Thursday, October 18, 2012

Ganz Tail Towns Friends Facebook Game Review

Tail Towns Friends by Ganz, the makers of Webkinz, is a new Facebook game for grownups. It has the feel of a soap opera with cute animal characters and is a very social game that you can play with your Facebook friends. It has adventures, tasks to complete and is rich with tales of intrigue, treachery and, dare I say it... forbidden love! The drama in this game is not really for little kids and the characters sometimes even swear...well they say "bleeping", but still...I thought it was very unnecessary. Unlike Webkinz, Tail Towns Friends was made for adults by Ganz. This game officially launched on October 9th.

The landscapes are semi-realistic and you can add to them, making your dream garden landscape, by completing tasks and buying items from the store to place on your property, thus developing it into something unique from how it started. There is a typical storyline that this game follows.

Then there are also hand painted figurines you can collect to create an exclusive even more elaborate storyline from the character your figurine unlocks that off shoots from the first and becomes part of the game. You can collect them all to unravel the storyline even more and give you an exclusive specialty virtual item per figurine. They retail for around $14 each. I received the Chef hand painted figurine from Ganz for the game experience. He came with a secret code that I registered in the game to unlock his exclusive storyline and “Secret Diary Goals,” which gave me more information about his life and more tasks to complete. The figurines are not only great for the codes, but they are also kinda cute and would be neat to display.

Here is my gaming experience: At first I had trouble with Tail Towns Friends. The first task to complete has you harvesting 5 crabby apple trees. The problem I was having was that the crabby apple trees were never on the Old Orchard so I couldn't harvest them (see the top picture of the above image). I cleared the dead trees and grass on the Old Orchard at the beginning thinking that would do something, but it didn't move any thing forward. I couldn't finish the quest on my own because the crabby apple trees were never there like they were supposed to be. There was also a mysterious dirt patch in front of the house and the logs in the corner weren't there either. I was thinking oh yeah I'll just buy some seeds to plant some crabby apple trees myself but there were no seeds to be bought either. The game started out very frustrating at first.

I got on a group on Facebook for Tail Towns and they couldn't help me, but were very nice and even showed me what the game should have looked like when I started out (see the bottom picture of the above image). I was told the TTF Crew were on Thanksgiving vacation since Oct. 5th (Oct. 8th is Canada's Thanksgiving and they were Canadians) and I should submit a ticket for customer support. I had already submitted a ticket on the 6th, but I waited some more. They got back to me on the 9th and fixed the glitch for me so that I could resume playing. They just completed the task of harvesting the crabby apple trees that didn't seem to exist for me and I was on my way. I guess since this is a new game they haven't ironed out all the glitches yet.

My first time on Facebook I had fallen into the Farmville trap and was spending way to much of my time on the game. I finally broke down and blocked all Facebook games, but I thought I would give this one a try. Like all games that I have found fun Tail Towns Friends also proved to be very addicting. After the glitch was fixed I set a time limit on how long I was to spend on the game to limit myself so that I could get other things done too.
In no time at all I was creating my own landscape from the Old Orchard and completing tasks from picking produce from my friend's gardens and orchards to bottling juice to making bouquets from flowers I had gathered. It was fun, but it did take up some of my precious time. I probably will play occasionally, but I don't see myself being so immersed in this game that I be on it every moment...I know better than to do that again...I hope :)

Follow and Join
The OFFICIAL Tail Towns Friends Group
Tail Towns Friends Group
Tail Towns Friends Facebook
Tail Towns Friends Twitter
Tail Towns Friends Pinterest 

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: I received product for free to facilitate my review. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any other compensation for doing this review.

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