Consider this the sidebar to GrrlGotGame's in-depth look at Zynga games. If you do play Farmville or Cafe World (and you probably should), here are some quick tips to help you make the most of your time in the games.
For Farmville:
- Box your avatar in. This will keep him/her from walking all over to perform tasks, which saves a TON of time. Find the spot in the middle of the screen where your avatar always appears, and surround it with hay bales (or fences, but bales are cheaper and you can isolate the exact spot, saving more space for crops). When you upgrade your farm, the center will move so you'll need to reposition everything around your new spawn point.
- Put trees along one of the back boundaries of your farm so they don't interfere with harvesting and planting crops.
- If you have trouble selecting an animal to harvest its bounty or brush coins out of its fur (or whatever it is you do to cats and reindeer now), aim for the pink indicator over its head. It's much easier to select with animals that are crowded or in the back of the pack.
- Hay bales make nice decorations and count toward your ribbons. Use them to line your crop sections and get your item count up toward your ribbons at the same time.
- Check for gifts (and send some daily to let friends know you're still active). Gifts don't automatically appear in your gift box, you have to go to the Requests section of Facebook and painstakingly accept them one at a time. The price we pay for free virtual stuff in meaningless timewaster games!
Be sure to click the little gray save button (looks like a floppy disc, if anyone still remembers what those are) on the right side of your game window after making any changes. For some reason, the game doesn't auto-save your customizations. If you do lose them, any lost items will be stored in your Customize menu where you can retrieve them.
When playing, always keep counters open for food that's nearly done. If you have a lot of time before dishes are ready, raid your gifts or look for friends offering "tastings" to collect food to serve during downtime. It appears food in your gift box never goes bad, while food on your stove will - so plan accordingly. Also, if you have more of a food that's already on the counter being served, it will get added to same counter so don't be afraid to put it out right away.
