A Closer Look at Mermaid World app for iPhone and iPad

Ok, so banner ads do work.  I got roped into this new app for my iPad when I saw one such ad at the bottom of another game I was playing.  The app is called Mermaid World and while it might look like a way to distract a 6 year-old girl, it is a surprisingly fun and challenging game.  I played it for about 2 days and then Aimee got curious, now we are both addicted.

(For Updates, scroll to the bottom of the page)


Mermaid World is basically a DragonVale clone with a few added challenges and, of course, cute mermaids.  You purchase realms for your mermaids to live in and can "summon" different kinds of mermaids to populate your realms.  Mermaids have different characteristics that are described by color.  For instance, a Velvet Twist mermaid is a Red, Blue and Green mermaid.  Mermaids can have up to three characteristics, but may only have one.  Characteristics determine the type of mermaid and are static.  However, each individual mermaid has 4 criteria that determine their happiness.  Mermaids like realms that are 100% decorated, they have a special trinket item that they like, they also have a preference for and against one other kind of mermaid.  When all 4 criteria are met, the mermaid is ecstatic.  Each realm can hold up to 5 mermaids and if you can make all 5 ecstatic, then your realm will rate 3 stars.  Having 3 star realms is the goal of the game and will earn you pearls.  Pearls are the in-app purchase for Mermaid World, and like DragonVale, the in-app purchase system here is done the right way.  Pearls can be earned in game both by having 3 star realms and by sending mermaids out on explorations.

Explorations are the primary method of obtaining decor and trinkets.  As the mermaids lounge about in your realms, they earn gold that you can spend on decor or explorations (trinkets cost pearls).  The more characteristics a mermaid has the more it will cost to send them on an exploration, but there seems to be some correlation between the amounts of characteristics and the rarity of the mermaid and the items and trinkets they are able to find.

The balance of the game is spent trying to build, decorate, and populate your realms and then elevate your mermaids to ecstatic status.  Populating your realms can be achieved by summoning mermaids by spending coins or pearls, but the much cheaper and more challenging way is to "call" them.  Calling mermaids is conducted by having two mermaids sing a duet.  The siren song they sing will summon a new mermaid to your realms.  The kind of mermaid that is summoned will depend entirely upon the kinds that are singing.  For instance, if an Aqua (blue) mermaid and Coral (red) mermaid sing, they might summon other Aqua or Coral mermaids, or they might summon a Fuchsia (red/blue) mermaid!  Needless to say, the combinations can build from there.  All in all there are 51 possible mermaids to summon ranging from those that have a single characteristic to those that are more complex and have three characteristics.  There are also rare mermaids that have unique characteristics not governed by color types.  Every kind of mermaid can be summoned by "calling."

(Click Here to visit the Mermaid World Calling Guide)

Calling mermaids is done by sending two mermaids to the Singing Summit.  Once there, they will being their song and a status bar will appear telling you how long it will take them to sing the song.  Generally speaking the longer the song, the greater the rarity of the mermaid summoned.  For instance, the Tiger Lily mermaid is extremely common and takes only 5 minutes to summon, however the Silversong mermaid is fairly rare and takes 10 hours to summon.  Those times are a bit deceiving, however, because in addition to the time it takes to sing the song it takes an equal amount of time to summon them, so a Tiger Lily mermaid will take 10 full minutes to summon in full (5 for the song and 5 for the summoning) and a Silversong will take 20 hours.  It should also be noted that the cost for singing a song will be determined by the rarity of the rarest mermaid singing, not the rarity of the mermaid being summoned.  Thus an Aqua/Coral duet may only cost 135 coins to sing their song, while an Aqua/Koi duet might cost as much as 2065 coins to sing.

There are other aspects to the game play that are explained within the game.  For instance, your mermaids will go to sleep after some time if you are not actively engaged in singing or exploring.  Sleeping mermaids earn no gold, so you'll have to check in regularly to keep them up and going.

WAKE UP!

