Picture this: You’re a restless explorer, and you’re returning to your father’s estate for the first time in years. Your father is long gone, and so are his millions. You walk onto the estate lands and your eyes immediately fall on the tattered buildings, the sour fields, and the rusted corpses of vehicles parked willy-nilly. You sigh, and drop your pack on the dirt with a thud. You steel yourself, roll up your sleeves, and sit down on Facebook to manage your virtual inheritance through Dynasty, because your parents don’t actually own any property except for a centipede-ridden bungalow in the suburbs.
Picture this: You’re a restless explorer, and you’re returning to your father’s estate for the first time in years. Your father is long gone, and so are his millions. You walk onto the estate lands and your eyes immediately fall on the tattered buildings, the sour fields, and the rusted corpses of vehicles parked willy-nilly. You sigh, and drop your pack on the dirt with a thud. You steel yourself, roll up your sleeves, and sit down on Facebook to manage your virtual inheritance through Dynasty, because your parents don’t actually own any property except for a centipede-ridden bungalow in the suburbs.
Dynasty puts you in the pantaloons of a 1930’s-era explorer (people wore pantaloons back then, right?) who returns home after a falling-out with his father, only to discover that late pop’s estate is in ruins and the family fortune has been siphoned away by con men. Your job is to restore your family’s property back to its original glory, starting with the farm and the house, and then moving to the suburbs and beyond if you can hack it.
Dynasty is a pretty typical property management/building game, but its huge size makes it compelling. After making a few basic repairs to the house and grounds, you move on to make your farms, orchards, and gardens profitable once more. This involves tilling the fields, planting fruits and vegetables, harvesting them, and selling them in your stores. In time, you can even raise cows for milk, and pigs for their sausage (oink!).
You don’t have access to the entirety of your grounds right off the bat, though. The fields are shrouded in fog (“Durn it Pa, what’d I say about buying land in Silent Hill?”), and you need to “Explore” them before they can be used in any manner. Exploration requires the compass item, and one compass clears away a large patch of fog. There is a lot of fog to get through, though, and unsurprisingly, the compass is a premium item. Thankfully, Dynasty hands them out for leveling up, or just for being cool.
In fact, Dynasty is a well-paced game—for the most part. You level up quickly, and you have a lot of in-game cash to throw around on projects when you first start playing. Unfortunately, everything you do requires a unit of energy, so expect to run out quickly and then wait around for a while before you can resume playing.
Dynasty also suffers from a poorly-written script that can impede your ability to follow directions, and there are graphic glitches as well. Once in a while you come across an item that appears to be missing its image file, so instead of a water tower, you get a black square that’s lodged in “Loading…” limbo.
Despite its flaws, Dynasty is among the more solid game offerings on Facebook. There’s lots to see and do, and tons of goals to aspire towards. Give it a try, and make ol’ Pa proud of you.
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