The Smurfs & Co

Deep in the forest, there are a crowd of blue-skinned, white-dressed creatures known as Smurfs living happily together in their mushroom-shaped houses. Kind-hearted with optimistic nature, these blue little things enjoy their lives in the woods, working industriously to perfect and protect their home town and meanwhile playing around boisterously to have great funs everyday. But there is the wicked wizard Gargamel with his dark magic and his sidekick, an evil cat, who lives to sabotage the blue creatures’ felicity. Classical Belgian cartoon, right? And now this great Smurf world is rebuilt in a new Facebook game, that is, The Smurfs & Co.

The Smurfs & Co, a social game just put on Facebook by Ubisoft, is in its essence a city building and farm management game that differs from other similar games under the same genre only in that it adopts the Smurf back story. In this game, the player will act as a Smurf himself/herself, wondering and wandering in the classic Smurf heaven in the dense woods. The in-game graphics have maintained the postcard style, reminiscent of the wonderland in the cartoon where clusters of mushroom house are set in a landscape and a dreamscape, surrounded by emerald forest.

Being Smurfs in the game, players are tasked to build their own ideal, happy town, and at the same time collect various materials, necessary ingredients for Papa Smurf to make a magic potion that is able to erase the memory of the black wizard Gargemal about the locale of Smurf towns so as to protect their safety. Based on such a storyline, players will need to start from cutting down trees to clear space as town site before they occupy themselves in any other quests, ranging from collecting materials inclusive of weeds, flowers, mushrooms, rocks and almost everything on land to unlocking more facilities from the basic practical houses to recreational arenas in higher level. While building towns, players ought to take great efforts to increase the happiness degree of each town, since happier towns enjoy greater odds to attract the famous Smurfs, such as the blond Smurfette with her other siblings like Brainy Smurf and Hefty Smurf, to pay a visit with surprising gifts of extra bonuses or mysterious quests which accelerate the ingredient gathering. Besides, news has it that new features of Power-Ups and Wonders which are worked on to update and enrich the storyline are scheduled to release around September.

Although the core gameplay is of little innovation with the common management contents, this new game yet is said to have attracted about 78,000 players in the first launching day, which without doubt is owed to the everlasting appeal of the Smurfs back story. After all, who can say no to those adorable Smurfs?