Today FarmVille will receive its second major expansion, as Zynga follows up the release of English Countryside with Lighthouse Cove. The third farm will let players enjoy a new location, complete with characters and a story, that are all designed to coincide with the incoming fall season. There’s even a new restaurant feature and, more importantly, a cove full of playful dolphins.
Today FarmVille will receive its second major expansion, as Zynga follows up the release of English Countryside with Lighthouse Cove. The third farm will let players enjoy a new location, complete with characters and a story, that are all designed to coincide with the incoming fall season. There’s even a new restaurant feature and, more importantly, a cove full of playful dolphins.
The expansion begins when a woman named Brenda who invites you down to the cove for a little autumn adventure. Problem is, much of the area has been damaged, and so you’ll be spending your time building up a new farm and returning the cove to its former glory. In addition to the seasonal theme of the new location, one of the more interesting new features is that your farm is not only located along the water’s edge, the water is actually part of your farm. You’ll be able to actually harvest the sea, capturing clams, lobsters, and other creatures.
And what you manage to catch will be put to good use thanks to a new restaurant mechanic. Here, thanks to the help of chef Roland, you’ll be able to learn new recipes for regional cuisine like lobster rolls and clam chowder.
Along with Brenda, Roland will factor into the all new story, which will revolve around the restoration of the cove. There might even be some surprises come Halloween. But unlike the English Countryside expansion, which lets players race through the story as quickly as they wanted to, Lighthouse Cove will feature timed quests, with a new chapter released every Monday. According to FarmVille GM Nate Etter, this change was made so that players would be able to enjoy the story at the same time.
While Zynga has been on a bit of a tear recently, releasing a number of new games including Empires & Allies and Adventure World, Etter told Gamezebo that this new expansion shows that the developer is as committed to its live games as it is to launching new releases.
The expansion has actually been available for the past week to select players, but today it goes live for everyone. In order to get your invitation to the cove you’ll need to be at level 15 or higher.
This June FarmVille will celebrate its second anniversary. And though it’s been around for a while, the game still the second most popular title on all of Facebook. So what’s next? Zynga wants to take you, and your farm, to the English Countryside.
Sometime in the next few weeks the game will see its biggest update ever. Players will be able to get to work on a second farm, in a whole new location. One filled with new gameplay ideas and even a structured narrative. Gamezebo recently had the chance to take a look at the English Countryside update and chat with FarmVille GM Todd Arnold and senior director of product Manuel Bronstein Bendayan about just what players can expect.
According to Arnold, the idea for the game actually stemmed from a problem: a lack of space.
“The origin of the idea was about players always wanting more space,” he told Gamezebo. “There’s never quite enough space. We give players more space through the normal course of playing the game already, but the whole idea of having a completely separate and distinct second farm was where this all started.”
And from there the idea grew, turning from simply giving players a second farm to creating a whole new setting and even adding in story elements.
The update will be available to all players at level 20 and higher, and will begin with an airship crash landing on your farm. As it turns out, the airship is the property of an English Duke who just so happens to need help with a farm back home. So he offers you the deed to that farm…provided you help him repair his ship first.
That’s how the story begins, and once you make your way across the pond to your quaint new farm you’ll be introduced to new characters and story elements. Additional chapters will be released periodically, and we’re told that the story is in-depth and that there will be an actual end to it as well. However, if you’d rather just play FarmVille in a new location without dealing with any sort of narrative, there’s that option too.
“In terms of playing FarmVille the way that you know and love it, but in the context of the English Countryside, that’s entirely available,” said Arnold. “If you decide to proceed through the narrative and accomplish the objectives that the Duke, and Agatha, and the other characters lay out for you, that’s an additional dimension on top of that.”
As for new game content, there will be new crops, items, and buildings (including a pub where you can craft all new items), of course with an English theme. And you don’t even have to worry about making new neighbors, as you’ll be able to keep the ones from your first farm.
But the most significant gameplay update is probably the new sheep breeding mechanic. With this you can pick any ram and any ewe to breed a cute little baby sheep. The baby will take on some of the characteristics of its parents, but exactly how it will look will be a mystery until it grows up. And with the sheep coming in all sorts of colors and patterns, this will likely become a pretty addictive diversion.
One of the main goals of the English Countryside update is to bring back players who may have left the game, in addition to giving current players something new to play with. And it looks like it may just succeed. Between the fresh new setting, the addition of story and characters, and the new features like sheep breeding, there’s a whole lot to get excited about for FarmVille fans, both current and lapsed.
Stay tuned to Gamezebo to find out just when the update goes live, which should be sometime in the next few weeks.
