Game Reviews

Cloud Village

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iOS
| Cloud Village
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Cloud Village
|
iOS
| Cloud Village

[This is first of our new freemium game reviews, where we give our impressions immediately after booting a game up, again after three days, and finally after seven days. That's what the strange sub-headings are all about.]


[Carry on.]

The Cloudlings are in trouble, and they desperately need your help. Is there anybody out there who can help them build houses, plant seeds, grow food to eat, and create magical potions to boost their morale?

And, crucially, do any of those people feel like spending hour after hour playing a rather tedious rudimentary world-builder?

First impressions

Cloud Village's aesthetic vision is a little scattershot from the off. For the most part it aims for an overly twee depiction of Cloudlings (small elvish creatures) concocting potions and working the land to harvest pretty-sounding crops.

Everything - from the Melonberries and Broccollisprouts to your people's little homes and their agricultural buildings – has a Rien Poortvliet quality (Google it).

It's just a pity that this level of detail doesn't extend into their movement. Cloudlings walk stiffly with few frames of animation, and as buildings are constructed they simply get larger, with no sign of craftsmanship.

Menu icons are clear, but there's a lot of wasted space, meaning you'll need to scroll through too many icons to get to the item you want. When you don't have enough workers to execute an action, what looks like placeholder font text covers these icons, which looks naff. There's just a general lack of attention to detail throughout.

3 days: Not much change

If you're new to freemium world-builders, you may find that Cloud Village's mechanics provide a welcome introduction. It's very simple fare: grow crops, harvest crops, get money, make buildings, expand.

But if you've ever played anything more complicated you'll tire quickly of growing X number of things, sending out Cloudlings on missions, and building certain structures over and over.

There are simplistic mini-games that come with a handful of buildings, and you can play these at regular intervals, but otherwise you're just repeating the same process ad nauseum.

Slotted between levels are short cut-scenes documenting the plight of the Cloudlings – something about an exodus from their previous home to their new one. It's all weakly written dialogue with no pizzazz, and you'll quickly find yourself skipping its sickeningly cute nonsense.

A few experience boost items are available to decorate your village, and may even help to make the grind go quicker, but there's little to add your own personal mark on the world. This issue nullifies the incentive to visit the villages of your friends, unless you want to leave them a gift in the hope that you'll get one back.

7 days: Fatigue sets in

One of the title's biggest issues is that there simply isn't enough to keep you in the game for very long. You might check back in when you get a notification that your crops have grown, but the slow speed of access makes it a real chore.

If you're happy to save your cash but spend your time waiting for things to happen then you'll find Cloud Village a very slow-going game. You quickly run out of workers to help build your village, and those you do have will often take hours completing work on structures.

After a few levels you're given the option of building a bridge across a nearby stream, which opens up a vast new area to build on. But you'll never build on it, because you won't be able to fill the land you already have fast enough.

With very little variety, slow and cumbersome access to the content you want, and a lack of visual finery, Cloud Village has little to keep you coming back. It's certainly cheery, but the basic structure of its gameplay has been done to death in other, much better games.

Perhaps you're having more fun, though. Let us know how you're getting on by popping a comment in the box below. And don't feel shy about sharing your tips for progress, too -we'd love to hear them.

Cloud Village

Cloud Village is My First Freemium World Builder, and if you're totally new to the genre then you may find something here of merit. For everyone else, feel free to skip this cute, but soulless time waster
Score
Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.