P. Cruz Reviews: My Empire

If you've been active on Facebook lately and are into games, you might've noticed this new Playfish game My Empire.

It's your standard build-a-city game where you earn money to build up your nation for "glory" and so on. When you start the game, there's this a nice intro where you see a Parthenon-like structure by the sea, when it ends, it brings you the tutorial, for first-timers. The story is you left your home nation to start up your own. You have one neighbor, a village hall, a harbor, and if my memory doesn't fail me, one house. The tutorial instructs you the hire a tax collector, after all, what can a governor do without taxes. ;)

There are four options for collecting taxes, 5 minutes, 4 hours, 12 hours, and 24 hours. Once you hire a tax collector, you wait your selected duration for him to come back with your coins; you also have that amount to time to come back for them once if you don't arrive precisely on the selected time. For example, if I selected 5 minutes, I wait 5 minutes and my money's there; after 5 minutes, I have 5 more minutes before the money disappears. Perhaps the tax collector runs away with it or something. What's nice for Playfish is that 5 minute option is free (the other options require the player to pay around 10% of the amount of the tax), enticing the player to keep using that option, so keeping the page open, captivates/distracts the player, making it more addicting.

I've digressed. Anyway, additionally, at start-up, you have 3000 coins to build houses and other buildings that will increase the the capacity (for living) of the city, the happiness of the citizens, and the fame of your nation. The population of your city dictates how much tax you receive. The continual erecting of houses is not enough though. You have to keep your citizens happy by either building "happiness" structures or decorating your nation. Fame is your point system. The more famous you are, the higher your level. Though it doesn't really affect your citizens, higher levels unlock structures that are more efficient, like houses that take up the same amount of space, but let more people live in them.

As you level up, you'll unlock the mine, the mill, and the quarry. Once you build them, you'll have to wait 24 hours for them to produce bronze, wood, and stone, respectively. These objects are for building more advanced structures. If I'm not mistaken, the first structure you'll be able to build with these things will be Stonehenge.


Stonehenge? What's Stonehenge doing in here? We'll it's a Wonder that's why. In the game, Wonders are things you construct with the help of your friends. You have to collect some wood, some stone, some bronze, and some tar to complete it's construction. You get tar by having your friends send some over. Wonders are not the only structures you need your friends for. When you construct your temple and your court, you'll need to ask your friends to help build it with you, of course they'll be compensated for their generosity. Hopefully, you'll thank them by helping them build whatever they want to build or by sending them whatever they need.

Overall, I'm generally ok with the game. I like the graphics, but as with normal online games, it's pretty pointless and a waste of time. (If you're like me, though, you overlook that and continue to play.) It's still quite new (I think it was released on May 13), so it's still kinda glitchy. The glitch is linked to my main issue with the game as well. What I like about Playfish games, compared to Zynga games, is that you don't need to add your friends individually to get them connected to you in the game. For some reason, in My Empire you have to invite your friends to be neighbors before you can visit them. (Minus 25 points in my book.) So, this leads to the glitch where even after I add my friend, he/she doesn't appear on my neighbor line-up. :( On the Playfish forum, people say the best way to avoid this is to go directly to the game after accepting a neighbor invite.
I think I'll come back to this in the future and review it again, when it's all better. That's one of the things I really like and somewhat dislike about Playfish. They update their games a lot. I do mean a lot. They update Restaurant City and Pet Society weekly with new and exciting themes. (Random: So far, I don't like the 24 hours shifts in Restaurant City.)

I'd give My Empire 3.5-4 stars for now.


Links:
The game: http://apps.facebook.com/myempiregame
My Empire Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/myempiregame
My Empire Site (for more screenshots, etc): http://www.playfish.com/?page=game_my_empire
Introductory post on the Playfish blog: http://playfish.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/welcome-to-my-empire/
Thread on neighbor glitch: http://forum.playfish.com/showthread.php?t=1848194

*logo from Playfish blog, link above