Zynga today unveiled The Ville, its latest “Ville” game at its Zynga Unleashed press event. The game is a lifestyle sim that bears many similarities to titles like EA’s The Sims Social, which we won’t discuss here.
The concept of The Ville is for players to build their dream house, hang out with their friends in the game and build in-game relationships. Players initially receive a small home that they gradually decorate and expand to manor-like proportions. Along the way, they unlock new areas of their yard to expand their home onto.

As players unlock new blocks of yard, they gain whatever items happen to be resting there. During a hands-off demo, we saw a yard with several locked squares containing a rock garden, a tree house and a koi pond.
Meanwhile, players can also use their yards to plant gardens they can then harvest items from to craft consumable items with. The example we saw of this in action involved a player collecting ingredients for a blueberry pie that, when eaten, temporarily shrank the player characters down to roughly half their size.
The Ville includes social features that have become standard in many Zynga games, like being able to visit other players’ homes and establishing relationships with their in-game characters; relationships can become romantic and we even got to see players score a “happiness home run,” represented by them jumping onto a bed and being surrounded by a cloud of hearts. Interacting with other characters earns hearts and happiness. Hearts increase the strength of a relationship between characters, while happiness allows players to perform jobs in the game. Jobs, in turn, provide soft currency coins, which can allow players to purchase new decorations and expansions for their home.
Zynga’s launching two new social features in The Ville. First, players can check their Facebook friends’ statuses and leave comments on their news feeds from within The Ville. Players are also able to share entertaining in-game moments by snapping photos and posting them to their news feeds for friends to see.
The Ville is set to debut June 27, on Facebook. It will come to Zynga.com soon after.