Overview: Frontierville is Facebook game giant Zynga’s latest effort – in many ways, it’s Farmville 2.0. They’ve taken the concept of creating and maintaining a farm and added some new activities and tweaked the balance on the old ones to make a game that feels familiar but also plays more smoothly and feels less repetitive. It’s still a harvesting game at heart, but it’s a much more attractive package.

The basic concept of Frontierville is simple – clear ground, plant crops, raise livestock, and build a frontier town. Every task takes energy, and you can replenish energy by eating food, which you earn from gathering crops or harvesting fruit trees. (Or, of course, by getting gifts from friends.) The addition of energy along changes the game considerably from the Farmville model – now you have to prioritize. Is it worth it to plant a whole field of corn if it’ll take an entire morning’s worth of energy to reap? That tree needs chopping down, but that might rouse a bear, which needs to be run off – is it worth the risk? It’s a mechanic that makes the game feel much more like a series of choices rather than mindless timer-governed clicking.

There are also constant optional quests to follow that help you decide where to spend your energy. One of the more interesting quest lines takes you through building your homestead up sufficiently so your sweetheart can join you – giving you an extra farmhand, although this is really a cosmetic bonus. After several more quests, you can have a child as well. All three family members are fully customizable, including gender, which is not particularly historically accurate and all the more welcome for that.

The other major use of your time in Frontierville is tending your neighbors’ homesteads. You get food, money, and experience, plus a daily bonus that increases the more you help your friends out. Several quests send you to your neighbors as well – if you only have a few friends playing, you may have a tough time completing this type of quest. The other major obstacle to the solo player is building – all the structures require tools of various sorts that can only be gotten as gifts from friend (either the regular gifting system or having people click on your status update) or by paying real money. The buildings are required for many quests and the number of gifts needed gets higher and higher, making it increasingly hard to progress alone.

Frontierville is a well-crafted game that pushes all the same buttons as Farmville, but offers a more diverse experience. If you dig Farmville, and you can convert all of your Farmville friends, you’ll no doubt like Frontierville as well – although be warned, the compulsion to check in every ten minutes to spend that energy is even more intense.