Virtual Villagers Review



Posted on Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Virtual Villagers is a sim game for those who don't like too much interaction

Main screen

The idea behind Virtual Villagers is that a small group of people are separated from their tribe and wash ashore on this beautiful island paradise. With your help, they can reap the bounty of the land, discover nature's secrets and prosper. It's sort of what life would be like if God were a busybody who told you where to go and what to do every minute of the day.

As with most sim games, you have a limited number of tasks to perform just for basic survival. Food must be gathered to keep everyone alive and new huts must be built or the population never goes up. To improve the villager's quality of life, research must be done to discover new technologies such as medicine.

Let's see how the game is actually played.

Virtual Villagers is not a large sim. The map is small, so the options your villagers have are limited. You direct your villagers by grabbing them with the cursor and dumping them where there's work to be done. Food is usually gathered by fishing or from a berry bush. Grab any villager and drop them on either of these objects and they'll start gathering food and filling up the storehouse. Some villagers are slow learners so you have to dump them at their assigned task several times before they stop wandering off. When a villager repeatedly performs the same task, they become proficient at it and can pass the knowledge onto other villagers.

Doing Research
A villager
doing research 3 Researchers
Three villagers
produce research
faster Research is done by dropping villagers at a long table where the move things around and develop technology points. If you drop a villager on strange plants or other new objects on the map, they will research that and gain knowledge. The healing power of some villagers becomes enhanced when you research certain plants. Building is done using a similar drag and drop technique. The technology chart is shown below.


Technology chart

Now and then, one of the children will find a new object that only they can collect. Pick the object up and you get a bonus when enough of them are collected. Mushrooms can only be collected by children and can be used as a food source. Aside from collecting a limited number of objects, the children usually just play until they reach 14 or 15 when they're old enough to work.

Selecting a villager
Selecting a
villager You can also drag and drop the villagers on each other. When you drop a healer on a sick person, the healer will heal the sick person. When you drop a male on a female or a female on a male, they wander off into a hut if they are compatible, have sex, and in some cases, produce a baby. If they aren't compatible, one of the villagers runs away making you feel like a lecher or some kind of creep. I know the Sims made great use of this feature but it seems a bit awkward in this game.

Unfortunately, you quickly run out of things to do. The technology points are produced at a snails pace as is your population. Women who have babies stop working to care for the baby until it is older which takes quite awhile. Researching individual items takes some time but they appear in a limited number. The map is very small and can be explored in ten minutes. A view of the map is shown below.

Small Map

The game gets around the slow pace by having the villagers continue to "work" even when you're not playing. I think the game does this by determining how much time has passed since you last played and then calculates the progress your villagers would have made had you left the game on the entire time. You'll notice increased amounts of anything the villagers were working on such as food or research points and that all the villagers are older. The game does NOT run in the background while you're not playing it.



This is how I rate Virtual Villagers:


Cost - Like most casual games - cheap - less than $10

Available Platforms - Pc and Mac

Gameplay - The game commands are easy to learn but progress takes a long time. This is a good game if you like a sim but don't like spending hours at time playing it. You give your villagers tasks, turn the game off, do something else until the next day. You can then check their progress and give them new goals. This is a very slow starting game.

Graphics - Nicely drawn and clear. You can easily tell the villagers apart.

Originality - This game reminds me of Giga Pets meet The Sims. A great idea if you don't want to devote too much time to a game but still like to see the progress. It's not so great of idea if you like to get into all of the details only to find out there's nothing left to do.

Strong Points - A great sim if you don't want to invest considerable time in the game.

Weak Points - A poor game if you're looking for a complex sim.

Boredom/Frustration Ratio: 4/1 - I found the game dull but I like sim games where there's lots of things to do.

Overall Rating: 6

Conclusion:This game is a great idea if you want a sim that you can successfully play for short periods of time. More in depth players may find this a bit light but not everyone likes devoting months to a PC game. The complexity of the game grows as you go along but the early play may not hold your interest long enough to get there.


Download Virtual Villagers for PC
or
Download Virtual Villagers for Mac
 from The Shareware Genie and try it for one hour free. The price has been reduced to $9.99.