The challenge of Mermaid World is that is can be extremely difficult to get a three star realm.  When you consider that you need to meet the 4 needs of 5 different mermaids, and three of those needs are diverse and distinct, getting all of those criteria met is tough.  You can spend pearls to randomize these criteria if you chose. This can be helpful if you have a rare mermaid with undesirable criteria, however the cost to randomize is based on the rarity of the mermaid being altered.

Keeping all of these criteria in balance can be a real challenge and will require summoning multiple mermaids of the same type to fit perfectly into a specific realm.  One major tip is to remember that you only need a mermaid that likes an existing member of a realm and is not disliked by anyone in the realm.  The only time you will need a specific type of mermaid is to meet the Liked criteria of an existing mermaid and if you do it right, you'll only have to worry about that once or twice per realm.
For a more in depth look at how to create Harmonious Realms, check out our Mermaid World Guide to Harmonious Realms!

To help you summon each and every kind of mermaid out there, Aimee and I are working hard on building a Calling Guide that lists the duets that will summon each type.  This guide is a work-in-progress and will be updated regularly.  I am putting the guide on its own page to help keep the size manageable.  You can access the guide from this link or the link at the top of the page.

I never honestly expected to like, play or enjoy Mermaid World, but I gave it a try anyway. I assumed it was going to be some manner of silly dress-up paper doll game, but I am pleased to say that I am wrong.  On its face this game appears to be geared for young girls, but I think the appeal is much broader and I think that players of all ages and genders can find something fun here.  The in-app purchase aspect is minimally important to the enjoyment of the game and there is a broad social aspect as well.  The only major downfall is that the game is bit buggy (lots of crashes and minor glitches) and it requires you to be friends on Facebook in order to be friends with people in the game.  This can either severely restrict your friends list, if you have few who play games like this or are terrified of hybrid sub-sea dwellers, or it can open you up to friending all kinds of random people on the internet just to play a mermaid game.  However, the game is new and hopefully will see enough support to get regular updates and improvements.

So go give Mermaid World a try.  It's rather addictive and fun, and the mermaids are just as cute as they can be!

UPDATE!

I got the Limited Edition Winter Mermaid!  She is super-awesome!  Check the Calling Guide for details about how to add her to your list!

Also, I got a Stinger and something a little odd occurred.  I have mentioned above that the game is a bit buggy. Well Stinger's favorite trinket was a question mark, big one.  When clicked upon, the question mark identified itself as a mandolin.  I later found the mandolin (you can see it in the picture of Winter above), but the question mark icon remains.  Was this intentional?  If so, why?  Is this a bug?  What is the question mark really for?  And where is the image for the mandolin? Weird.

A Closer Look at DragonVale for the iPhone

UPDATE!  For those of you seeking the latest, greatest DragonVale info, check out my new DragonVale Update Page for the low-down on everything that is new and funky in the floating islands!
Otherwise, enjoy the main feature below!

Look, I know you don't want to know about my personal life and I thank you for it, but this story begins in the boudoir; I cannot help this fact so just bear with me if you can.  Sometime back in December on a lazy Sunday morning, the wife and I were lounging about in bed enjoying the fact that we had no where to go and nothing to do.  As you may recall from my recent Smurf Village missive, not much was going in the village and I was pretty much fed up with my Trade Nations town, so I was looking for some other time waster for my phone.  I dialed over to the App Store and browsed around to see what the top ranked apps were.  In the Top 25 Grossing category the #1 game was something called DragonVale.  I like dragons and the icon was pretty cute, so I clicked on it. By the description: "Play DragonVale and raise, feed, and breed your own lovable dragons."

I was sold.

