FaceBook: ESPNU College Town Review

This has been one game that I've been beyond hesitant about writing because much like a MMO it continues to evolve, but then again there's always the fact that one could use a review of a game like this as a starter to help influence if they are going to end up playing the game or not. College Town is a game in which you build a college from the ground up, you can associate your school with an existing school, I chose Auburn. You will then have to raise the funds, hold events, bring in the students, clean up the academic buildings, and make your campus look attractive.
Graphically you can tell that this is an internet game that doesn't want to put too much pressure on anyone's computer. There are animations that can cause some mischief, but not to the degree of completely destroying a computer. The building designs are all unique. I do enjoy the fact that when you're upgrading your academic and athletic buildings that you get an improved looked to them. My one qualm about the graphics is the fact that there's no rotating camera. I understand that its locked in a slightly not overhead view, but I would love to be able to see some of the buildings that aren't as tall as others that I might have accidentally placed behind a bigger building.
To be honest with you I really don't know if this game has any sounds, I rarely have the speakers on while navigating Facebook, and so I have no idea if this game has good sounds or not.
The controls of the game are just using your mouse to select the different options (builder, competition, friends, etc) and then using the mouse to further your decision. Most of the time, once you really get into the game, all you're going to be doing is clicking on buildings to collect your rewards.
So you start with next to nothing and have to build from there. There's dorms and other housing buildings that are going to be needed in order to make your school thrive, but there's a catch, you're going to need school spirit in order to keep all the students coming. So you're going to have to add some entertainment, some trees, flowers, statues, etc to make students want to keep coming. One of the best ways, though, is to build academic buildings. The reason is that you can upgrade them and it will increase the school spirit as you go. There's also the athletic venues that not only get your students pumped but also drive in some cash to help you build your university up. Now I'll say this right now, this game is not for everyone. If you're looking for instant action, this game is about as far away as you can get from that. This is a timed game. You're going to see that ever building that you can get something out of is on a timer, and only when the timer expires can you get those goods. Now this also makes for a good game for a very busy individual. You can make all your selections, and choices, and then just leave the university be for an extended amount of time, and have no fear of missing anything. Now of course there are some exceptions to that rule, and those are the sporting events. If you wait too long on those you're going to find that you won't get the full value out of the time you had them running.
There is a lot of small things that can help your university, if you've got friends you can expand your borders of your different sections to allow for more room, you can also help out your friends' campuses for money, there's also competitions that you can initiate to see if you have the athletes to compete with the rest. There's a lot of levels for a college/university fan, and its up to them to decide how far they dive down.
For me personally I like to just control the campus, have lots of cash on hand, and make sure that the population is building. So if you're looking for a chance to do a little college town modeling and building, and aren't turned off by a slow pace game, give this one a chance. I give this game a 7.6 out of 10.



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Reader Comments (1)
Yes, the game does has sound and they sound straight out of the 16-bit era.
My main issue was that the Flash Monster kept on killing my web browsers, slowing things to a halt. I eventually gave up as I have a tendency to manically right-click for no good reason whatsoever, and doing so only made things worse.