with a good amount of super cute style, then here’s an app worth a look.

[Shortly after we published this review, we discovered that this little gem actually from Ubisoft.]