Facebook: Power Planets

I've never been opposed to Facebook games, though it has taken me a while to actually get into them, being much more accustomed to games that seem to encourage longer play sessions. The first game that's finally clicked for me (and there will be many more to come, starting with Frontierville) is Power Planets, which at first seems a game of strategic resource management--a poignant topic at the moment.

You have control of a planet that has various resources: coal, wind, oil, and solar. It is up to you how you harvest them, and to develop the technologies for some of them. You are given both points and money based on what you've built, though some buildings and resource harvesters will have a negative effect on the environment and planet overall.

However, there's a catch, and what makes the game a bit more interesting:

Every so often we'll mix up all the planets, giving the one you've been managing to someone else, and giving you a new one to take care of. Will you carefully prepare your planet for its next owner, or will you recklessly exploit it? The choice is yours.

The scoreboards the game displays are split into two categories: top scoring planet and top scoring player. In the case of the latter, you can view it either among the friends playing, or more generally across the entire game.

From my own experiences, people tend toward being kind to the planet, though it is difficult to tell if any longer term and wider spread analysis can tell us anything about what such a trend would mean (or if my experience is indicative across the board).

However, I am perfectly content to spend a few minutes setting up a few buildings, researching new technologies which are spread across a branching map that allows you to choose where to progress. In fact, you spend money to put toward research and then are shown a small clip that determines if you're little person succeeded or failed; success means you have unlocked the technology, failure still nets you 10% closer to the goal. The various technologies include both more lucrative or energy efficient factories, parks, aesthetic choices, living arrangements, and such.

Plus, your little people fly kites and fish, which amuses me every time.