There was a chance that I was buying into a dragon themed My Little Pony or Nintendogs here, but I risked it. I am pleased to report that it was worth the risk!  You know I am goofy about Smurf Village, but I think in DragonVale I may have found the best "In-App Purchase" game currently available. (For those of you like me who have no idea what that means, it is the kind of app where it is free to play but there are elements within the game that cost real money)

The premise behind DragonVale is exactly what the description above says.  The game is that simple.  Build Habitats, pick up a few dragon eggs and you are off and running!  Pretty soon you'll have Fire Dragons, Plant Dragons, Cold Dragons, and Earth Dragons everywhere!  Then you start growing food to feed the dragons and raise them to maturity.  Once they become "of age" you can build a breeding pit and let nature take its course.  This opens the game up in all new ways.  Now you can breed hybrid dragons like Storm Dragons (Lightning + Cold), Magma Dragons (Earth + Fire), and Fog Dragons (Water + Air).  Just remember that each dragon type has its antithesis and will not be able to directly breed with dragons of the opposing type. Feed your dragons and raise their levels and then let them compete in the Colosseum for big prizes! And so on.  You can see how easily this game piles on the fun and injects itself into the addictive part of your brain.

Honestly, the game is brilliantly constructed to make sure the fun just keeps coming.  You start with the plant dragons.  Plant habitats build quickly and their dragon eggs hatch quickly so you will be up and going within minutes of starting the game.  The "tutorial" portion is pretty painless and over soon and if you know your way around these games you can work it to your advantage.  Soon after getting your plant dragons going, you'll raise your level high enough to unlock Earth Dragons and habitats and shortly after that Fire Dragons.  So within the first day of starting the game you will have at least 3 kinds of dragons to play with.  After that point the game keeps a steady stream of fun going by introducing new types of dragons, new game play elements, and pretty regular updates.  And then there are the rare dragons!  These are dragons you can only obtain by breeding and only then with some random chance and luck.  Seriously, how are you still reading this and not downloading this app right now? Oh, of course, you already have it.  Silly me.

"But what about the "In-App Purchase" part?  You haven't mentioned that," you say.  See, that is perhaps the most brilliant part of this app and maybe why it is #1 in In-App purchases.  The In-App purchase in this game centers around "gems" that you can use to speed up egg hatching, breeding, and pretty much anything else in the game that takes time to do.  You can also use the gems to buy dragon eggs, particularly rare ones.  But unlike other In-App Purchase games, you NEVER have to buy a SINGLE GEM to get everything the game has to offer.  Unlike similar apps, gems are relatively easy to come by in this game.  You can win up to 5 every day from the Colosseum, your friends can you give one gem per day, or you can spend real money on them.  But you never HAVE to spend money.  If you are patient you can build up enough gems over time to buy pretty much anything in the game you need gems for.  To  my knowledge there are only a handful of things in the game that can only be obtained via gems, hatchery upgrades, the special breeding island, the gem tree, and maybe a couple of other things.  Unlike so many other apps (looking dead square at YOU Trade Nations), you don't HAVE to spend real money to get the very most out of this game, which to my mind makes me much more likely to spend money on this game.  If you make something optional instead of obligatory, then the chance of the human being responding favorably to it is far more likely. (Now go take your PSYCH101 test and pass it, you can thank me later)

Playing this game is a mix of raising dragons, decorating your islands, breeding dragons, and most importantly gaining experience so you can raise your level and unlock more cool stuff.  Experience is gained in many ways including clearing brush, building things, growing food and clearing Goals the game sets up for you. These Goals are a nice touch as they give you some general direction in playing the game.  They can also reward you with bonus food or gold! One of the most profitable ways to make money is to sell dragon eggs you don't need.  Particularly rare dragon eggs (Mist, Willow, Sun, Rainbow, Moon) can fetch one or two million gold each!

There is a whole special island for dragon hanky-panky

One of the most interesting facets of the game is the breeding.  One would be tempted to turn this Closer Look into a DragonVale Breeding Guide (that would be me), but one would do so in vain.  Breeding in DragonVale does follow basic logic, but there is no set of definitive "how to breed" rules.  A Tree Dragon is the hybrid result of breeding a Plant Dragon and an Earth Dragon; that is a fact.  But a Moss Dragon is also the hybrid result of breeding a Plant Dragon and an Earth Dragon.  How do you determine which one you'll get?  You don't.  Electronic Mother Nature rolls the dice and you get one or the other.  A breeding guide would be redundant, except in a very few cases and we'll get to those soon.  The random element to the breeding aspect of this game keeps it fresh, fun, and occasionally maddening, particularly when it is two days to Valentine's Day and you are frantically trying to breed a Love Dragon before the window of opportunity closes!

