On track to announce 10 products today, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus just announced the newest game in its “Ville” franchise, Castleville. Castleville will be joining mainstays Farmville, Frontierville, and Cityville, the number one game on Facebook. From what we’re hearing the game play is basically like Farmville, except building a medieval castle instead of a farm. You can craft art and armour and trade, as well as defend your castle from “beasties” according to Zynga Dallas director Bill Jackson.
Jackson also reveals that Castleville will have an original orchestral score.
At first glance Castleville looks a little like Shrek, with a character called “Antonio the ‘Playboy woodsman’” who is vaguely reminiscent of Antonio Banderas, who also had a role in Shrek.
It’s been in development for over a year, Pincus says.
So far we’ve got Castleville, Hidden Chronicles, Mafia Wars 2 on Google+, Zynga Casino (and Zynga Bingo) and five new mobile games including three on Facebook’s HTML5 platform (Words With Friends, Zynga Poker and Farmville Express) and Mafia Wars ShakeDown and DreamZoo a “zoo with no cages.”
I’m sitting here at Zynga HQ writing this, so will update this post with more details as they come in.
Image via: Matija Grguric
Updating.