Social games seem to be gaining more and more traction on the iPhone every day, though it’s been awhile since we had a real stand out star in the genre. Trade Nations is angling to be the platform’s next big star, taking the medieval castle building experience to a deeper level than is typically seen in social games.
Social games seem to be gaining more and more traction on the iPhone every day, though it’s been awhile since we had a real stand out star in the genre. Trade Nations is angling to be the platform’s next big star, taking the medieval castle building experience to a deeper level than is typically seen in social games.
Trade Nations uses the social formula popularized by We Rule as a starting point and expands upon it with deeper gameplay mechanics. Players will still be able to collect taxes, visit neighbours, and use buildings to create items for profit – but they’ll also need to gather resources, assign jobs, and complete trades in the marketplace.
Different buildings and items will require different resources to be constructed. This means players will need to gather raw materials ranging from wood and wheat to rocks and cotton. Once collected, players can use those materials to build new items and buildings or simply sell them in the market for gold.
Building a cottage creates one worker, and that worker can be assigned to gather a specific material. Material gathering will occur even when you’re not logged in, but each material gatherer can only hold so much of their resource before you come and collect it. It’s not unlike the money collection in games like Happy Island. In an interesting twist, you can use assign another worker to transport the resources to a storage facility, which automates the entire process letting you check in on your village less, but also forces you to give up one of your precious workforce that might be better utilized somewhere else.
Like all social games, there’s an in-app purchase element here that isn’t required to enjoy the offering, but can certainly help to speed things up for impatient gamers. “Magic beans” can be purchased to make workers “hurry,” forcing collection of raw materials or production of new items to happen the moment you want them.
Social games on the iPhone often stress-test their servers with an early Canadian release, and it appears Trade Nations is following suit. The game is currently available in Canada, but once they have faith in the server stability Trade Nations will no doubt be available in an App Store near you. As of right now, the official launch window is “later this year.”
Want to know when Trade Nations is released worldwide? Be sure to set a Gamezebo game alert to let you know the moment it’s available!
