What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that villagers can die; when they do,
they litter the ground with their skeletons. Eventually your
villagers will learn to bury their dead in a graveyard. Parents
of young children should also be aware of the game's mating
aspect. Sometimes villagers will kiss and then go inside a hut.
When they emerge, occasionally a baby will magically appear in
the woman's arms. You can also pick up villagers and drop them
on top of another villager to see if they like each other. If
they do, they will kiss and go inside the hut. If they don't,
one will run away. It's rare, but possible, for three people to
go inside a hut together. One mother whose children played this
game explained the mating behavior by saying that the villagers
went inside the hut to discuss their compatibility.
Families can talk about what's important for a society to survive. The simulation forces players to prioritize how they spend their tech points on research. Is farming more important than building? How about spirituality over healing? This is fertile ground for discussions about what's important in life.
Common Sense Media Review
Computer-generated life simulations like
The Sims
and the
Civilization
series have long appealed to both teens and adults, but
that type of game is complicated, has a steep learning curve,
and requires a large time commitment. VIRTUAL VILLAGERS: A NEW
HOME is a streamlined life simulation that's so simple even
kids can play.
The game starts with a small tribe of seven people arriving on the island of Isola as the only survivors of a volcanic eruption. Your role is to manage these survivors as they evolve into a thriving village of 90 people. The villagers will need to find food and housing, develop technologies, fight disease, and mate. Players direct each villager to develop a specific skill, work with others to survive, and eventually explore the island to discover its 16 mysteries.
You control a villager's activity by selecting a preferred skill from a list that includes builder, farmer, researcher, breeder, or healer. Villagers with an assigned skill will initiate tasks relating to that skill set. You can also pick up villagers by left-clicking on them and then dropping them at a job site to teach them a new skill. For example, early on in the game before villagers have learned to grow their own food, they'll need to forage for berries. If you place any villager, regardless of designated skill, in front of a berry bush, he or she can learn to pick the fruit.
Researchers play a crucial role in this game because the only way your society can progress is by earning "tech points." Teaching villagers to research, an event that happens when you place them in front of the research table, earns tech points. With your tech points you can improve your villagers' ability to farm, construct, reproduce, heal, and become spiritual. Accumulating food points is another element crucial to survival. One tester lost the game early on because she grew her population too quickly without growing enough food for them.
What makes Virtual Villagers unique is that it runs in real time. Even when you quit playing for the day, your villagers keep living unless you choose to "pause" the game. This isn't a game that you play all at once. Instead, you fiddle with it for about 10 minutes at a time, then let the villagers get on with their lives until the next time you want to peek in.
Managing this virtual world isn't difficult; it just takes patience. It will take hours for your villagers to build huts so that their population can grow, and days before your villagers will learn to fish. One of the things that will keep you coming back is trying to figure out the island's 16 mysteries. Villagers will be curious about certain things, like a rock blocking a cave's entrance; but it's up to you to figure out how to unlock each mystery.
By playing Virtual Villagers, kids will think about life in terms of what's necessary to survive. They'll learn that people need shelter, food, healing, and the ability to reproduce. And to better their lot, they need to be creative and scientific. It's a perspective that many young people may not have thought about before playing this game.
Fans may like to go urban with SimCity 4 or to the zoo with the simulation game Zoo Tycoon 2.
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