So instead of trying to construct anything like a Breeding Guide, I think it would be better to just put together an Official Tour Guide to the Wonderful World of DragonVale and take a look at the many interesting things the game has to offer.

Raising Dragons
The heart of this game is raising dragons and constructing awesome habitats for them to flourish in.  There are 8 basic kinds of dragons that you can raise: Plant, Earth, Fire, Cold, Electricity, Water, Air, and Rare.  Each type of dragon has its own special habitat and most rare dragons have their own habitats as well.  Hybrid Dragons can live in any habitat that is part of their make-up (i.e. Magma dragons can live in Fire or Earth Habitats).  Most dragons are either base dragons or dual hybrids, but there are a few very special, usually limited time offer, dragons that are multiple hybrids of three or four kinds.  The aforementioned Love Dragon is a Fire/Plant/Electricity hybrid.
Raising Dragons requires you to build farms and grow food to feed and mature your dragons.  The higher your level of dragon, the more money it can generate (from seemingly purposeless guests that wander your islands).  Building farms and harvesting food is simple and so is growing your dragons.  Later in the game you can build type-specific shrines that will unlock higher levels your dragons can grow into.  There does not appear to be a rare dragon shrine.
The game is wide open and you are free to raise whichever kind of dragons you choose.  That is definitely part of the appeal.


Colosseum
Although your dragons are already bringing in money on a regular basis, there is an even better way to make them work for you.  Once a day you can enter one of your dragons in competition in the Colosseum.  Your dragon can take home gold, silver and bronze medals.  Each medal rewards you with Gold, Experience, and precious gems.  At its very best, you can take home 5 gems a day this way.  There is no big secret to winning at the Colosseum, but it seems like high levels and pure types do better than hybrids and child-dragons.  The type of event changes every day and there does not seem to be a rare event although rare dragons can compete in any event.

I mark my gold medals with flags because I'm a dork.

Fountain of Youth
At higher levels you will gain access to the Fountain of Youth.  This "building" will enable you to revert your higher level dragons back to their post-hatching form.  Sometimes dragons are just cuter in their pre-adolescent stages.  This is definitely true for the Quake, Lightning and Magma dragons.  The Fountain of Youth effect has no detrimental side effects on your dragons; the change is entirely cosmetic.  You can still raise them up to higher levels and breed them.  This process does take time, however, and your dragon will be out of commission during the transformation.

Fountain of Youth on the left, Hibernation Cave on the right.

Hibernation Cave
One thing DragonVale does limit you on is the number of habitats you can have at one time.  As your level goes up, you often get +1 Max Habitats increasing your total number, but raising levels can take time and overcrowding can quickly become an issue if you are breeding dragons left and right and looking to keep them; you'll find great refuge in the Hibernation Cave.  Available at higher levels, the Hibernation Cave will allow you to stow extra dragons away for later enjoyment.  True, you don't get the make any money off these dragons as they are effectively out of play, but you get to keep them and they will be minty fresh when you pull them back out.  You can upgrade the Cave with gems to increase the capacity. 



Shrines and Boosters
Don't think the game is over just because you maxed all of your dragons out a level 10.  After unlocking all of the habitats you'll gain access to the shrines.  There is a shrine for each kind of dragon and when you honor that shrine you will be allowed to raise your dragons past level 10.  Honoring a shrine is easy, kind of.  All you have to do is raise 50 dragons of that type to level 10.  That sounds like a lot, but hybrids can count for two shrines at once so that will help cut down on some of the grinding.  Higher level dragons earn gold faster and get physically bigger.  They also get a little ball over their head representative of their dominant type.  Just remember, feeding higher level dragons consumes a bounty of food, so keep those farms a growing!

