The Return of the Villagers: Virtual Villagers 2 The Lost Children
The Virtual Villagers are back, in a new game:

Virtual Villagers Chapter 2: The Lost Children

The new game picks up around the "end" of the original game, though you don't need to have played the first one to enjoy the sequel. Once the mysterious cave with the remnants of the original inhabitants were found, two of the villagers wandered deep into it and discovered a vine-covered opening on the other side. Pushing through, they fell down a steep, slippery rocks and a waterfall.

What they discovered on the other side was the remnants of another village - this time, with several dirty, hungry children in need of care.

Who are these lost children? What happened to their parents? You get to discover the answers yourself in this sequel to the hit casual sim / strategy game of last year.

I don't consider myself much of a casual gamer, but a few casual games have hooked me. Virtual Villagers was one. Maybe it was just the appeal of living on a tropical island paradise. Of course, I'm also a sucker for "sim" games, like Outpost Kaloki, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Sim City, and so forth. Virtual Villagers was a fresh take on the genre. One of the more interesting elements of the game was that it would continue to "run" in real-time while you weren't playing - unless you chose to pause it, say if you were actually taking off for a REAL trip to vacation on a tropical island paradise.... mmmmm....... oh, sorry. Where was I again?

Anyway, the result was a game that you could play for just a few minutes a day. You could spend fifteen minutes at a time checking up on your villagers, assigning tasks, helping those villagers newly grown into adulthood get started supporting the village, buy technologies, solve quests, and have the children find mushrooms to support the village food supply. A downside of the game was that once you got everything situated, there wasn't a whole lot of reason to actively play, other than to find more mushrooms for the children to retrieve.

The new game adds several more activities to the mix to make things more interesting than ever. There's just more to do. In addition to mushrooms, there are now collectables to be found on the island. The collectables are also retrieved by the children, and unlock new secrets or can be used to increase research towards new technologies. There are also the sixteen mysteries (or quests) to solve, emotional states, a new "sewing hut" you can build to customize your village and change their outfits, and more. The end result is that even during the more slow, stable parts of the games, there's more stuff to do and tweak to improve your village.

Fortunately, it doesn't seem like they've stomped on anything that made the first game so fun to play. The sequel is every bit as fun as the original, and more. While there are lots of differences (different technology, mysteries, special events, and so forth) between the two game, the sequel has lost none of the original's charm.

Anyway - if you liked the original (or never tried the original), I'd recommend checking out Virtual Villagers 2. The demo is available for free to try it out and see what you think at the following link:

Virtual Villagers Chapter 2: The Lost Children


(Vaguely) related things written while wishing I was on a tropical island paradise:
* Tamagotchi Villagers
* Dead Villagers
* Virtual Villagers II Developer's Diary
.

Labels: casual games, Game Announcements, strategy games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:41 AM (Permalink)