We Rule from ngmoco and NewToy Inc. is the latest game to follow the ‘freemium’ pricing model that’s being increasingly favoured by iPhone developers. Freemium meaning that the initial game comes gratis, but its development is funded by in-game micro-transactions. Typically with these types of games, it’s usually the hardcore 1% that do purchase the in-game items that fund the game for the other 99% of other players that do not purchase.

We Rule is also another example of what’s called asynchronous gaming. This basically means that the vast majority of its action continues in the background while you’re going about your every day business. New Toy Inc. has previous experience of asynchronous gaming with its marvellous Words With Friends, and it’s a model I can really see taking off. Particularly for gamers who have jobs and busy lives and who can’t dedicate every waking hour to tending to their crops, collecting hidesor whatever other arbitrary action is required to progress through whichever perpetual and persistent world they’re vicariously living through.

We Rule can best be described as a city/town sim, and sits in the same mould as Zynga’s FarmVille and basically sees you slowly building your own mini-empire - carefully micro-managing each individual element whether it be agriculture, mining or trading until you’re an all-conquering force. Starting off with a lowly castle you’ll begin by building farms, which initially at least, are the easiest and quickest way to earn money. Each crop type grows at a different rate to the next, and perhaps most significantly, in real-time. For example, corn is free to plant, but yields only 25 gold coins and can be harvested in 2 minutes. Carrots meanwhile, cost significantly more, yield greater XP and monetary rewards but take 12 hours to harvest. That’s 12 of your actual real-world hours, and not speeded up in-game hours.

Of course if you’re not inclined to wait 12 hours for a crop of carrots, you can use the game’s secondary currency, Mojo, to speed things up. And here lies either the game’s genius, or, as I’m more inclined to believe, the cynical greed of ngmoco. More Mojo can be bought using real money. The cheapest option is £0.59 which gets you a small vial containing 5 units of Mojo, while at the other end of the scale, £29.99 gets you a vintage bottle containing 800 units of Mojo. For people that really get into the game, being able to speed up your town’s development by using real money will be a god-send, but for those of you like myself that baulk at the thought of spending hard-earned money in order to simply speed up an inevitable process, it somewhat rankles.

I should point out however, that it is entirely to possible to experience the game to its fullest without spending a single penny. Patience is all that’s required.

Inevitably, the more time you spend with the game, the more items are unlocked and after a few days the game invokes memories of Theme Park as you spend hours carefully crafting roads, paths and tree-lines in order to make your little empire more appealing. One feature that’s worth pointing out is that the game allows you to re-design your entire town at any time for no cost at all. On the one hand this is entirely necessary, particularly as levelling up increases the space you have available. But it’s also useful because it allows you to reposition similar items as you progress, an organisation that’s essential as there’s actually a lot of stuff to buy and build and keeping track of it all can be quite a task if you've not positioned similar items adjacent to each other.

Scoring We Rule is a difficult proposition. On paper it sounds dull and tedious and with limited rewards, yet for some reason, I find myself returning to it and often. And the fact that is sends you push notifications whenever anything of merit happens is a genius move. The multiplayer connectivity, while fairly limited and basic for now at least, is a fun addition but adds little of worth.

We Rule feels like it’s a work in progress. While the aesthetics and controls are generally of a high standard, it’s the numerous foibles that grate the most. Frequent crashes, server timeouts, performance issues (on a 2G iPhone at least) and only intermittent push notifications do tend to grate, but these are all issues that will no doubt be fixed in time. If ngmoco rethinks its Mojo strategy and speeds the overall gameplay up then it could be on to a winner. But in its current state, We Rule is no more than passing a curio. To ignore it however, would be foolish, because regardless of what you think about it, it is an important sign of things to come and perhaps a turning point in the development of iPhone games. Watch this space. Your carrots will be ready in 12 hours.

 

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