Who knew that a game about farming could lead to world domination?

Although Zynga has been making online games for a while they first made a splash in the Facebook community with Farmville, one the first popular Facebook games. Since then, they’ve built a myriad of different games—many of which are off-shoots of the same principles and gameplay as Farmville. In fact, Zynga’s game CityVille has roughly 90 million players worldwide. But up till now Zynga has mainly relied on benign-themed games: farms, cities, fishtanks, pets, restaurants, etc. But now they have expanded their offering to create a game that has a combat element as well as a linear storyline: Empires and Allies.

It’s no surprise that women are more likely to play many of the Zynga games than men. Men are more inclined to play action-oriented, linear games and use video game consoles or PC-based games than women. With Empires and Allies, it seems that Zynga is trying to bring more guys into the social gaming world as well.

To anyone who has played a Zynga game before, like CityVille, the initial gameplay will seem very familiar. The concept is similar to others in that it consists of building houses, faming resources, inviting friends to be your neighbors, etc. Except in this game, you are also building up armies to defend your island. What sets Empires and Allies apart is that, in addition to the social gaming aspect, there is an accompanying storyline.

At the beginning of the game, your island home has been decimated by The Raven, an evil dictator-type bad guy. The point of the game is to rebuild your island, create an army, and make your way through a series of increasingly difficult invasions of surrounding islands—guarded by The Raven’s henchmen—in order to ultimately defeat The Raven and conquer the empire. To wit, shortly after you begin the game, you are invaded by a small army from a neighboring island that you have to fend off. The game is much like RISK in that, you face off against your enemies and random chance determines if your hits, misses, damage, etc.—but you actually get to shoot guns and tanks, and see stuff blow up, which is a plus.

In addition, once you add friends to your game, you can invade them, use them as allies to help you fight in combat, and more. In fact there is a white hat/black element that adds a nice morality play to the game. As you invade your friends and steal their resources, you earn black hearts. But if you help them, you earn red hearts, earning you the accompanying reputation.

This hybrid-style of social gaming is a new and welcome twist on the genre and could go a long way to encourage more men to get more involved in the social gaming world.

Lisa is an avid yoga enthusiast who enjoys writing in her spare time for Usdirect.com – home of Direct TV Packages.

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