September 2010

ESPNU College Town is the latest Facebook game by game developer Playdom in collaboration with ESPN. It is a sports-theme building sim game. In ESPNU College Town, you get the opportunity to build and manage your own university.

Basically, the game has two parts – building and managing the university, and building elite sports team and competing with other players.

Managing the first part is like playing any other building sim game.You have to manage the different entities of a real university such as academic, dorms, entertainment and the moods of the students. Different types of buildings play different role in the progress of the game. Everything under this part can be access from the “Build” icon in the game.

Managing the second part is more like playing a sports game in manager mode, which can be accessed through the “Competition” icon in the game. The competition section features Challenges, My Team, Recruitment, Scoreboard, and Leaderboard section, through which you build, manage and challenge fellow players to either football or basketball matches. Players with better stats and level becomes available to recruit as you level up in the game.

Gameplay Basics: Different types of building will affect the progress of the game. Make sure you have the right mix of different types of buildings to have a steady growth to owning the best virtual university. Effects of different types of buildings.

• Dorms/residential building will enable you to enroll more students, which in turn lifts the caps off the maximum venues you can build.
• Entertainment buildings will help you in get a steady income.
• Academic buildings and decorations will keep your students spirits high. Spirit of students determines the maximum number of students you can enroll.
• Venues are another type of building through which you can host events and earn revenues. They are the best source of revenue generation in the game, but revenues are not collectable if not collected within a specific time after the event is over. Venues can host bigger events by upgrading them. Over time, you will also be able to build authentic stadiums.

Apart from building those buildings, you can lay different types of roads and expand your campus area.

Managing and playing the sports part is totally different from the building part. On joining the game, you will get a few players with not so cool stats. Anyway, there are two types of challenges:

1. Gameday Challenge – You will be able to instant challenge teams that has the same team level as you. You will be able to make a specific amount of Gameday Challenge in a day.
2. Rival Challenge – You can use this mode to sent out challenge along with an optional message. The competition takes place when they accept your challenge.

You can have a maximum of 4 gameday challenge, that are recharged over time. You must select a starter by dragging a player card in the given slot and start the challenge. Different player cards can be used for a specific number of plays only. You can recruit players with better stats and use them to increase your odds of winning.

Few screenshots of the sports part of the game

The game contains all the other social mechanism like sending and receiving free gifts, visiting and helping neighbors, publishing and receiving free bonuse.

The game also gives access to authentic assets to more than 60 real universities including campus buildings, stadiums, mascots, logos and more.

If you have played Playdom’s other title like Social city, you will see a lot of similarity in the game play of the first part. The second part carters mainly for sports fans, but depends on the building and managing part to excel. All in all, ESPNU College Town has the right mix of building and sports sim and demands a lot of strategy, planning and competition.

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