Line #57 VideoGame/FarmVille


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1858485_farmville_1.jpg]]
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3	->"Man, Farmville is so huge! Do you realize it's the second-biggest browser-based social-networking-centered farming game in the WORLD?"
4	-->--'''AltText of ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' [[http://xkcd.com/802 #802: Online Communities 2]]'''
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6	''[=FarmVille=]'' is a 2009 [[WebGames flash-based game]] by Zynga Inc., available through Website/{{Facebook}}. You play a farmer, with a single farm (at first) consisting of [[IsometricProjection isometric tiles]]. You plow land, plant crops and trees, buy animals, and harvest them at regular intervals. You may also buy buildings, decorations, vehicles, and various other items, many of which are cosmetic rather than functional. The primary currency is "coins", which are earned through harvesting, completing achievements ("ribbons"), and assisting your neighbors. There is also a secondary currency called "Farm Cash" which is primarily purchased with real money, and is necessary to [[BribingYourWayToVictory buy most of the really good stuff]]. Through working on your farm and buying items, you earn experience, which in turn unlocks better items as you gain levels.
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8	The game promotes socializing and sharing. Your ability to expand your farm is dependent on how many neighbors you have, so if you have Facebook friends who play [=FarmVille=] you will probably be getting a lot of neighbor requests from them. Other than that, there are many items that can only be obtained by having someone send them to you as a gift, and you can earn extra coins, experience, and items by visiting other farms and fertilizing their crops, feeding their chickens, and whatnot.
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10	The game supports many playstyles; you can go for maximum coin earnings, maximum experience gain, become a collector, design your farm around any theme you can imagine, and/or compete in the weekly contests for best looking farm; and allows play in any desired intervals, mainly through having a variety of crops that harvest at different rates, from 2 hours to 5 days.
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12	Updates to ''[=FarmVille=]'' have added additional minigames, including "co-op" quests to farm large quantities of crops in a limited time with help from your neighbors, and the Farmer's Market, which allows trading of "bushels" that can be used for a variety of temporary buffs or combined to manufacture consumable goods. New functional buildings are constantly being introduced, including the chicken coop, dairy farm, horse stable, nursery barn, beehive, garage, pigpen, orchard, duck pond, and sheep pen, which generally let you save space and simplify harvesting while also conferring a special bonus[[note]]Chicken coops allow for the collection of mystery eggs, dairy farms provide calves, horse stables provide foals and mass-harvesting consumables, nursery barns let your baby animals grow up, beehives sometimes provide you with self-fertilization consumables and pollinated seeds, garages let you upgrade vehicles from 2x2 to 4x4, pigpens let you gather special truffles that can be traded for unique items, orchards give you watering cans or mystery seedlings, duck ponds give you ducklings, and sheep pens let you breed rams and ewes together to produce lambs that resemble a mixture of the parents[[/note]].
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14	''Farmville'' is basically the TropeCodifier and [[FollowTheLeader genre launcher]] for games in a social-networking environment: insane customization and [[GottaCatchEmAll collectability]], and progress requiring help from friends. ([[StopPokingMe Just a little]].) The formula works: Farmville has become so insanely popular that Creator/BlizzardEntertainment has [[http://www.massively.com/2010/03/04/activision-farmers-could-kill-wow/ begun to consider it a competitor]] to ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''. And [[FollowTheLeader various other competitors]], such as an announced ''VideoGame/TheSims'' Facebook game.
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16	It is a sister game to ''[=PetVille=]'', ''[=FishVille=]'', ''Videogame/FrontierVille'', and ''Videogame/CityVille''. It's not a well known fact, but Farmville is actually inspired by ''Happy Farm'', developed in China (which itself was inspired by ''Videogame/StoryOfSeasons''). You would think it's usually the other way around.
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18	Due to the deprecation of UsefulNotes/AdobeFlash in browsers, as well as Google Chrome removing support on December 31st, 2020, Zynga announced it would shut ''[=FarmVille=]'' down at the end of the year too. They launched ''[=FarmVille=] 3'' in 2021 as a replacement on mobile phones -- ''[=FarmVille=] 2'' had already existed since 2012 and is also available on mobile, and thus survived the demise of Adobe Flash.
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20	!!This game provides examples of:
21	%% This is not an AllegedlyFreeGame. Read the trope distinctions.
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23	* AmazingTechnicolorWildlife
24	* AntiPoopSocking: You can sit there and obsessively farm berries all day for quick experience, but most crops ripen and most events occur in daily intervals -- and the longer it takes, usually the more it's worth. (Although the game has eventually added some vehicles to make poopsocking more possible.)
25	* {{Arcadia}}: Considering the only places you see in the entire game are farms, pastures and orchards, and everyone is an adorable little farmer in overalls...
26	* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: There's a ''Brontosaurus'' in the market. ''Brontosaurus'' never existed, it should be ''Apatosaurus''. ''Brontosaurus'' [[AccidentallyCorrectWriting would eventually be considered distinct]] from ''Apatosaurus'', but not for several years until after their introduction into the game.
27	* BowChickaWowWow: When sheep breeding was introduced; the sheep and the ram being bred are placed in a separate private part of the pen, and replaced with signs that say Baa Chicka Baa Baa.
28	* BribingYourWayToVictory: The game may be played entirely for free and is fully functional, but there are a whole host of cool items, shortcuts, and time savers available for those who shell out real money for Farm Cash, as opposed to the standard currency of Farm Coins. Farm Cash normally trickles in at the rate of one per level earned[[note]]although special promotions are regularly held, allowing players to subject themselves to extra-aggressive advertising in exchange for a pittance[[/note]].
