Okay, I got introduced to a game yesterday and I got hooked! The game’s called Tribal Wars and the short version is that you develop a village, acquiring resources, building buildings, and recruiting troops, all the while interacting with neighbors and people you meet in the game. Most people join (or create) a tribe, both for discussion and mutual protection & support. Sometimes villages get attacked and war can sometimes even be seen on tribal levels.

It’s a great deal of fun. And the best part, besides being FREE, is that things happen in real time. So if you’re building an upgrade to your Market or Warehouse, it may take a couple of hours and it really does. But at the same time, your workers are harvesting timber, clay, and iron at a rate of so much per hour (based on the levels of your facilities). The result of this setup is that you don’t spend hours sitting online playing the game. Instead, you just check in once in a while (daily, every other day, hourly if you’re obsessed :-) ) and queue up building projects and maybe check your mail. Yes, it eventually will get more complicated than that, but for a while when you’re starting out, you’re just trying to get your village established.

Here’s a bit of their own description of the game:

Tribal Wars ist a free browser based MMOG. You can play the game from nearly any computer with internet access because there are no downloads necessary.

Your goal is to lead a medieval village to fame and power. With your help the small village will grow bigger and bigger. The population grows, production rises and trade prospers.

But not only your village grows. Neighbours are also looking to expand their influence. Troops are being recruited, villages are fortified and wild axemen plunder and kill.

You will meet other players, with whom you can fight together in a tribe.

Your village grows bigger and soon the formerly small village will conquer other villages….

I’ve already gotten a few friends hooked, um, I mean ENJOYING the game and we’ve formed our own tribe, called MSTies. If you recognize the reference to MST3K, you belong in our tribe. :-D

If you want to check out the game and maybe give it a try, visit Tribal Wars and log onto World 3–that’s where we are. Also let me know what your username is and I’ll send you an invitation to join our tribe.

Since you occasionally interact with other players, especially those near to you geographically, I’ve already found another tribe that is from Milan and all speak Italian. Now I get to practice what little Italian I know, since some of them speak hardly any English. Che ficata! I mean, how cool!

[tags]games, online, tribal wars, medieval, MMOG, MST3K[/tags]