Village Life - after 3 months

I started playing Village Life in February.

As with all games the main objective is to level up as you progress.

For this game, the way to level up is by keeping the villages happy, and they will play with the various games hence producing Happiness points to the Happiness Shrine.  Once the shrine is full, we go up by a level and will be rewarded with one key and some gems.

Keys and gems allow us to unlock more items for the village.  We can also opt to purchase gems using real money in USD, not sure who will want to spend real money on a game.

The problem with this game is that the progress is way too slow.  It's the way the program the game, the villagers are not easily satisfied.  The reward system of 1 key and 20 gems per level are not enough to satisfied the demands of the villagers.

After a while it became such a bore, I just couldn't be bothered,,I just give whatever resources I have regardless of whether they are happy or not.  In fact , I nearly quit, if not for my sis and her hubby who are still in the game.  And they are doing well..my b-i-l applied some kind of strategy and it seemed to work. I didn't bother to understand further.

Anyway..my perseverance brought reward today.  Or may be the programmers changed their settings :D

My villagers are suddenly very happy today and started participating in all kinds of games and entertainment that I've 'worked' hard to build for them :D 

They were dancing away...

Dirty Dancing

Playing 'nude painting'..

Naughty Painting

Even the old folks are enjoying themselves!

Even the old folks wanna do Dirty Dancing!

Now..if they go on like this, I'll have another set of problems. I don't have anyone to do the work! Cos if I assign them tasks while they're having fun..I don't get happiness points.

Haha.

Village Life - guess which is mine?

 Here are three random shots from different villagers by myself, my sis and a random player.
Can you guess which is mine?

Village Life

I'm weird.

While everyone was playing Diamond Dash, Bejeweled..I played City Ville, Trade Nations, Battle Nations..

Now everyone seems to be crazy about Candy Crush..I did try..but didn't see the point..may be I didn't try to understand the scoring systems..


I've stopped playing City Ville for some time.  Deleted Battle Nations from the phone too.  Still on Trade Nations..but not often.

Still playing Letterpress on and off for the sake of my vocabulary power..so to speak.


But..there's this new game that I'm really enjoying now - VILLAGE LIFE.

Short description of the game from the homepage:

The player starts with only two villager in an empty village, one pregnant with a child.  By looking after a pregnant couple who need food and shelter. The player then has to rebuild and repopulate a village to create a thriving utopia where every need of each villager is met by helping them harvest food and collect resources to craft tools, toys and buildings.

In this ancient world you'll name and care for each character, watching them grow from birth through to first date, marriage, childbirth and old age with all the fun of life along the way. 

In a uniquely social twist, villagers will also seek to have relationships and children with other villagers made up of other members of the Village Life Facebook community.

Key features:

• Build a thriving village
• Care for every need of your villagers through fully integrated quests
• Harvest food and collect resources to craft tools, toys and buildings
• Explore the land, and progress into new worlds building bigger villages
• Unlock new tools, resources, and more through using in-game currency
• Fully Interactive Social features: Date and Marry your Facebook friends' villagers!

So, I've been doing most of the above.  In my village now, the elder couple (Hayden and Ellie) with their twins (Emily and Benjamin), just had another baby (Abigail). The twins has grown up and could help around at the farm, etc.  There are these two other adults (Isaac & Samantha) who joined the couple earlier..they are are apparently yearning for LOVe..wonder why they can't get together on their own :D

I'm still begging my friends to join me in the game so I can find them partners!  Anyone? Please....



Check this out..I just took this screen shot.  I just got them a Yoga mat :D
And the little guy next to the yoga mat is playing skipping. Spot the fencing dummy in front of the yoga mat.

They don't sleep by the way, always asking for different kinds of food and entertainment :s  You'll see at the bottom right corner, Samatha's wishes in the white clouds -- she's wishing for a new house, knitting kit and love.

:D

Letterpress

Source : http://thisgame.co/newsletters/letterpress

A friend introduced Letterpress to me recently.  Initially it felt like a very basic letter game, but it became more addictive and challenging once I start to understand the game more.

It's slowly re-building my weakening vocabulary knowledge too.

It exercises seldom-connected parts of the mind, it's unpredictable, and it's intensely social 
- says thisgame.co

I find it very challenging for the brain, especially when there are multiple games going on with different type of opponents!  My opponents are so strong that sometimes I really hate playing with them! 