Shines change color when you reach 50 dragons at level 10

Speaking of earning gold (I did!  Three lines ago!), to help your dragons maximize their earning potential, you can also erect boosters for each type.  When these boosters are built they will enhance all dragons and hybrids of their type so that they earn 20% more gold.  But just as each type of dragon has its antithesis, not only will each booster enhance dragons of its type, it will also diminish dragons of the opposing type.  Therefore if you have cold dragons and fire dragons living on the same island and you build a fire booster, your cold dragons will earn less gold as a result.  This creates real havoc when you have hybrids like the Frostfire dragon who is both cold and fire!  The display says that the detrimental effect takes precedence, but there is clearly some kind of cancellation when you have a dragon of two opposing types being boosted.  Thus, your Sandstorm dragon will not loose all of its boost if you have a Air Booster built.  Boosters are excellent, and while some look a little odd, I strongly recommend building one of each type on the islands where you have habitats of that type.

RARE Dragons!

This is what we all play for!  The rare dragons!  Only available through hefty gem prices or through very lucky breeding, the rarest dragons are highly prized and very, very cool looking.  While luck does play a big part in getting a rare dragon, there are certain factors that can influence your chances of landing that oh-so special egg.  In what is a really nice touch, your chances of breeding a Sun Dragon are dramatically increased if you breed dragons in the day time.  Likewise, getting a Moon Dragon is helped greatly by breeding dragons at night.  The Rainbow Dragon is perhaps the most elusive and the internet is aflush with theories about which dragons yield a Rainbow.  I have not seen anything definitive that proves any of those theories true, but if it is working for you don't question it.  I've bred three Sun Dragons and all of them came from different pairings.  I will also say that the special Breeding Island doesn't seem to significantly improve your chances either, no matter what the game tells you.  However, it does double your breeding capacity and that goes a long way. The only real way I know to get the three base rare dragons is to breed and keep breeding your dragons, and eventually you will get that happy message telling you that your breeding time is 48 hours.  Then it is just a matter of waiting the process out to see what kind of dragon you'll get.
And then there are the specialty rare dragons that are released as temporary offerings generally associated with a coming holiday or season.  I've been playing since December and I've seen Bone Dragons (which I assume are from Halloween), Reindeer Dragons, Panlong Dragons, Leap Year Dragons, Love Dragons and Cloverleaf Dragons.  I can only assume they keep them coming.  These dragons are generally hybrids, with the exclusion thus far of the Leap Year Dragon, meaning that your chances of getting them are slightly better since you have some illusion of control.  Take the Reindeer Dragon for instance.  It is a hybrid of Cold and Plant, two things that don't generally mix.  Thus, you will not be able to get a Reindeer Dragon by breeding a Cold and Plant dragon.  The result is trying to figure out which hybrid mix will give you the best chance of breeding a Reindeer.  Originally, I thought that the flag indicators on the dragon's profile gave some indication since they seem to indicate a dominance in type (i.e. the Crystal Dragon lists Lightning then Earth whereas the Quake Dragon lists Earth then Lightning).  However breeding experience has disproven any meaningful correlation between the profile listing and the breeding result.  This might sound annoying, but it turns out to be a lot of fun and keeps the game fresh and new.

The Moon Dragon is maybe my favorite!

So there you have it!  Everything that is cool and fun about DragonVale.  If you aren't already having a blast with this app, go get it!  Then, when you figure out the best recipe for breeding a Sandstorm Dragon, come back here and tell me, I am desperately chasing a second one and cannot seem to find the right mix!

A Closer Look at Smurf’s Village app for the iPhone and iPad

 UPDATE!
This article is still great, but the NEWLY REVISED Poor Smurfer's Almanac for 2012 just hit with all new information about the Dreamy Smurf update, all new crops and more! Check it out today!


  I know what you are saying: “Stan, you have to be smurfing me here!  Are you smurfing serious?”  Yes.  I’m not smurfing your leg.  Trust me, I never would have imagined that this would be something I would ever pay attention to, much less devote my precious time, and yours, to. (watch that preposition dangle!)  But two weeks ago, a friend of mine on that devilish social networking timesuck posted that there was a Smurfs app for the iPhone and better yet, it was a game.  Now, I am a child of the 80’s, two things are very dear to me: Pee Wee Herman, and the Smurfs.  I will always love both with a bizarre and clinical unconditional love that can really only be understood by twins and those who have climbed Mt. Everest.  So when you tell me there is a Smurf game for my phone (which, let’s be honest isn’t really a phone anymore), you have to know I’m going to give it a look.

