Been meaning to post about this for a while, and stranded here in Taipei sounded as good a time as any to do so. Facebook is home, as everyone surely knows either through their own or their friends' means, to many a flash game, from Farmville to Happy Aquarium to Restaurant City to Yoville. I know because I occasionally play some of them. Most are tolerable, sometimes tedious depending on the day and my mood. Happy Aquarium can be quite the source of frustration thanks to friends notifying you of your hungry fish!
My latest find is a pretty cool one, and in the spirit of treasure hunting it's more than appropriate. It's called Treasure Madness (check it out if you haven't seen it already) and for some reason it's maintained a fairly low profile in the scheme of Facebook games. At least in my circles - only four other friends have it added. I found out about it through an innocuous ad on the side of my Farmville bar, which said "Tired of plowing your farm? Hunt for treasure" or something thereabouts. I do like treasure, after all…
Here's one of the opening screens:
It sounded pretty catchy from the get-go to me, and it's not too bad as it turns out! It's a little bit like the Underground from Pokemon Diamond/Pearl, where you dig for treasures across chosen spots (all types of islands). Here, 'random encounters' result in treasure, gold, health or nothing at all (this is my least favourite outcome, obviously). To win a treasure, you have to play a mini-game and complete it within a certain time, otherwise you get a big stamp of 'LOSE' which really sucks. Some pretty random treasures turn up too, especially with the current Christmas theme.
The goal of collecting treasures (as if collecting treasures wasn't cool enough on its own!) is to complete a set of 5 treasures in a particular series, secure them with the museum and gain some museum money, as well as fame and bragging rights and all that. Pretty neat I think. So far I've completed 3 collections, but I've only secured one because I like seeing all the pictures there. They fade out once they're secured, as you can see with my candlestick collection.
Only downside, and maybe this is a testament to the game anyway, is that you run out of health points (HP) way too quickly. And then your treasure hunting minutes are over, to be replenished slowly in 35-second intervals. Kind of annoying, but it stops you from getting too bored too quickly. Collecting treasures is just such a cool novelty, and the game itself plays out well to its further credit. I do recommend giving it a shot, but if you don't like collecting things you may end up being immune to its charms.
I'm hoping to complete a few of the Christmas collections (they're so neat) before they run out, so I guess they'll be keeping my business for a little while longer!