Trade Nations

Title: Trade Nations
Platform Played On:  iPhone/iPad
Release Date: April 20, 2011
Date Played: May-June 2011
Time Played: 100+ hours (persistent gameplay)
Completed (Y/N): N/A
Score: 3/5

Opinion:
Trade Nations is another one of what seems to be hundreds of Farm Ville clones.

It is a persistent (play in the cloud) without any real goals other than expansion of your "nation" game. However, this is probably one of the better games of its kind.  The art direction is well executed and the actual things you do are fairly interesting.

Trade Nations has a Sim City feel to it. You need to provide housing for your little dudes, who in turn can be assigned to various jobs around the "nation".  As they work they earn money, which in turn can be used to upgrade and expand your kingdom to bring in more money to expand etc... basically its a never ending and increasingly hard expansion cycle, which gets mundane fairly quickly (just like Farm Ville).

The one mechanic that makes Trade Nations stand apart from dozens of games of its type is the auction house. The developers took advantage of the fact that the game is played entirely online by adding an auction house where you can buy and sell in-game resources (such as lumber and stone) for gold.  Whats interesting is the fact that the prices are driven by supply and demand (averaged among all Trade Nations players).  In essence it is a market driven by the real Trade Nations economy.  This makes the game that much more interesting, because you cant predict what the prices will be like form day to day, nor can you really game the system.

At the end of the day though Trade Nations is just another Farm Ville clone with (in my opinion) better aesthetics and more interesting gameplay. It utilizes some innovative mechanics such as the auction house, and it allows you to play on the go from any iOS device (assuming you have internet).  However when it comes down to it, after a few weeks of play you find yourself on a grind without any real goal, just like in all the other games of this kind.  After a while progress takes forever, and if you dont want to wait, you have to spend real life $$ on the in-game currency.

Bottom line is that Trade Nations is a cool distraction for a few weeks, but you will probably find yourself bored after a while. If you are a fan of persistent games similar to Farm Ville I would encourage you to check out Trade Nations, its free after all.