The Smurf’s Village app, for all intents and purposes, is basically a pretty skin for the already epidemic Farmville or Frontiersville or Petsville or any of those other horrid social networking games developed by Zynga. Well, almost.  There are some important differences and I’ll get to those in a minute.  But first let me tell you how asinine I find those social games like Farmville.  Perhaps the most obnoxious thing since spam emails, these social network “games” are thinly disguised marketing tools used to monitor network activity and promote online interaction to increase the potential to exploit the bottomless resource that is the internet.  Games like Farmville seem to be built not around playing a game that is fun, but in asking your friends for supplies and otherwise cluttering the pages of everyone you know with insightful messages like “Stan, I need 4 nails to finish my fence,” or “Pam just stole a pig from your pen, click here to see what else is going on in Farmville.”  And you get these wonderful missives regardless of whether you partake in the madness or not.  I do not.  Worst of all, Farmville, and its cohorts, entice you to spend REAL MONEY, not video game money, rupees or gil, but REAL MONEY to buy things to speed up the progress of your farm.  And most of the things you spend your REAL MONEY on can be acquired by playing the game, it just takes more time.  So, much like the real Capitalist system, if you don’t want to earn your achievements, you can just buy them.  I pretty much hate everything about these kinds of games.

So how? How can I advocate Smurf’s Village?  My defense is shoddy and rests mainly on the phrase, “but dude, they are smurfs.”  However, I will tell you why I am sinking hours of valuable game time that could be going toward Kirby’s Epic Yarn or EA NFL Training Camp into this stupid little app, and I’ll try to make it sound convincing.

First of all, Smurf’s Village differs from its extremely obnoxious cousins in some very important ways.  Most importantly amongst these ways is that the game play is much more passive than something like Farmville.  There are no pushy messages from friends (even though the game is linked through facebook to your network) to give them things or to harvest their crops.  You can give gifts to your friends, but no one ever contacts you, and if you never connect to the social network, no big deal, the game plays on.  So, right off the bat, SV is not as self-effacing as its predecessors.

Second, the game is simple and fun.  If you are not familiar with these kinds of games, they are basically micro-management games reminiscent of SimCity, Roller Coaster Tycoon, or the Sims.  The premise is minimal: Gargamel found the Smurf village and destroyed it, scattering smurfs far and wide (and apparently spawning multiple clones of distinctive smurfs like Papa, Hefty and Smurfette, since each new village has one…).  Your job is to rebuild a new smurf village and make it flourish so that the smurfs will have a new haven to call home.  This reclamation project requires you to build mushroom houses for the smurfs and then put them to work farming in order to generate more revenue to keep the revitalization going.  Apparently, Papa Smurf is able to sell the produce generated by the farming to an undisclosed outside buyer who will in turn give the smurfs money (not REAL MONEY, let’s get that straight) with which they can buy building supplies, tufts of grass, and moss covered rocks.  Why you have to buy such things is really beyond me.  But those are the tools you use to beautify and enhance your new smurf village.  As you progress in the game, you will gain access to more and more décor items like colored fences, flower patches, and even different kinds of mushroom houses.  The game goes on like this at least up the level 25, the last level in which it is indicated that you can unlock new items.  If you like micro-management games (and I tend to) and the Smurfs (see above), then this game is a fun little diversion.

