WARNING! Your holidays are in jeopardy!
Yahoo Games recently put up three new social games, with a devious plan to get the innocent public hooked on gaming away their holidays. Titled Ranch Story, Island Café and Lady Popular, they are an addictive throwback to the days of yore, and are exactly the kind of games that will eat away your holidays without you realizing it.
Here are the 3 you should watch out for if you don’t want your partner dragging you away from the computer by your ears.
Ranch Story
Ranch Story is a cute farming social game that runs more like a farm sim than anything. The tutorial is brief and lets you jump right into the heart of the game: running your own farm!
The aim of the game is to keep your farm running, so go crazy with planting, harvesting, and cleaning up the area! Ranch Story sets itself apart from other farming social games by giving you lots of stuff to do. You begin with a farm absolutely chock-full of debris, and have to work hard to clean it up so you have space for crops.
But Ranch Story is not just a farming sim. There are also achievements you can aim for, in order to get further in the game. You can even collect rare items: a full collection gives you an added boost for the game. Every action performed also gives you rewards, whether in the form of experience to level you up, or items you need for purchases, like wood. Remember to click on the rewards that pop out after every action you take!
If you’re looking for an absolutely immersive game to while away time, check out Ranch Story.
Island Café
Island Café is a delightful social game that lets you run your own restaurant. You’re in charge of every aspect of the game, right down to the décor, and the type of dishes you’d like to cook!
Even the floor tiles are customisable, but that’s not the best thing about it. Food that you prepare takes but two clicks to be ready for cooking, and the servings that result are huge. This puts Island Café in another tier altogether when it comes to social restaurant sims – little effort is required on the player’s part to run a successful café!
Café games are usually dependent on friends, and Island Café is no exception. You can invite friends to the game to have them send you gifts or parts to unlock a dish, or to upgrade a specific piece of furniture. However that is not to say you cannot enjoy Island Café alone. The game comes replete with a computer-controlled mentor, who frequently drops by with items and tips – acting as a real life friend would. This same character – Captain Cook – is also the one who takes you through tutorials and reminds you of achievements.
With cute character design and a quirky soundtrack replete with ambient sound, Island Café is the type of game you could spend hours on.
Lady Popular
Lady Popular is a life sim, where you take on the persona of a lady and navigate your way through life in a big city.
Your Lady starts off at the very bottom, with no apartment, only one outfit and a limited amount of cash. You’ve got to work your way up the game’s social strata, IQ point by IQ point, before you can become the reigning queen bee.
While life sims have been popular in social gaming platforms, Lady Popular takes it a step further by embodying real life values. At the start, your Lady can only get a low ranking job. But by working hard and training up aspects of your Lady (like IQ or weight), she will be able to get better jobs, and thus, a better salary.
Eventually, you’ll be able to own your own apartment, a great job and a full wardrobe. Because this is more of an MMO game than a social game, you’ll be able to engage in face-offs with other Lady Popular players as well.
Like Ranch Story and Island Café, you’re in charge of all aspects of your Lady’s life, with options to get yourself tattoos, piercings, sexy clothes or even cosmetic surgery.
Be prepared to live a life within your life in Lady Popular! The game developers also release adventures periodically. The latest adventure has you fighting off werewolves to marry a vampire hunk… sounds a lot like a famous movie now, huh?
Make the choices and live the high life in Lady Popular!
All three games have already been causing certain unrest among the gaming community, accused of delaying numerous World of Warcraft raids and pronounced guilty of breaking up Blackshot clans due to inactivity. If your holiday schedule is currently still blank, this might just the opportunity to fill it up with fun and addiction!
