Civ World Review

Posted on Jul 08, 2011 by Michael Gugel in Gaming

When I first heard about Sid Meier’s Civilization app on Facebook, I thought it might give Cityville a run for its money.  Sid’s previous Civilization games had deep gameplay and required skill, strategy and tactics.

I was a huge fan of Civilization IV.

I was a huge fan of Civilization IV.

Sid stayed true to the original Civilization games with Civ World.  The game does have strategy and depth.  The only problem is that it’s excruciatingly boring.

The game starts off with a simple quest.  No qualms there.

Build a house. Sounds easy enough.

Build a house. Sounds easy enough.

The next few quests asked me to build a garden, an additional house, create a worker and build a guard tower.  YAWN.

Where was the action? Where was the excitement? Where was the societal development and the battles? If I kept playing, I knew I’d get there eventually, but I just wasn’t having fun!

Here’s my beef with the game:

  1. I had to wait like 15 seconds after completing a quest to get a “congrats” popup.  That just doesn’t cut it.  Rewards for user actions have to be in close time-proximity for them to be effective.
  2. The game was way too tutorial based.  I didn’t come here to learn how to play your game.  I came here to have fun.  Cut out SOME of the tutorial and give me some REAL action.
  3. You want to make a cartoonish design?  Go ahead, but make it light, colorful and fun.  The art in Civ World is way too bleak and serious.

I realize the game is in beta and they’re still tweaking the design, but they squandered their launch opportunity.  It’s going to be much harder to get their most hardcore fans to come back to play the game if they don’t have a great experience right off the bat.

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