Zynga Cityville Review on Facebook

Early in 2010, it was revealed that Zynga was working on a new game that would be released in late 2010. The time has finally come and Zynga has released their new social game called "CityVille" on Facebook. The game play is very similar to other city games on Facebook and the early computer game "Sim City.

CityVille Game Play

Players start with a small city that needs buildings, decorations and a way to get goods to sell. Buy and place a home, store, franchise slot or community buildings to get the game started. Plant crops to get goods and use the goods to stock and restock your stores. When the buildings are ready for you to collect, a money bag will appear over the building.

CityVille has features that can be seen in other Zynga games. Like Farmville, players can grow crops and like FrontierVille, players can gather collections and they need energy to complete different tasks.

Neighbors are also essential to CityVille, just like most Facebook games. Neighbors can build franchises on your and you can visit them to receive energy, goods, experience points and reputation points.

CityVille - The Good

If other Facebook games have become stale, CityVille is a new game that may peak your interest.

Increased ability to play with friends, through the franchise and train features.

Smooth Game play that appears to use a lot less computer researches than Cafe World, FarmVille and FrontierVille.

Buildings are beautifully made because Zynga hired real architects to draw up real life buildings plans for the game.

CityVille - The Bad

The biggest issue for new players is the energy problem. In FrontierVille, we can purchase energy by coins or Zynga's in game cash called 'horse shoes". However, there is no way to get energy with coins. You can have to buy in game cash that are called city dollars. There are still ways to get energy such as visiting neighbors, turning in collections, waiting for energy to replenish, asking friends or receiving energy as a gift. However, players receive a very small energy bar at the start of the game and energy is needed for almost everything. Add to the fact that visiting neighbors awards up to 2 energy (mostly 1 energy), and the gifts from friends is 3 energy at the most.

Energy is needed to collect money from buildings, its used to whack buildings like in FrontierVille, to harvest crops, and to collect goods from boats. So if you have 10 buildings and 15 crops that need to be harvested, you will not have nearly enough energy to complete all the tasks at hand. On the plus side, the energy bar does continue to grow as you level up but there is still not enough energy to go around.

In the end, CityVille is an interesting game that should hold the attention of many Facebook members, however it does have a learning curve, and players will have to stick out the energy problems to progress further into the game.