Coffeetable Blog

The chick has grown up, and it's a hen now! And it already laid a bunch of eggs. Might be I am doing the right thing giving it care and feeding it well. I still have to wait for sometime before I find out what will happen next, which I expect to be a bunch of more chicks.

While waiting for that, now is a good time as ever to talk about Friendship Points. As I posted earlier here in my intro post about Country Story, having friends play a role in the game. Aside from the 3 random gifts that you get for the first time you visit your friend, additional interaction with friends are also done through Friendship Points (FP).

You start off with 75 FPs to each of your friends (you can click on the pic to enlarge and see better). How do you use those points? Well, for one you can automatically ask friends to help protect your crops from being stolen (by other friends or by themselves, ironically). You either go to your friend's farm, and click on the Friendship Icon (the one with the heart on the upper left of the pic; it would be on the lower panel of your screen if you are on your friend's farm). You can also do that right in your farm by calling up the screen on the left and clicking "Get Help". You can then proceed to assign a plot of unharvested crop to your friend. It will protect the crop from being stolen, and it will also automate the harvesting. Of course, this is not without a price. Each time you assign a friend to give you help, the FP goes down. Sounds like a typical relationship where you can't get too cozy long enough.

Now, your FP with your friend won't get up if he also asked you to do something for him. He will only end up losing FP on you as well. The only way you or him can get it up is to send gifts to your friends. Each item you send as a gift from the shop that is worth 1,000 coins, it will increase your FP with that friend by 10. Any item sent for less than 1,000 won't have any effect. Also, you can only increase your FP to your friend by a maximum of 10 per day. Take note that if you received an item worth 1,000 from the shop and you "re-gift" it, it won't be counted as gifting something worth 1,000 since the resale price (which becomes the reference price of the gift) is much much lower.

By the way, "asking" help from a friend does not require that they accept it too. Just like in Restaurant City, it's only a concept in the game and the accepting is done automatically.

If that is the only use of FP, you may think you would want to maximize your friends' help and ensure that you get your full harvest early on in the game. It turns out being friendly (and generous) can have long-term benefits. If you have at least 15 friends playing CS, you can get yourself a dog if you can get your FP with each of them up to 100. That's basically spending 3,000 coins to each of them (30 FP total, since an amount less than 1,000 gets you nowhere), for a total of 45,000 coins. If you think that's a steep price for getting a pet, you can view that dog as an investment, since it can prevent others from stealing from you. Saves you a lot of FPs and harvest in the long run, not to mention time spent on assigning plots to friends.

That's quite a lot for a post already. Back to the farm and remember what it's all about: having fun!

Had my first "pet" in County Story after finishing a quest that required a certain number of wood, stones, and chicken wheat. Am not really sure what to do with it though :) Based on the information given, I have enough feeds for the chick, and there's also a countdown when it's supposed to mature. I don't understand though if I am supposed to move up from the Happy to the Great and how to do it. Been clicking on the Heart logo incessantly for some minutes but with no evident effect. Anyway, I'll learn it as I go along (or if somebody volunteers some information here).

I'm supposed to post about Friendship Points, but this one came up and I just thought it would be much better to talk about this first. I'll post on Friendship Points next time around.

More Country Story here and here.

Playfish, the creator of Restaurant City, just recently launched its newest game, Country Story. This game is likewise accessible via Facebook. The game builds on the SIM-like style of Restaurant City while at the same time incorporating the theme of other popular Facebook games like FarmTown, BarnBuddy and Farmville.

You start in the game with a nice little house (that you can't get inside), and a plot of land that you can plow and plant crops in. Then there's the usual watering and harvesting. Of course, all these hard work will get your character tired, and you would need to replenish his strength by providing food or letting him rest for a while.

The game introduces also the concept of quests, which is quite similar to Awards given in Restaurant City. Some of the quests may require you to simply do so much of one thing in your farm, or it may require that you get involved with your friends. The Awards affects your farm in different ways, such as increasing your production capacity. The quests are given through one of the several institutions in the village (shown below) such as the Mayor, Bank, Construction, Livestock, and Market.


Having friends also play a role in the game. How crucial, I have yet to find out. Much like other games, you get a reward (actually, three rewards) for your first visit to your friend's farm. You can also assign friends to look after your crops, since it can be stolen (by other friends, ironically). And I think you must have a number of them to get yourself a dog.

Well, that's it for now. The game's quite new, and I have yet to explore it myself. I'll post my developments from time to time. For now, try it yourself, and create your own Country Story.

More Country Story here.