Farmville 2 - The Growing of the Giant Eggplant is a game that should never have been made, but that's ok, because that's exactly why it was made. As part of RMN's 4th birthday a competition was run, the restriction was to create a game in 4 hours (seriously, 4 hours, that's not a typo) with the theme "Sequels that should never be made, but that we will make anyways." Ignoring the misuse of the word 'anyway', the logic here is that if the original game should never have been made then a sequel is right out. Yes I'm channelling the holy hand-grenade of Antioch, which should probably have been applied to this game.


1...2...5! 3, Sir...3!

Actually it's not that bad. It's meant to be bad, the developer knew that he was subverting the Farmville trope and gleefully went about blatantly doing just that. Is it a rousing success story? No not really but as stated it was a game made in 4 hours. It was never going to be a magnum opus.

Given the premise you just knew this game was not going to be set in a lush fertile valley full of acres and acres of verdant and arable land, where your happy go lucky farmer can spend his days harvesting his crops and tending to his livestock whilst being right down neighbourly with all this facebook friends. No this game is set in a desert, an arid parched expanse of shifting sands and scouring winds, and the only thing this deluded farmer who of course is called Ol' Donald has on his mind is growing the biggest eggplant known to mankind. Also he doesn't have any friends. Or indeed neighbours, he's in a desert. He doesn't even have nomadic hermits to chat to, though on the plus side he also doesn't have any scorpions, snakes, lizards or other desert denizens to deal with either. No battles in this one, other than with the forces of nature and a recalcitrant aubergine.

Luckily for him he has two things going for him. He does have an oasis, but of course in keeping with the bright idea of trying to run a farm in the desert the oasis isn't actually on his farm, it's a trek up from it. Then again the game only has about 6 maps so it's not really a long trek, and the other thing he has the player. You see you don't play the game as the idiot farmer, you play it as a wandering something-or-other that stumbles across the farmer lamenting his lack of a garden egg and decides to pitch in and help...after some less than polite dialogue choices that is.

The graphics are all RTP of course, with the exception of the modified Farmville logo, because who could craft custom graphics and make a game in 4 hours? The music likewise is the default with a single exception, the Farmville theme has been added for some bizarre feeling of authenticity.

So off you trot to help out by fermenting weeds into compost and undertaking a feat of engineering by re-routing water from that handy oasis, after getting the crazy and not even remotely neighbourly lady who lives there to get her sizeable posterior out of the way. On the upside though it does allow the developer to subject you to an ice-slide puzzle in the desert, which isn't ridiculous at all.

After a few various quick fetch quests you finally succeed in getting Ol' Donald everything he needs in order to follow his dream and grow his prize winning fruit....


That's a watermelon not a melongene, you idiot.

For a short game that was never meant to be deep or serious or indeed anything like it, Farmville 2 nails it. It's still a waste of time, but as it only lasts 10 minutes, it's not a colossal one.