Virtual Villagers 3: The Secret City Update

First I'd like to say that this post may contain some game spoilers, but I'll try to keep those to the bare minimum. That said, I think if you haven't played the game at all yet, read this after you've played a bit, but before your village population is over ten people including infants. Same goes in my opinion, for the official guide at www.ldwforums.com which is the address to the forum community at Last Day of Work, the makers of this game. I'd give you a hot link to it, but their linking policy is a little complicated. Spoilers start below.

I'm glad to say I was able to purchase the game through Big Fish several days ago, after find at the LDW forums that Big Dish was indeed going to be getting the game soon. As I understand it, this version of the game is still a bit of a work in progress, with additional tweaking to be released at a later date. I'm very much enjoying this game. and now that my Villagers are no longer on the verge of starvation I can relax and move back into a more casual playing mode. One vital piece of information that is in the official guide is that until the Villagers can fish, the available food sources can support a maximum of 12-15 people. I read this after my population was at 17, and spent quite a bit of touch and go time staving off starvation with mushroom harvests. It's ideal to have at least two children at all times with this game, as unlike earlier Virtual Villagers games, there are often several collectibles and/or mushrooms appearing at the same time. Which is really nice actually, as it keeps you busy.

I'm saddened to say, I did have to read the walk-through section on the fishing puzzle in order to get my Villagers on the right track, I really wanted to solve it without cheating, but I didn't know I had exceeded my max population on current food sources until it was obviously too late. Thankfully, I was able to pull them through once I did get them working on the right track. No one has died as yet. And, with the information from the walk-through, I was able to focus all their labor on the solution, where up until that point I had them working on less important areas, unknowingly. If you keep your population below the max level you should be able to work out the puzzle, without cheating, at your leisure.

I'm looking forward to solving the rest of the puzzles on my own, barring an attack of sheer frustration.

So, I'd recommend getting this game, exploring a little first and then maybe checking out the guide, it's nicely organized into basic information first, and clearly warns the reader before they get to the actual puzzle solutions and other such spoilers.