The Pioneer Trail



The Pioneer Trail (originally called FrontierVille) is a Flash-based game by Zynga Inc., available through Facebook. You play a farmer, with a single homestead that consists of isometric tiles. You plow land, plant crops and trees, buy animals, and harvest them at regular intervals. You may also buy buildings, decorations, vehicles and various other items, many of which are cosmetic rather than functional. The primary currency is "coins", which are earned through harvesting, completing achievements ("ribbons"), and assisting your neighbors. There is also a secondary currency called "Horseshoes" which is primarily purchased with real money, and is necessary to buy most of the really good stuff. Through working on your homestead and buying items, you earn experience, which in turn unlocks better items as you gain levels.

The game promotes socializing and sharing. Your ability to expand your homestead is dependent on how many neighbors you have, so if you have Facebook friends who play The Pioneer Trail, you will probably be getting a lot of neighbor requests from them. Other than that, there are many items that can only be obtained by having someone send them to you as a gift, and you can earn extra coins and experience by visiting other frontiers and fertilizing their crops, pulling weeds or scaring off snakes, coyotes and bears.

The game supports many play styles. You can go for maximum coin earnings or maximum experience gain, become a collector, design your homestead around any theme you can imagine, or compete in the weekly contests for best-looking homestead. Play is allowed in any desired intervals, mainly through having a variety of crops that harvest at different rates, from two hours to five days.

It is a sister game to PetVille, Fish Ville and FarmVille.


 * Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Even though you can bribe your way to get through the game, the cost of horseshoes with different items/quests/etc. WILL make you curse and swear.
 * Amazing Technicolor Wildlife
 * Anti-Poopsocking: While you can sit there and obsessively homestead clovers if you really want to, most crops ripen and most events occur in daily intervals.
 * Arcadia: Considering that the only places you see in the entire game are farms homesteads, pastures and orchards, and everyone is an adorable little farmer in overalls...
 * Bribing Your Way to Victory: The game may be played entirely for free and is fully functional, but there are a whole host of cool items, shortcuts and time savers available for those who shell out real money for Horseshoes, which otherwise trickles in at the rate of one per level earned. Needless to say, this has earned the game a substantial Hatedom.
 * More to the point, the programmers must have hired Adam Smith, which make the hate very, very, VERY understandable.
 * But Thou Must!: There's a woman over there with a broken wagon, and I absolutely will not let you click on anything else until you answer the letter she just sent you. Every day. You physically can't ignore her.
 * Cosmetic Award: Nearly every building and decoration, save a handful of functional ones, is there simply to make your farm homestead look pretty.
 * Desert Skull: These keep popping up on disused parts of your homestead.
 * Determined Homesteader: More so than in FarmVille, where the country is already tamed.
 * Determined Homesteader's Spouse: Can be earned by completing certain goals.
 * Determined Homesteader's Children: And once you have a spouse, more goals to add to your family.
 * Everything's Worse with Bears: ...and coyotes ...and foxes ...and groundhogs ...and snakes.
 * Engagement Challenge: Though not for the groom-to-be  but for the player, who has to complete challenges so   can propose. The challenges include making a ring, and creating a customizable Pimped-Out Dress for
 * Experience Points: You earn them by doing just about everything, and each level you gain unlocks new crops and items.
 * Gay Option: You can have a spouse of the same gender as your farmer.
 * When you finish building the Kissing Tree, you can start one of three romances. One of such involves Fanny Wildcat and Bess.
 * Gotta Catch Them All: All the different types of trees, animals, miscellaneous decorations, collectibles...
 * Holiday Mode: Many of the decorations (as well as some animals and crops) are limited edition, meaning they can only be bought for a few weeks after they're introduced, and then they become virtually impossible to get your hands on. Limited edition content is usually based around themes, with holidays being especially popular.
 * In-Universe Game Clock: The game uses real-world time. Make sure you harvest your crops on schedule, because they'll wither if you leave them alone twice as long as you should.
 * Isometric Projection
 * Randomly Drops: Mystery boxes give you random rewards, including some things for which you'd otherwise have to pay cash.
 * Ridiculously Cute Critter: Normal farm animals, yes. But they are all ridiculously cute.
 * The fully grown cow is a bit of a Gonk.
 * Shame If Something Happened: The Mysterious Stranger who appears with the Saloon and Still threatens you with this if you don't complete the related Still mission tasks.
 * Shop Keeper: Hank, manager of the general store. Known for a supply of bad jokes.
 * Shout-Out: A rather brilliant one, actually. There's an angel statue available in the market. The description? Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you are dead.
 * X Meets Y: The game is pretty much identical to FarmVille only with Mafia Wars' energy mechanic.
 * And missions.