Tamagotchi Villagers
A couple of years ago, I had a game idea that I thought would be really cool. One of several. I still have it written down, in short summary form, in a directory on my computer (See? I have proof!). After watching Castaway and catching tidbits of the TV show "Survivor" (my wife was still watching it at the time), I thought, "Hey, how about a game where you help a bunch of stranded survivors on a remote tropical island?"

The ideas flowed. You could help the different villagers learn skills and develop technology (in my game concept, they'd all come from a more civilized society - say, Victorian England - so they'd know about technology, just not how to build it immediately. So it'd be kind of a primitive, tropical-island SimCity starting with a village of clueless people.

Last week, a friend told me about a game a friend of hers was playing. It sounded very suspiciously like my game idea! Very suspiciously! A few days later I discovered Virtual Villagers, and sure enough, they'd built a game around a very similar concept.

Oh, there are some major differences. The villagers in Virtual Villagers come from another island, rather than being castaways from a more advanced civilization. And I was planning on having a little bit of politics in mine - say, a ship finally comes to rescue the survivors, and some want to stay while others leave. Or a disgruntled, charismatic leader in the tribe decides to leave with a bunch of followers to start a new, rival village. That kind of thing. As far as I know, there's no such thing going on in virtual villagers. Which may be for the better.

The very curious gameplay element which some people may love and others may hate is that the "village" deals with the passage of time when you aren't playing - sort of like an online game. What it really comes down to is that this is a game intended to be played over many short sessions. You'll load it up, play it for a few minutes, deal with any surprises (and there are a lot of surprise events that occur in the game), re-arrange some tasks, and then log out again. It's a little like Tamagotchi, I guess, except the villagers aren't as annoying and demanding.

The tasks are pretty easy to assign - you can go into the "Detail" view and set a particular villager's preference for activities. Or you can just pick up the villager, move them to a task, and they may (depending upon their preference or current state) attempt it and improve in it.

For example, if one villager is sick, you can drag another villager over on top of them to get that villager to try and heal the sick one. You can drag a villager over to the research table to start attempting research and creating technological advances. You can drag a healthy adult villager over a healthy adult villager of the opposite sex to see if they'll ... uh, get amorous and get busy making babies.

That's another major feature of this game - it occurs over many successive generations. Your villagers will have children, who will grow up to become productive members of the community (wow, so this is a FANTASY game...), have children of their own, grow old, and eventually die. I don't think the game tracks lineage - at least, I hope not, or by the fourth generation it is going to be a village of mutants. EVERYONE is going to be marrying siblings or cousins.

Well, the effects of that kind of inbreeding is possibly already rearing it's bald head. Male-pattern baldness seems to be something even the little boys get stuck with, running around with the retreated hairline that they'll have as grown-ups. Ah, well.

Anyway, this isn't the usual kind of game I offer at Rampant Games (I'm not much of the casual games kinda guy), but this particular game was amusing and addictive enough that I thought I'd share. Besides, Outpost Kaloki was all lonely and stuff as the only real strategy game there (unless you count Journey to Rooted Hold, which is more of a ... puzzle game, I guess, though it really defies description).

Click Here to download a free demo of Virtual Villagers. Or you can visit the website at http://www.rampantgames.com/villagers.html.

Or you can... not do either. That's cool too. Am I a hard-sell guy or what? Anyway, if you try it out, feel free to post here to tell me what you think of it.

Labels: casual games, Game Announcements

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:21 AM (Permalink)