Facebook Farm Apps

Facebook game applications have grown in complexity and popularity over the last couple of years. It seems like everyone on my friend's list has at least one game that they play almost religiously on Facebook, and I'm constantly surprised at who I get invitations to new games from. There seems to be an incredibly wide appeal to social networking based gaming, and I can't deny that I find the apps quite addicting. Among my friends and among my friend's friends, I find that the most popular type of game is the virtual farming game - Farmville, Farm Town and Country Story are among the favorites. But which is the best?

People that I wasn't even aware were active on their Facebook accounts are constantly cropping up as neighbors in Farmville. The game was published by Zynga, the same company responsible for Mafia Wars and a handful of similar games, Yoville, Scramble and Zynga Poker. Most of their games are also available on Myspace, which allows them to reach an even larger crowd than some of the Facebook-only apps. Out of the farming games I've tried, Farmville is easily the most popular among my friends, but I have to wonder if that's just because it's well advertised.

Obviously, though I have some negative things to say about it, I'm a fan and player of the game. There's something undeniably addictive about virtual farming, and the more friends there are the compete against, the more I find myself compulsively checking in on my farm while I'm sitting at the computer. Farmville certainly has enough features and opportunity to progress to keep me interested. Like any farm game, there's a multitude of crops to grow that take anywhere from four hours to four days to grow to the point they can be harvested for coins. As one progresses in level, more crops unlock, offering better and better rewards. Farmville also features animals ranging from cows to rabbits that can be periodically harvested for coins, and a variety of trees that function similarly. Only recently has the game opened up to allow decorations for purchase with coins, allowing for a personal touch to your farm. Awards can be earned from doing just about anything in the game, and having 'neighbors,' (friends on Facebook who also play the game,) offers more chances for experience towards leveling and coin rewards.

Of course, as with any popular social networking app, there are pay to play features. Certain decorations are unavailable without cash, and the size of your farm (another newer feature,) can be expanded either by accumulating neighbors or buying into the game. Graciously, Zynga grants all players a cash allowance that can be spent at the virtual market before cash funds have to be replenished with real life dollars.

While there's plenty to keep me amused playing Farmville, I fail to see why it's the most popular game of it's type. Zynga updates the game often with new features and upgrades, but I still feel like I'm playing a shoddy, bug-ridden flash game that doesn't have the funding or popularity to work out all of the kinks. As farms can now be quite big, it's tedious to have to click to the market and select items one by one when I'm looking to buy in bulk. Seeds for crops and fences are able to be bought without doing so, and that only serves to baffle me why everything in the game can't be purchased more than one at a time.

I play Facebook games on a computer that can take a lot of abuse and has a great Internet connection, so when I say that the connection on Farmville is horrible, it's not because my computer can't handle it. Frequently, the app goes out of sync with the server and needs to be reloaded with all recent progress being lost - which is a pain when I've just had to click to go to the market fifteen times to buy fifteen of the same object. Nothing in the game is instant. There's a load time for viewing your own awards, for glancing at gifts friends have sent and for going to the market, and the load time quickly wears on my nerves. It's clear that the servers can't handle the popularity of the game, and I would hope that with pay to play features Zynga would be able to upgrade them.

While farms are highly customizable with buildings and animals, there's very little interaction with any of the objects in game. Why buy a fruit stand when you're not going to be able to sell fruit from it to make more coins? Why buy a barn when the animals can't be stored inside of it?

Really, there's two things that have kept me playing Farmville despite how simple and buggy the game is, in my opinion. One - just about everyone I know on Facebook plays the game, which adds some fun competitive flair to the game, and two - for all the improvements I think that are necessary for the game, Zynga does regularly update and upgrade it. I'm just hoping it hurries up and gets to the point where it's as much fun as it has the potential to be.

