The Ville Cheats & Tips: See your friends' status updates without leaving the game

Zynga definitely wants The Ville to be a social experience for gamers on Facebook, as the Big Z has added a social feature within the life-simulation game that will allow you to keep track of and even interact with your friends without ever leaving the game. Rather than limiting the social features to those that just allow you to visit your friends' pads and interact with their imaginary avatars, you can also send your friends messages that they can read at a later date (via Z Talk at the bottom of the screen), or even read their status updates without going to their profile (or even your Facebook news feed).

For the latter feature, you'll need to actually find your friend's avatar within the game. The easiest way to do this is to click on their image in your friends list at the bottom of the screen and click on the "Call Over" button. This will bring their avatar over to your game where you can interact with it directly. When clicking on their avatar, you'll see the "Check Status" button, as seen below.

When you click on this button, you'll need to give The Ville access to read the posts on your News Feed (which is fairly harmless), and will then be able to comment on or Like the most recent status from that friend. You can even view other comments on the status (if there are any). At the end of your interaction, you can choose to share a link to the Ville on Facebook, or can simply un-check that box, if you'd rather your friends not be "spammed" with an ad.

Unfortunately, this only applies to status updates that were posted natively within Facebook, so if your friends update with third-party applications (most likely Twitter), you won't see those. Still, it's a neat novelty that you might try out every now and again, and it is a step in the right direction to make these sorts of games truly social. If any other social features launch in The Ville in the future, we'll make sure to let you know.

Will you take the time to check your friends' statuses without leaving The Ville, or will you simply read them on your News Feed as usual? Sound off in the comments!