Hunting treasure, opening a hotel

I am getting used to the pace at Treasure Isle. You use your energy in a few minutes then move on to other things. There is not as great a temptation to linger, as with some other games. Also the game's developers heard complaints about the energy issue and added a lot more hidden fruit (which gives the avatar energy) within the game.

My latest social app foray is Hotel City. Players build and decorate rooms which then fill with guests who pay based on size of room. Hoteliers also have to decorate their rooms to attract guests and earn stars. My establishment is currently a four-star one. The highest is five-star. Like a general. It is fun to watch the figures working, working out in the gym, resting, and rising.

Acquiring funds and guests is not always, shall we say, genteel. Bags of cash sit in friends' hotel lobbies, which players take. We do not have to do anything helpful on the properties we visit, as in island or farm games where players shoo away crows, rake up leaves, clear away washed up jellyfish, etc. Just grab the dough and go. If our own hotel is not filling up fast enough, we can literally grab passersby and put them by our elevator. Usually they take the hint and decide to check in for a nap, maybe thinking that otherwise they might end up sleeping with the fishes. The shakedown may continue after that, though. One odd way of gaining geld is to randomly roust guests from their slumber. Usually they do a couple of jumping jacks and then dive back under the covers for more ZZZZs. One has money and gives it over. Perhaps the game's creators have an affinity for the gangster genre.

Treasure Isle

Zynga, creators of the Villes (PetVille, YoVille, FarmVille)is getting their feet wet in the treasure genre with Treasure Isle. It just became available today, for me anyway.
It has elements of several different types of games. Players have a home island where they rest, garden, and decorate. The home island also has a gem tree, with jewels of a particular color. Mine is blue. It looks like players want to befriend neighbors with different color gems as different treasure chests require varying colors of gems to open.
Resting is an important element in this game, as energy is a limited commodity. I ran out after just a few minutes of digging for gold and treasure chests. Rather like the real world, in that respect, where I also run out of steam after a short period of exertion. This is different, though, from games like PetVille and YoVille where one can play for much longer without energy becoming an issue. One gains energy by resting, eating fruit (which you can grow on your home island or find on islands you visit), or buying energy packs. This is somewhat similar to the leisure principle at Social City, another fairly new game I play. There players have to build in a certain percentage of leisure options such as water parks and museums to keep the population happy and growing. New citizens will refuse to move into your town when the work/leisure ratio is off and you need the population to keep growing in order to build new factories to earn more money.
I do see a downside for nature-lovers in this island paradise game. Treasure hunters down tropical foliage with machetes to get at the treasure buried beneath. Perhaps a future update will allow those of us who are overly sensitive to environmental ethics to plant seedlings to replace what we dig up. :)

April Fools on the Farm and Ranch

Farmville has a few fun things going on for April Fools Day. You can grow nachos as a crop, earning one experience point and doubling your modest investment of 25 coins in just two hours. The "seed" is a spilled bag of tortilla chips. Farmers can also digitally TP their neighbors' barns or buy - for FarmCash - some truly odd creatures.

SPP Ranchers meanwhile are finding that animals bought today appear to all be named "Ha." The store also features 100-coin animals that mature in a matter of seconds for ... 100 coins!

I do not see any April Foolishness happening in Yoville or Petville. Both, however, along with Farmville are going all out for Easter, "egging" players on to request, gather, and redeem eggs for collectible items. I also just checked to see whether Social City was getting on the silly action. Perhaps a whoopie cushion factory contract for today only? No such luck.

In short, some social app games are getting into the spirit of the day, others not so much. These games are by their nature whimsical. Hopefully next year we will see more whimsy on top of whimsy.