Ten Days With Castaways: Virtual Villagers 2 Playthrough, Part 5
Over the last couple weeks, I have decided to chronicle my experiences with a group of villagers in the hit game, "Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children" (AKA Virtual Villagers 2) by Last Day of Work (and available from Rampant Games). Of course, me being who I am, I couldn't help but inject a little bit of role-playing and my twisted imagination to abuse the game a little. Or a lot.

Since the game allows you to rename your little villagers, and you begin with seven... stranded castaways... So here's the story of ten days on Gilligan's Island, as simulated by Virtual Villagers 2.

Day 9: The Island Survivor!
Aw, man. The Skipper, the first Esteemed Elder of our tropic island nest, kicked the bucket. His bones littered the village center when I logged in to check out how things were going. Old age finally caught up with him. At least he won't be smacking Gilligan around with his hat anymore.

Aside for a brief funeral procession, life in the village proceeded pretty normally. More than half of the original crew of the S.S. Minnow have gone back to that tropic port in the sky. I have two collections from the kids now that are shy of only one final item to fill out. The food table is overflowing, with over 10,000 units of food, so starvation is just not an issue anymore. We can just about neglect the farming at this point...

... And they do. The villager, left on their own, are gravitating towards research or fishing. Or rain-dancing. Or doing laundry. Or playing in the pond. Our little survivors now have lives of leisure!

Ellie May, however, will have none of it. There's not much to build these days, so she's not able to apply her "Master Builder" talents. She swaps between research and farming, and is soon an expert in both skills. This earns her the "Esteemed Elder" title, and another ugly-but-colorful totem to go next to that of the now-deceased Skipper and Gilligan.

Near the end of the day, both Gilligan and Mary Ann have died. Another funeral procession takes place. Since just about everyone left on the island was either a direct result of their... oh, shall we say, productivity... or partners in the same... I imagine there is much mourning for the Esteemed Elder and his sometimes-girlfriend.

Eunice "Lovey" Wentworth Howell is the sole survivor of the original crew of the S.S. Minnow. I guess she's supposed to win the million dollars, but as she and Thurston often found, there's no place to spend it on the island.

Day 10: Now This is the Tale of our Castaways, They're Here For a Long, Long Time...
I'm just getting used to seeing skeletons to clean up when I first log into the game. As expected, Lovey didn't survive through the entire night. Game Over for the original crew. But at least she survived into Day 10.

Bob and Ellie May, the first children born to the island of the original crew, are now elderly as well. However, we achieve a breakthrough in modern island medicine (due in part to the tireless efforts of our two elderly master scientists), and they miraculously go from being elderly to being healthy! All the villagers rejoice!

A parrot flies into the village, and all the children learn to treat it like a pet. Apparently, this gives them parenting skills. So that one day, they can hope to be as productive as their ancestors, Gilligan and Mary Ann, one day.

A very strange thing happens at the end of the day. I get a message that says one of the children remembers something of the mystery of the island and the original villagers (crew). I guess this is some kind of collective unconscious thing, because the last child who'd have remembered anything died this morning. A ghost, maybe?

Or maybe my island villagers may develop some kind of voodoo cult! That'd be cool!

As the day closes, my village's population is 21. We've got a little over half of the puzzles solved, two technologies maxed out, no collections completed, and the whole worrying starvation thing licked. The original castaways have passed on, but their legacy is in really good shape.

Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children Thoughts (Conclusion)
Well, there you go. Ten days, playing approximately four sessions per day, ranging from 5 minutes to 30 minutes per session.

At the time I did this writeup, another week has gone by from day 10, and the SS Minnow Tribe has grown to nearly 70 people. We've got somewhere over 100,000 food, so the villagers don't need much work. All technologies have been finished long ago, so the tech points are mainly used for changing outfits at the clothing hut (something I didn't mention in the write-up, as I never used it after it was completed).

While I don't consider myself much of a "casual game" fan, I am a "Sim" game fan. The unique feature of the Virtual Villagers games is that they are designed to be played in short segments - often no more than 10 or 15 minutes per day. Things got a little more insane during the close-to-starvation segments of the game.

I won't pretend I came anywhere close to picking an optimal path for my villagers to progress. If you happen to get all hardcore over this game, there is a built-in, online leaderboard so you can check how you fare against other players. I'm pretty close to the bottom percentile in all categories.

But as you can tell, I had a lot of fun with it. And that's what it's all about! Congrats to Last Day of Work for a great game!


(Vaguely) related island wackiness:
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 4
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 3
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 2
* Ten Days With Castaways, Part 1
.

Labels: casual games

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