Will you accept the quest of bringing an abandoned village back to life? Good folks are coming to this country looking for a nice place to live and work. You are going to build fields, orchards, corrals for a livestock and help them organize work as their god-hand. You can have various farm animals producing eggs, milk, wool and manure. Restore the village with it's surroundings and collect all breeds!
The genre "Realistic Sim" is a bit misleading here - the game is very casual. Even more than "Family Farm", which had more micromanagement in it (check out the demo).
Compared to FamilyFarm this game plays faster and more smooth. In FamilyFarm I often wished to pause time for decision-making and planning, while here the game-speed matches the things you can do in the given time-frame.
Graphics are *really* sweet and functional. Sound is really nice too.
However, after some hours the lack of depth shows - basically you don't have to decide too much, it becomes rather "scan&click" in order to assign people to tasks or collect produced ressources.
I played till reaching level 20 (happiness level 7) in around 90 simulated days. After that point the game does not grant you any more progress or assignments.
There are no alternative scenarios, so the replay value is low, but until you have reached that level 20, you will spend *some* very enjoyable hours with this casual game :)
My wife and I both like this game. At first I seemed to feel a little like a cow clicker. I was used to Family Farm where there was a strategic element in picking who did what job and a tight element of when things had to be done based on season and scenario goals. In Goodfolks, the people are pretty interchangeable. The seasons do not really matter and you can take your time on the level goals. The handling of animals is also greatly simplified.
It is easy to want to confuse it for Family Farm since it reused the engine and several assets including the music. I don't think that is a bad though. I think they fit the setting well.
It's looking like Family Farm that's deceiving. The game play is different. It didn't take long for me to realize the strategy is in selecting what crops to plant, where to place them, what meals to fix and how to prioritize work. This is more a resource management game than just a time management game. Maybe that's a spoiler. My wife and I both shot ourselves in the foot pretty bad learning that one.
It's not an action shooter or a military strategy game, but it is a strategy game. I think it is well done and very fun.
I'm still on the fence about having my kids play it. My daughters would probably enjoy it. However the characters in the game have 'personalities' unlike in Family Farm. That's actually a good thing, but I think I've seen when a new person come into the village the old lady say "What the hell are you doing here?". I think I've seen a few other mildly colorful comments. Some of my kids are still in the "echo what you hear" age and I'm not really in the mood to force that conversation in the name of a game.
Great Game. We need more family games like this one on Linux.
Goodfolks is very similiar to its predecessor entitled Family Farm. In fact, it's so similiar that the textures/animations/audio are all the same. Thankfully, enough has changed to turn it into another game.
Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to renew a long-lost village I've decided to dub "Longtown." However it seems less like renewing a village and more running a farm in Family Farm, just, without the scenario ending once you complete the tasks (THANK GOODNESS!). Unnamed Settlers will arrive without any real reason (Their car broke down, or they got lost hiking, I guess) once your Happiness reaches a certian level. You increase happiness by your citizens eating quality foods, and you create quality foods from a variety of food-stuffs you plant and harvest in addition to animal goods.
The game was obviously designed with tablet play in mind, as "Longtown" is aptly named such as you navigate the town by swiping your mouse left-and-right. Everything that should say "click" instead says "tap" and all actions are completed with a single left-click only.
There is no storyline to speak of aside from renewing the town, which makes the game lose its grip on you eventually. It's a fun game, great even! But the lack of any real "goal" except completing the small missions that are presented is unfulfilling.
The game is nothing like Harvest Moon, so don't think that. You don't control a single character, you don't control anywhere outside of the town, you don't do any type of "events" or follow a storyline - nothing like that. The best way to describe Goodfolks is Zynga's FarmVille, lacking energy and the need to annoy your friends. So, that's a good thing.
Aside from the lack of any real goal and the obvious fact that it's a tablet made game, it is still a fun game. If you want a casual, non-violent, goal based game - this is it. I very much enjoy it.