Farm Town is another fairly popular farming app, though it's quite obviously nearly a copy of Farmville. In my opinion, however, Farm Town does much better than it's predecessor. It has many of the same features, including the farm game staples of harvestable trees and crops, animals, buildings and decorations. Again, there are pay to play features and all items in the game are purchasable with either solely coins, cash or the option of the two.

Farm Town, for me, is a step up from Farmville. It runs much more smoothly than the Zynga game, and it has features that I wish Farmville would have. The downside is that the game is not as popular, which confuses me as I find it much more enjoyable to play. In Farm Town, harvested crops can be held in storage, and though there is a similar timer on when crops can be harvested, they don't seem to go to waste as quickly as they would in Farmville. Farm Town features a lot more interact-able features than it's Zynga twin. Animals can be fed and posed or let to wander around the farm rather than being stationary. Items, including plots where crops can be planted, all have drop-down menus that are a little more involved than those available in Farmville, allowing for a bit more seamless play. Everything loads instantly on my connection, and although the game periodically has to communicate with the server, it never forces the page to reload, nor does the communication interrupt the game play.

Farm Town is, however, not perfect. The graphics, like in Farmville, are cute and fitting of the game, but they leave something to be desired. Although decorations are broken up into more categories, which makes them more manageable to navigate, there's not much interaction with them. Still, the decorations available make a bit more sense than the ones in Farmville - it seems more likely to find a functioning pigsty on a farm than a fruit stand that just sits there. Visiting neighbors' farms has a distracting load time. I find that even though I'm a bigger fan of this game, I play it much less than Farmville because just not as many people play.

My favorite of the Facebook farm games app is Country Story, which is published by Playfish. Playfish is also responsible for Pet Society and Restaurant City. Country Story is instantly more aesthetically pleasing than either Farmville or Farm Town. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of friends who play the game. While the graphics are better and the game play is entirely seamless and features a save function that Farmville and Farm Town lack, it seems to take more out of my computer to run this app, and I know plenty of people who own computers that simply can't handle it.

Country Story appeals to me because it has a lot of completely unique features. Yes, it has the farm game staples of plowing plots, planting seeds and harvesting crops. It has animals and trees that earn coins, and it has the obligatory, optional pay to play features. Farms are decoratable, and though the selection of decorations is sparce, I'd rather have a garden gnome than a big, bulky building that does nothing taking up all my space.

What separates Country Story the most from other farm game applications is how levels are gained. It's name is quite fitting as villagers offer quests that serve to both help you get started in a very comprehensive tutorial and then continue to offer helpful rewards and experience for progressing as a farmer and neighbor. There's just more available to do in this game than in the others. At neighbors farms, you do more than rake up leaves for a couple of coins and experience points. You can water their dry crops, collect building materials like wood and even steal some of their crops that are ready to be harvested.

While other farm games will let you fill your entire farm with plants or keep adding until you're out of coins, in Country Story, you have to progress in level to be able to gain more plots for planting crops. To me, this gives the game a little more order and focus. You're also limited to how much you can do by stamina, which is replenish-able from food in the coin shop and is consumed by water plants, plowing the fields, planting seeds and stealing a friend's crops. I like the stamina system because I find when I'm out of it, I don't stick around to play longer than I'd wanted or planned.

Even the pay to play features in Country Story, although I don't partake in them, make more sense to me. Instead of being able to just expand the size of your farm or buy special decorations, you can buy fertilizer to accelerate the growth of your crops or animals that are only otherwise available as quest rewards.

Country Story is the most engaging farm game for me, as it has a lot of features I wish Farmville and Farm Town offered. New decorations are added as regularly as they are in the other games, so the game is still as actively growing as any other farm game. It's nicer to look at and much more exciting.

Obviously, if I were going to suggest a farm game application, I would suggest Country Story. However, if your computer is unable to run it, I would suggest Farm Town over Farmville. While I play all three, I have the most complaints about Zynga's version. If you've never played a farm game application, I urge you to do so. It might sound kind of boring, but all three are quite addictive and a lot of fun to share with friends.