29	* CanineCompanion
30	* CarnivoreConfusion: None of the animals in the game are kept for slaughter. Somewhat understandable for some animals (cows are kept for milk, chickens are kept for eggs), but downright strange in other places. There is apparently no pork in this universe, as all pigs are used to gather truffles. Horses are not meant to be ridden: they are only there for collecting horsehair. Cats don't catch mice: they're only good at generating yarn, somehow.
31	* ConstantlyLactatingCow: You can milk cows and you can breed them, but you don't need to breed them in order to be able to milk them.
32	* CosmeticAward: Nearly every building and decoration, save a handful of functional ones, is there simply to make your farm look pretty.
33	* CuteKitten: Cats and kittens can be obtained. They are absurdly cute.
34	* DecemberDecemberRomance: Your neighbors Barbara and Walter, who get married over the June 2014 arc- with your help, of course.
35	* DuelingGames: With ''Farm Town'', which ''[=FarmVille=]'' won. Both of these also bear strong similarities to the ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon'' series.
36	* ExperiencePoints: Earned by doing just about everything[[note]]plowing, planting most seeds (usually one or two points per plot), harvesting fertilized crops, finishing collections, fertilizing neighbors' crops, crafting goods, and even buying most decorations (generally 1 exp. per 100 coins spent, or 5-30 exp. per 1 cash spent)[[/note]], each level you gain unlocks new crops and items, and gives you 1 farm cash.
37	* FrothyMugsOfWater:
38	** [[DrinkingGame Take a shot]] whenever you log on and see that your on-farm Winery has started selling "Sweet Energy Drink" instead of Sake.
39	** {{Averted}} (for now) by the co-op missions you can start. They refer to the goods as, for example, "Bloody Mary Mix" rather than "Spicy Tomato Juice".
40	* GottaCatchThemAll: All the different types of trees, animals, buildings that you can construct and expand, miscellaneous decorations, collectibles, mastery signs for crops and goods and trees, and the 160 (and counting) ribbons...
41	* HolidayMode: Many of the decorations (as well as some animals and crops) are limited edition, meaning they can only be bought for a few weeks after they're introduced, and then they become virtually impossible to get your hands on. Limited edition content is usually based around themes, with holidays being especially popular.
42	* InUniverseGameClock: The game uses real world time. Make sure you harvest your crops on schedule, because they'll wither if you leave them alone twice as long as you're supposed to. Some daily activities (like buying goods and bushels) reset at midnight, while most daily activities (like harvesting your chicken coop) use a 23-hour timer that starts counting from the last time you used it.
43	%%* IsometricProjection
44	* ItsAlwaysSpring: Unless you buy the winter theme, which has no effect on gameplay and only drops snow on top of otherwise entirely unaltered assets.
45	* KickTheDog: If you forget to feed the dog, he'll run away.
46	* LawOfChromaticSuperiority: Nearly every animal has variations distinguished by color, and the color often determines the value of whatever you harvest from them. For example, brown cows give chocolate milk, which is worth 12 coins, compared to the 6 coins you get for the milk from ordinary white cows, but pink cows give strawberry milk, which is worth 18 coins, and certain cows obtained through breeding can have milk worth as much as 80 coins. Similarly, Rainbow chickens > Rhode Island Red > Scots Grey > Cornish > golden > black > brown > white.
47	* MessyPig: Although the slop feeding part was removed from the game.
48	* MisplacedWildlife: You can get penguins, direct from the ''North'' Pole.
49	* OurHippocampsAreDifferent: Mystical Hippocamps are available as farm animals. As sea creatures, they can be housed inside the Marine Observatory. As horses, they can also be housed inside the Horse Paddock and the Horse Stable.
50	* PreciousPuppies: Feed the dog with [[DogFoodDiet kibble]] to get him to stay and follow you around.
51	* PremiumCurrency: The game has two types of currency: Farm Coins and Farm Cash. Farm Coins are used to purchase most of the more mundane in-game items, animals, trees and crops, and are earned through routine farm work — harvesting crops, collecting the various animals' produce and selling items will all yield enough farm coins to afford whatever a player might wind up needing. Farm Cash, which can be used to buy the nicer decorations and very high-quality trees and animals, usually ones only available during the various in-game events, can only be earned in small amounts by leveling up or performing in-game quests — or by shelling out real-world cash.
52	* PrettyButterflies: There is a collection series of butterflies, and butterfly decorations.
53	* RandomlyDrops: Mystery eggs and boxes give you random rewards, including some things you'd otherwise have to pay cash for. [[ImpossibleItemDrop Never mind how]] that Pink Cottage got inside that egg...
54	* RidiculouslyCuteCritter: Normal farm animals, mostly (penguins?). But they are all ridiculously cute.
55	* SuperWoolGrowth: Sheep give wool every 30 minutes.
56	* TemporaryOnlineContent: The [=GagaVille=] event ran for ten days in May, 2011.
57	* UnsuccessfulPetAdoption: If you neglect to feed a puppy (but not an adult dog), they'll run away and they only come back if you buy Farm Cash and pay to rescue them.
58	* VideoGameCaringPotential: Some players gush about the cuteness of the foals, lambs, etc. ''Many'' get so devoted to their farms that they'll drop everything and rush to the computer if they realize they're due to harvest some lovingly-planted crops. Then there are [[CanineCompanion puppies]], which have to be fed regularly for a couple weeks, and once they grow up, you can teach them tricks.

Context VideoGame / FarmVille