We Rule

As I’m sure most of you will be aware, ngmoco finally unleashed We Rule to the world a few short day’s ago after there now standard Canadian testing. I’ve been playing this game for a while (as I have access to a Canadian iTunes account) and would like to give our impressions on this latest title.

Now, this is by ngmoco, and so yes, this is a freemium title. I can hear the outcries from here, but this review is not about whether the freemium model is a good or bad thing. I’m going to set it aside for now and concentrate on the game itself. It should also be noted, that since the worldwide release the game has been hampered quite badly with poor server connections (yes the game needs a constant internet connection to play). This has caused no end of backlash against the game and ngmoco. However, as I believe that these will be short lived (much like in the days when Eliminate first launched) I am not going to let it bias my judgement of the game as a whole.

As the name suggests, We Rule puts you in charge of your own little kingdom and it is your job to build your kingdom any way you wish. You start by running through a tutorial which asks you to do certain tasks (such as buying properties or planting trees) to get you accustomed to the basic game mechanics. This shouldn’t take you too long to run through and then after that, you’re left on your own to decide how best to advance your kingdom.

Of course, for that, you’re going to need gold, and lots of it. Everything in the game costs gold and you earn this in one of four ways. The first is taxes, you can build cottages and at set intervals collect taxes from them. Be warned though, the return on these is extremely low so it’s no good just filling your kingdom full of cottages.

The second way to earn gold is farming. If you have enough gold, you can buy a farm and grow crops for harvest. There are a number of different crops that can be grown at the outset, with more becoming available as you level up. Each different type of crop takes a different amount of time to grow and reaps different amounts of gold and xp. This can become quite a time consuming area of the game, let me explain. When I started playing I simply planted whatever grew the quickest, a good way to make money, but it means opening the game more often. Later I started planting crops that took longer to grow, but this then meant I had crops to harvest at inconvenient times such as 4am (no time to be waking up just to harvest some virtual crops) or worse, during my working day. I can imagine the look on my bosses face if I turned round and told him I had to be excused from a  meeting so I could check my crops.

You need to also bear in mind that crops spoil. There is a window in which they are ripe and these seems to change depending on how long they take to grow, the general rule seems to be the longer a crop takes to grow, the longer the window in which you can harvest them before they spoil. Timing is very important when growing crops.

The third way to make money is through businesses, these also become available as you level up and vary from a simple fishing pond up to a condors nest, with taverns and mines in between. This is also where the use of ngmoco’s plus+ service comes into play. If any of your plus+ friends are playing We Rule then they can visit your kingdom and place orders at any of your open businesses. These orders also take a varying amount of time to complete, but tend to be quite long so you’re far less likely to miss the window of time in which you can deliver the goods. Completing orders of your plus+ friends gives you gold and xp, but more than that. It gives your friend gold and xp as well.

This being the fourth and final way of making gold. You can only order from one business per plus+ friend at a time, so if you don’t have many friends on plus+ you won’t have much of an opportunity to speed your progress by ordering with your neighbouring kingdoms. One of the nicest parts here is that you actually visit their kingdom, exactly as they have designed it. This is great and I’ve spent some time looking at how others have built there kingdoms compared to me. To be honest, I’ve ‘borrowed’ a few ideas as well.

The game is visually pleasing and the music suits it well. So far, looking good right? But, I guess we can’t ignore the freemium aspect of this forever can we? So, I’m sure you want to know how ngmoco have incorporated it into this game. The answer is Mojo. Mojo can be used to instantly grow crops, or instantly deliver that order that would otherwise take over a day to produce. To me, We Rule balances out well. I’ve been playing for a while and reached level 17 without spending any money, and have no desire to do so either. If you’re happy to let the game play out, you can enjoy all that We Rule has to offer without spending a penny. But, if you want to speed up your progress you can spend as much as you like.

Perhaps the biggest downside to this game is that it is effectively constantly running (everything grows in real time). So even when you’re not playing, your kingdom is working away. This means you can’t leave it for any real length of time or you’ll lose out. But thankfully, there are push notifications. You can turn these on and off for each farm / business. If on, it’ll let you know when your crops are ready, or when someone places an order.

Overall, I’ve been enjoying my time with this game, and despite the rather large teething problems at present in relation to poor server connectivity, I still rate this game high and once these issues have been resolved it’ll be one I’ll be more than happy to keep on my homescreen. Unlike other freemium titles from ngmoco you don’t really feel as if you’re missing out if you don’t buy Mojo you just progress at a more sedate speed.