Before you ask, no. I don't use Facebook for anything other than contacting distant relatives who I won't give my number out to. I only recently started to try games on it out of sheer boredom. Here are a few I tried:
Candy Crush Soda: Eh.
So maybe I just played the wrong game, but I decided to try out Candy Crush Soda today. I've heard of how much of a hit Candy Crush Saga became and how allegedly addicting it was, so it seemed fitting to try it when I found that I could play it on my laptop. After a few turns of playing and a few levels... I was incredibly underwhelmed by my findings.
On all account, Candy Crush Soda is a relatively alright puzzle game match three candies or special combos to break bottles or free bears, or whatever else the game will eventually offer, but the problem is that the game is rather standard. Having played a ton of match 3 games in my time I have no clue why this is so popular. It's... Fun, I guess, in short intervals, but I find myself getting bored after a few goes. I can't even empty my current energy before I'm ready to quit.
The difficulty on the game is basically 'luck'. No easy, no hard, just luck. Getting a good or bad hand is mostly what gets you through. Not much thinking is needed to get through a level and the success you get is a brief score and showing you reached the next level in the line. Little sort of reward of any kind and every moment I worked at a level I felt like I was just wasting time.
Not sure why everyone talks about how addicting this is. I had a harder time forcing myself to keep playing.
Cafeland: Plays itself.
At first I really thought Cafeland was a cute idle game that was relatively fun, but soon I realized that it lacks any form of time management. It's mostly a waiting game. Once you fill your counters with food there's nothing you can do except click tips off of tables and wait. The quickest food to finish takes ten seconds and has only ten servings, foods that take longer have more servings, but it baffles me seeing things like steaks that take ten hours to cook. It's sort of unbelievable.
The challenges quickly need you to make these longer dishes too. It doesn't help that they also can go bad; if you start a ten hour meal you better be back or it will spoil. Then you can buy a sauce to fix it, but the money system is- Well, bluntly, it all leads back to real money. You can buy some things with hearts, you can buy hearts with dollars, and you can buy dollars with real money.
More of a screensaver than a game. I may keep checking in, but I don't foresee it getting any better than this point.
Cross Stitch World: Actually Enjoyable
Maybe it's just me, but I actually found myself interested in the relatively uninteresting gameplay. It's sort of when you zone out doing a meager task; such as matching colored thread to spots to make a picture. It's quite slow and not for everyone, but I found that it eased any frustration or anxiety I had while doing it.
That being said, it can eat a lot of time, and a single crossstitch took about two hours when I went for fifteen minutes, stopped, and started again. There was also only about ten immediately offered patterns. There may be more, but I'm under the impression that you'd have to buy more. Unfortunately I don't think it would be fun to do the same one twice so I'm guessing there's actually a limit that I'd hit quicker if the cross stitch wasn't as long as it was.
Again, it is something that depends fully on the person playing, and I recommend playing while listening to something in the background or watching TV.
Suburbia: My Neighbor Ned
I was drawn in thinking it was like the Sims and, to my surprise, it actually really is. You uncover one of those 'scandalous' stories that you'll see involving any desperate housewife. While I normally am bored stiff of this sort of over-dramatic soap opera-like scenario, I found that I kind of liked the game. It basically feels like a big parody and it doesn't take itself very seriously.
Basically you become the owner of a rundown house gifted to you by a friend. Next thing you know, you're involved in the disappearance of a rockstar, a murder, and Ned 'Flanders' who constantly looks like he's yelling and is obsessed with his garden. All the while you can fix your house up as well.
There are some problems; later on energy gets eaten rather quickly. In one level you have to fix Ned's garden after he goes on a rampage. That means you need to fertilize the tulips eight times and water them eight times; all of which takes one energy. So no matter what you will have to stop playing and return later to finish it. Sometimes you will need items to complete a task; but thankfully you can search for them which wastes energy instead of actual money.
Yet at the same time it is frustrating to spam a high cabinet four to five times just to get a bowl of sugar that may not appear. It's also difficult when skills take so long to grow. Some will take one energy and then need thirty minutes to grow to the point where you can gather the experience from them. It just seems like the energy disappears very quickly, but it also seems to refuel quick enough. About five minutes a point and sometimes you can also collect energy from other means.
All in all, I do think I'll return to the game for a while. Less to discover the story and more just to try to see where the game will lead me; I don't expect any surprises but I do feel like I am enjoying myself well enough.
Well, that's it for now! I'll make another of these once I have found four more Facebook games worth mentioning!
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