Trade Nations, the Elysian of town sims, migrates from iOS to Facebook

FarmVille players who are sick of withered crops should check out Z2Live's and Bight Games' Trade Nations, the newest town simulation game on Facebook. If you think FarmVille is hell, Trade Nations is like toiling in the Elysian Fields. This game is so cute, so easy, and so incredibly quiet, it doesn't even have its own theme, only sound effects. It's got an uncluttered look with simple, large icons and menus (a design that's probably due to its mobile origins). When you launch the game, a tutorial smoothly guides you until you reach Level 3. After that point, the hand-holding stops and you'll count on goals and captions to tell you what to do.

You'll do the usual click-and-wait routine with shops, logging camps, quarries, bakeries, and little workers who you'll boss around with chores. In that way, it's somewhat like a god game. But your workers (who all have their own names) have no moods to watch out for and there's no system of punishment where you'll lose goods and gold, if you leave things unattended for too long. It's also gratefully free of the heavily criticized faux-social elements of soliciting the help of friends via Facebook wall posts or the annoying in-game, pop-up windows asking for real money to buy more virtual premium currency.