City of Wonder: Day 30

 City of Wonder was my favorite of the Social Network Games by far. Between the global economy, quests, UI, and aesthetics, I was never bored with the game. It used just the right amount of social networking and gaming to keep me coming.

The only limiting factor of the game was the requirement for more allies to expand your civilization. I don't necessarily think it was unreasonable for the game itself, but rather because not enough of my friends play the game.

In comparison to the other games, City of Wonder did not require as much time to play. I was satisfied logging in twice a day. I would usually collect my crops, then replant then logout. I am sure that as you ad more colonies the micromanagement required would be more.

 The social aspect of the game was divided into 3 functions:

1. Expansion: In order to expand your territory, you were required to have x amount of allies. I would be upset by this but FarmVille, and probably a dozen others require this.
2. Quests: Certain quests required you to receive gifts from allies. It was a simple process that used the Facebook system to do it. The only problem was that, unless all of your friends played regularly, you would either have to wait a long time to complete simple quests, or you would have to dish out real world cash.
3. Economy: Allies provided economy that is equivalent to properties in Mafia Wars. About once a day, you can visit your friends property and collect money from them.

City of Wonder used "Gold Bars" that you could purchase and use in game to finish quests and purchase unique items. For $10, you can buy 42 Gold bars which works out to 42¢ per Gold Bar, which is consistent with other games. A majority of those Gold bars had to go into finishing the Zombie quest chain, 32 in fact. What made this worst, was the fact that even with all those Gold Bars spent, I never really got that close to completing the chain. You could easily dump a lot of money into this game without thinking. T

City of Wonder (Colony) - Day 30

The ability to expand to a Colony was a nice feature for the game and extended gameplay, but the colony experience was only a fraction of the main civilization. Most of the items in the colony required Gold Bars, and did very little for the overall experience.

I really enjoyed the workshop feature of the game. Using goods collected from your various farms and quarries, you can build very nice properties that have vastly superior stats to other that you have to buy.

City of Wonder (Home) - Day 30

The researching of the game started out as a simple, but then quickly grew to be complex and limiting. Not necessarily because of the cost, but because of the time involved. Later in the game, certain researches needed days to complete. My inability to complete the zombie quest chain was because I didn't have the knowledge to build certain goods until I researched them.

There are 2 types of quests involved with City of Wonders:

1. Hero Quests: These are simple quests that require you to buy items, attack, or perform actions that lead to you gaining a hero. Heroes provide things like faster research time, better attack, cleaning buildings, etc.
2. Special Quest Chains: These are long quests chains that require you to buy or craft buildings s well as other special tasks. I chose the Zombie chain which was pretty cool, however it didn't exactly help the overall aesthetics of my civilization. I gave them a nice area to the west that they can use to slaughter innocents for brains and whatever zombies do in their free time.

 Once again, I was very happy with this game, and will probably miss it the most.