It appears that now, during this crawling economy, most of the people on Facebook wish to build their own towns and lead them to greater glory and riches and prove themselves that there’s still a chance in the world. Hopefully, it’s not just a virtual one… Either way, with Playfish’s latest game, My Empire, social gamers all over the world get a chance to create an ancient time of their dreams. If the overall experience is pleasant or not – read on this My Empire Review to find out.

You start with a small patch of land and just a few buildings you have to turn into an impressive empire. It won’t be an easy trip and weeks will pass until you achieve your goal, but it will be a nice trip. First, you’ll have to start adding houses to draw in new inhabitants. But the people in your town won’t need only housing, but also places to make them happy, so you’ll have to also build structures that generate happiness. As a golden rule of thumb, you should keep those two really close since the minimum number (either the capacity or the happiness level) decides how many people are living in your empire.

At first, buildings are easy to be build and they’re ready quite fast, but things change with time, since you’ll also need construction materials for the most complex ones, like the wonders (eight of them at the moment I’m writing this review). Also, having neighbors is vital in My Empire: some buildings, including the Wonders, require items that can only be received as gifts from neighbors, which is quite nice since it basically rises up the social level of the game even though for such a young game with so few players it might not be quite a great idea…

Another nice element in My Empire is the introduction of research: if you want to build a Town Hall or a Quarry, you’ll need to research for the needed knowledge. For that, you’ll need an Academy, and things get challenging and interesting, therefore making the game quite enjoyable for a longer time.

However, the amount of items you can build is limited in My Empire for now and except for the aforementioned things, there’s not too much for you to do in the game – things like quests, more interactions with your empire or something…

Also, the social element is not maximized as it is in games like FarmVille, for example: apart from the obligatory gift sending between empires that keeps interactions to a minimum, there’s nothing else to do: visiting one of your friends’ empires only gives you a monetary reward and you can’t do anything to help up your neighbors. However, since the game has just been launched and extra content is planned to be released in the near future, I am sure that My Empire will become more complex and even more enjoyable.

Not that it’s not enjoyable right now! The graphics are classy and “old school”, the sound is bareable and overall the excitement level can be kept high, especially if you have at least a few friends playing the game. Actually, compared to all the other city management/building games I’ve seen on Facebook, My Empire is the only that goes close to the coolness of the great Caesar series. And I’m sure that, for most of you, this is a huge thumbs up.

So head over to Facebook and try My Empire for yourself!