There should be some strategizing involved..but my pea-brain can't seem to get around it..I'm never a chess or poker kind of person, you see... 

No wonder I keep losing :'(


Found a newsletter from thisgame.co on an interview with the game designer Loren Brichter, here are some interesting facts:

• Loren is a first time game designer!
•  
•  
•  

Err..yeah..right..I actually couldn't understand half the things he talked about in the interview.  So much for being a player :s

Read more HERE

I was going to quit drawing but then..

The game's getting a bit boring..I was going to quit it...but then..check this out..my 7 yr old nephew managed to guess this right!  So clever hor? He had been playing with us from his mother's phone.

And then..he drew me this :D

More Drawings

Yea.. I haven't been updating, I know.

Been busy, sort of..and couldn't settle down to think of a good topic to talk about.

So..I thought these could be a good filler post :P

Yes..we are still playing Drawsome...although most tiems it's more of a guessing game.

It's less addictive now..but we are still at it..at a lower pace...well, I still learn 'a lot' from the game you know...

Let me tell you a secret - I've never watched a single movie of Lord of the Rings.  So... how the heck do I know how to guess this??  I didn't even know this was suppose to be some wizard from LOTR.  It's GANDALF..so I was told ..

And then..there was this.  Wth..I thought.  And so I learnt about CYCLOPS .  *rolling eyes*

And ...today.. LOL... I got reminded about DUMBO !!

At the back of my mind..i knew it's some "BO" character from somewhere... haha.... it must have been buried deep down in my childhood memory. Very deep down.

Still Drawing

Yea..we are still at it. Although, I think the craze will die down soon, if they don't inject new stuff quickly enough.

For now, it's still quite entertaining.  I admit I've gotten abit lazy though.  When I first started, I will google for ideas and spent some time on coming out with the best 'artpiece' I could manage.  

But when they start repeating the words..and with time constraint..I got lazy.  Hence, my squid looked  like this:

 

The Draw Something page had been posting some really good examples from other players.

And I mean really good !

How is that even possible?  But then..in minutes..I can come out with something obvious enough :P

I had to google to check what exactly a hippo looks like :D

On the other hand, I've learnt quite a lot from this game :D  General knowledge, word power, creativity, imagination etc etc. Last night I learnt that Ariel is the name of the mermaid Disney character !  Then I learnt about ewok a star wars character.  And Pegasus ...yes..I am that Duh in all this fantasy stuff.  

Otherwise..it's been very entertaining..watching different friends of different characters and minds coming out with some really out of this world art piece.

TEETH for example ... WTH:

  

And,.what a way to describe an EYE BALL !

and..GOGGLES ???

And..sometimes,.when I couldn't guess something, my imagination goes wild :D

Draw Something

I'm really amaze by recent developments in the social gaming community.  It's very interesting to observe how developers design and adapt to meet the fast changing interests and demands.

It's no longer like those days where we got stuck in one stupid game like the Octopus in a Game and Watch for years.  In this century, especially mobile gaming, gamers defect and move on to other games in an instant.

Games are constantly updated with new features and levels to keep gamers loyal to the game.

But yet..a game doesn't have to be some hi tech to gain popularity.

I got hooked to Draw Something over the weekend.

It sounded silly.  It looked silly.  I wasn't convince that I'd be hooked.

But hey..it turned out to be quite addictive.

We can opt to to play with random strangers or like me I prefer to link to Facebook where it tells you all your other Facebook friends who are playing it too.  

All I had to do was Create a game with someone, Draw something (out of 3 options of difficulty levels), and wait for the other party to guess my drawing. If the other party guessed it right, both gets the points allocated, and he / she will draw something else for me to guess. And it goes on and on...until either party decides to stop.  Yeah..sounds silly, I know. But...

One can even opt to watch a live replay on how your opponet guessed your drawing.

I ROFL when I saw that my friend initially guessed my GRENADE as GERMANY :D

It's really quite fun and requires some imagination and lots of creativity.  

This one must be the mother of all drawings :

Hong Kong ??!! 

And..what do you think this is??

I was told it's a Corndog ..duh!

And then, some people are born to be good in art, like my dear sis, here:

But I'm desperately stuck now, cos I have no idea what she just drew here, can someone help me!

This is a MONKEY from ML , lol.  

ANd tadaa..here's the best from yours truly, so far.

What did I draw, can you guess?