Tiny, blue people… arrr! Thar is surely nothin’ funnier than that, aye? Me son got me to watch some ol’ reruns of the cartoon on YouTube and I swear, me jaw almost broke from laughin’ so much. Me love for this cartoon got me to download the Smurf’s Village gaming app on me iPad. And as we parlay, I am swiping and tapping away. Here is me review on the app.
Back in the 80’s, the Smurfs was one of the most popular cartoons on TV. Those little blue creatures led by the wise Papa Smurf was so loved by both children and adults then. Well, get ready to relive those days by playing Smurf’s Village, a mobile app tribute to the beloved cartoon.
The Game
If you are familiar with the old Smurfs cartoons, then you should know that the Smurfs had a major enemy by the name of Gargamel. Gargamel was always hell bent on decimating their village and everyone living in it. Well, it seems, in the game, Gargamel has finally succeeded in scattering the Smurfs by destroying their village. With the guidance of Papa Smurf, your mission as a lowly Smurf hero or heroine is to build a new village for the whole bluish congregation.
Sounds easy enough, right? If only it was. In order to build a new village, you will need to gather coins and experience. Coins are gathered through quests and by farming, which can be used to buy or rather build structures and homes in the village. Every structure you build contains mini games and quests, which will also provide you with more opportunities to earn more gold. The experience, on the other hand, comes with every quest completion. Experience points can be traded into special skills that will help you as move forward.
The Look
The game graphics is nothing to really brag about. The visuals are simple and are somewhat based on the old cartoons of yore, albeit tweaked for maximum crispness and sharpness.
The Gameplay
Smurf’s Village is not complicated. It is a village/city- building app combined with certain RPG elements. The cutesy feel of the game brought about by the whole Smurf culture, will most undoubtedly attract hardcore and casual gamers alike. Unfortunately, the slowness of the game to load and the turtle-like pace of the game can turn some players off.
According to our tests on the latest iPad, there is a long wait for the game to load initially and in between quests and mini-games. The game is also free-to-play, so the developers earning potential comes from in-game coins or items, which you can exchange for real money, which in turn will help you speed up your village-building progress. While this setup is perfectly alright, the game’s pace tends to crawl, which can make people rather impatient. And when players get impatient, they will either buy stuff in-game to speed things up or quit. Unfortunately, since a lot of gamers are kind of cheap, they end up quitting, which can definitely hurt the overall success of the game, right?
The Bottom Line
If you love the Smurf’s and feel like playing a simple but fun city or rather village-building game, Smurf’s Village is definitely a good app to get. It is free but it does come with some minor setbacks. Nevertheless, it is still a worthy download even for a pirate like me…arrr!
