Girls: Don’t feel confined to the likes of Farmville, Cityville or numerous other ‘ville’ type titles. There’s a fantasy based freemium game aimed specifically at the female gender: Fantasy Town.

OK, admittedly there’s nothing to stop girls from playing any game they so choose to (I should know) but Gameloft reckons that Fantasy Town is perfect for girls.

Focusing on a magical world in which players can raise magical plants, build a village and explore mysterious lands, much of the experience is centered around decorating homes and socializing with friends within the game through Facebook Connect. Plenty of creatures can be encountered and players can complete collections of magical items as they progress.

It sounds a little similar to other freemium titles but there’s no denying that it does look pretty cute. Check out the gameplay trailer below. The game is out now and is free to download.

FREE!

Fantasy Town

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-12-08 :: Category: Games

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Silicon Sisters’ Brenda Gershkovitch at GDC last week, and chatted a bit about the studio and the new game coming from them to the iPad.

Silicon Sisters is a newly created development studio founded by women with a goal of creating games that can “tickle the female brain.” More than just pinkification, the studio aims to create games and apps that speak to women of all ages, using a thorough review of current research to create a game development bible that will inform the development process and subsequent games. Their first app, School26, is aimed at girls aged 10 – 16. It’s a game of social interations, in which the protagonist, Kate, navigates the social environment of a high school, making friends and helping her peers with a variety of real-world problems that may tweens and adolescents can face in our modern world. Created for the iPad, School 26 uses a variety of game and quiz mechanics to tell the story of Kate and her friends and hopefully help the girls playing the game learn better ways to get through their own school days as a result.

The play build we were able to look at had a school locker dashboard, and involved some gameplay to help Kate and her two friends manage their own complicated and realistic friendships. There was a teen-magazine style quiz along with some dialogue response choices that we tapped our way through, hoping to calm an angry friend, and support another who needed some cheering up. The colorful, cartoon-y graphics rounded out a solid package, even for an early build.

We’re looking forward to seeing more of this and future games from Silicon Sisters. Not only do we applaud the efforts to make games for a typically under served target population (pink isn’t how we make games for girls!), but to make them with style and fun only enhances the package. No doubt many people, kid and adult, male and female, can benefit from such an appealing experience, and more developers can take a note from the concept of research studies to inform their development process.