User blog:Soosieloo/Chaining Chunked Cheery Casual Creative Cities



Say what?

Ok, it was a mouthful, but basically I wanted to chat about how the advent of chaining changed the outlook of villages in the wee world of Tiny Village. That little brilliant minigame that I myself enjoy playing started a wave of redecoration throughout the lands. Suddenly it behooved...(is that a real word and where on earth did it come from, pontificating horses? Anyway, I digress) players to reorganize their villages into the best groupings to gain huge chain results.

Gone went idyllic townships with carefully planted borders, gone went those pretty decorations that yielded little to no tax, out the window went themes and fun little nooks of creative genius and silliness. Now village after village is a homage to efficiency. Tucked into dusty inventories are those interesting but crap yielding stores and decorations.to be replaced with acres and acres of high tax decorations and stores grouped together like the Borg, resistance is futile! Join us... and I did.



A great game appeals to many different mindsets; the gatherers, the hunters, the efficiency experts, the number crunchers, the role players, the zergs, the list goes on. Tiny village has met a lot of those goals by having many activities to do and goals, both long and short term to plan for. For me, I like the creative ways to decorate villages. I get a little thrill when I see someone who put together two dissimilar decorations to get a whole new look. I appreciate every plant chosen in others villages, knowing that the player pored over all the options in order to get the look they saw in their mind. Its what I love about the Village.



My favorite activity is visiting other players and seeing what they have come up with and each used to be as different as snowflakes, but for months now its just village after village of efficiency. I get it... Really I do. I am torn between gaining levels and earning enough cash to buy the next expansion or Rock. In fact I used to have a total mish mash of high tax items crammed in together with no thought to layout or meaning. It was earnings first, experience second.

It was remarkably painful to take the first step (and the lousy inventory interface didn't help one bit) and start to remove items and reshuffle the layout to be more pleasing aesthetically. In the end I compromised, I sectioned of less then half for frivolity and left the rest for efficiency. The biggest surprise was realizing that I still gained enough experience and cash to keep up with a laid back leveling goal and be able to buy my upgrades.

Is it the best layout? geeze no, it would drive an efficiency player nutty and a purist decorator would snort at my ugly efficiency section. But my goodness, it's FUN. Once I let go of tax earnings and looked at items purely for how they looked then my whole game opened up again. I have many ideas for themes for the future, my inventory is almost maxed out so what will go to the chopping block first? Worthless decorations or those good chaining but ugly items? Guess. hah! I mean really... why do we knock ourselves out every week gathering up those new items if we only shove them into clogged inventories never to light again?

Anyway, I just want to encourage more players to get back to those first days of playing, when we gleefully landscaped our 2 houses and 3 buildings. That innocence of fun before the reality of ginormous experience needs and money costs for the future turned us all into efficiency experts. One day I will get rid of everything that doesn't please me and have a 100 percent decorating village. One day.... erm.. Well.. I just need to get to cap first and I have a couple expansions yet.. oh wait.. I still need a couple more Magic Rocks... oh crap.

*sighs and breaks out more scooter stores