But you have to maintain that perspective.  See, it’s not all sunshine and roses.  The Smurf’s Village app is absolutely 100% free, but as you well know, you don’t get something for nothing, that’s not the American way.  And this is where shades of Farmville creep into your otherwise smurfy world.  You see, some of the best stuff you can buy: Smurfette’s house, Hefty Smurf’s House, friendly snails and caterpillars (which grant lots of XP daily) cost not in-game money, but smurfberries.  Smurfberries are a rare commodity in the game and you only earn a small amount per day (1 per level early on, after level 10, 2 per level and so on).  No big deal, right? It’s all part of the game.  Wrong.  You see, those great things that cost smurfberries, don’t just cost 5 or 6 berries, they cost 25 or more.  Thus, it could take months just to add Painter Smurf and Farmer Smurf to your village.  It could, but it doesn’t have to.  You can always spend REAL MONEY (again, let’s be clear), and BUY smurfberries from the game.  See the shades?  You don’t have to wait; you can have all of the best things right now, for a price.  Now to be fair, the smurfberries are pretty reasonably priced, if we abandon the idea that paying for video game content is unreasonable to begin with.  Fifty smurfberries only cost five REAL DOLLARS. And fifty smurfberries can net you at least Smurfette’s and Painter’s houses (with a little help from the berries you’ve accumulated along the way).  To make matters worse, smurfberries aren’t just for buying the rare stuff, you can also spend them to speed up the harvest, shorten build time for mushroom houses, or instantly increase your population.  And therein lies the trap.  If you can restrict your smurfberry usage to just those rarities and not things you can get just by being patient, the impact of this otherwise exploitative option is greatly minimized.  If the villages of my friends are any indication, the lure of instant villages is too great.  For some of my friends this appears to sing to the tune of upward of twenty or thirty dollars or more. Guilty admission, I spent $5 to obtain Smurfette’s and Painter’s houses, and I may break down and spend five more REAL DOLLARS for Hefty and Farmer, but after that I will probably be done spending REAL MONEY on video game content for my iPhone.  I justify it by emphasizing how little I am really spending and that I am spending it on having fun like I would if I were going to a rock concert or live theatre.  I justify it with just a twinge of shame. (see my rant about downloadable content from several months ago for a full understanding of my cause for shame)

Honestly, though, the game is fun.  It is fun running the little smurfs around, having them farm and build fences, growing the village and adding new décor elements.  It is fun, plain and simple.  I like micro-management games and this one manages to find a soft, nostalgic spot in my heart.  The game is limited in several important ways, however and I am hopeful that since this is fluid software those issues will be addressed.  Most pressing is the fact that the game is quite limited in scope at this time.  As I stated before, the game stops giving you things to unlock after level 25.  I’ve been playing for about a week and half at this point and I am already nearly level 17.  If they do not release updates or expansions soon, my time with the game will be smurfed.  There is also a lack of diversity in things to do.  Once you have all of your smurfs busy farming and you’ve built everything you can build, there isn’t much else to do.  Sure, there are mini-games to play like Papa Smurf’s Potion Mixing Game or Greedy Smurf’s Baking Challenge, but these are only available for credit (XP) once per day and the games only last about 45 seconds.  The game simply needs other things for you and your smurfs to do.  There are some plot (very loosely understood here) driven tasks to undertake (as in “grow some tomatoes to rid the village of skunk stench”), but the later you get in the game, the more scarce those become.  It can become really easy to lose interest if there aren’t more things to do in the village as the game progresses. I guess I cannot complain too much, however the damn thing is free after all.


FINAL LOOK
So if you are looking for something fun to waste some time with while you wait in line at the DMV or are on a long car trip, Smurfs Village can be a fun way to accomplish just that, but you’ll need to keep things in perspective lest you get seduced into blowing your hard earned cash on something as ephemeral as video game content.


The Poor Smurfer’s Almanac
How to get the best productivity out of your village

Planting Schedules and Yields:
Know your crops!  By planting the right crops at the right time you can maximize your productivity.  Planting certain crops will enable you to generate large sums of coinage or experience in shorter amounts of time.  Not all crops are created equal and planting the wrong crops can several retard the growth of your village.  The chart below details which crops give you the best yields respective to whether you are looking to harvest $ or XP. 

