Hear Ye, Hear Ye! News of Zynga’s newest addition, currently in beta testing, is Castleville. With its campy quests and cutesy look, this game stands out from many other similar titles.
In this new medieval land you start with a basic character. It has a rather nice character creator, allowing you to play around and make a unique character that suits your tastes. Best of all you can always change the look for free later. It plays very much like Frontierville, which was a bit of a disappointment for me because I much prefer Farmville’s structure of game play.
The basic setup here is you get energy points to spend, and with those energy points you do the daily kingdom chores and complete the quests. You follow quests that the town folk give to you, which provides some direction.
If you are paying close attention, you will notice little things thrown into the game you might not have seen if you were rampantly clicking away. For example, when I was level 6, one of my quests was called ‘Fear and Loathing’.
Besides harvesting and completing these quests, you have the impending Gloom that is attacking your village. You must defeat the Glooms that appear, units such as a pack of wolves or some rats, fending them off to keep your kingdom safe. The goal is to keep building your kingdom up and unlocking more land surrounding you. You make your kingdom bigger and get more local peasants to follow your ranks, growing your kingdom through your success in managing the day-to-day and your battle prowess.
Unlocking special items is done with ‘Crown’ units. You get one every level and have the option to buy more with real cash. The unlocked items are things like costumes and different scenery items, or skipping quest parts without needing help from friends. Overall, the adventure seems like it will be a fun one, so I say Huzzah to Castleville.