Best Quick Growing Crops (grow time of 1 hour or less)
XP Yield                    $ Yield                      All Purpose
Cucumber (120)         Blueberry (120)         Blueberry
Blueberry (120)          Raspberry (36)          Raspberry
Currants (120*)          Blackberry (12)         Currants
Raspberry (96)           Currants (10*)           Blackberry
Blackberry (60)          Strawberry (9)           Cucumber
Strawberry (45)          Cucumber (8)             Strawberry

Best Mid-Level Crops (grow time of 2-6hours)
Brussels Sprouts (37.5XP  $7.5)
Peas (25XP  $5)
Carrots (16XP  $3.6)
Tomato (13XP  $2.6)

Best Long Term Crops (grow time of 9-24 hours)
XP Yield                      $ Yield                      All Purpose
Onion (14.5)                Corn (15.4)               Artichoke
Artichoke (13)             Sarsaparilla (6.25*)   Sarsaparilla*
Sarsaparilla (12.5*)     Artichoke (2.6)          Watermelon
Watermelon (10)         Watermelon (2)          Pumpkin
Pumpkin (10)               Pumpkin (2)              Corn
Potato (6.25)               Potato (1.25)             Onion
Corn (4.4)                   Onion (0.8)                Potato

XP and $ amounts are calculated on average yield per hour.  The amount of $ is calculated to reflect net profit (gross profit minus seed cost).  (Example: Brussels Sprouts yield 75XP and $20 in 2 hours growth, hence they yield and average of 37.5 XP per hour and $7.5, $15 gross profit minus $5 seed cost)

*The amounts for Currants are averaged up to reflect 2 yields per hour even though they can only be harvested every 40 mins.  This is for simplicity sake, adjust your planting accordingly.
*The amounts for Sarsaparilla are not reflective of their steep 1 Smurfberry seed cost.  Since there is no in-game monetary equivalent for Smurfberries, there is no reasonable way to evaluate seed cost.  You will have to decide the value of this cost and its overall effect on the profitability of planting this crop.

Plant smartly.  A well organized farm can accumulate a great deal of coinage and XP every day.  Depending on when you have time to play, figure out how to harvest the most crops in a day.  If you have a routine sleeping pattern, plant crops just before you go to sleep that will be ready to harvest immediately upon your waking up.  Maximize your grow time the same way for the rest of your day.  Make your farm work for you when you cannot work it.

It is strongly recommended against planting Potatoes, Strawberries, and Tomatoes.  These are the worst of the respective groups and will not accelerate your growth.  Also, with a seed cost of 1 Smurfberry, Sarsaparilla is a poor investment unless you have REAL MONEY to burn.

If you have the time, Blueberries are VERY lucrative!

Once your village is up and running, start populating it with snails and caterpillars.  Both generate a lot of XP daily if you check in on them.  Smurfette is good in the same capacity, but snails and caterpillars are much better and you can have multiples of them.  Plus, with a productive village you can add 2 snails or 1 caterpillar each day. This will help you advance in level much faster than with crops alone.

Later in the game, after you have built your village to your satisfaction and have nothing new to build, you can put your money to use buying XP by buying scenery and then deleting it.  Sure, this is a bit unethical, but it can turn money you are not using into valuable XP.

Design your village smartly.  You may want to consider dividing up your field into sections.  One section should be devoted to generating XP and the other coins.  Or simply design two separate fields and dedicate each to a task.

Unless you just have lots of REAL MONEY to burn, don’t waste Smurfberries on instantly growing crops or building houses.  Save your Smurfberries for things like the special smurfs or rare items.

Farmer Smurf is very important.  He can increase the yield on crops grown in fields that touch the perimeter of his house by 50%.  This means that up to 8 fields can see significant yield increases due to his presence.  He should be the first smurf you spend Smurfberries on.  You can arrange it so that he influences a full 8 fields, if you stagger your fields correctly.

Build bridges as soon as possible.  They greatly increase the size of your village and thus the arable land available.

Upgrade Smurf houses regularly to increase your population.  There are limits to the number of houses you can have per level, so this will help grow your village and get around this limitation.

Thanks for taking a look and have a smurfy time giving these hapless smurfs a new home!  Enjoy the smurf out of this fun little game!