FarmVille Limited Edition Swiss Buildings: Swiss Manor & Large Chalet

    farmville swiss manor
Two new limited edition Swiss themed buildings hit the market, the Swiss Manor and Large Chalet.

Both will be available in the FarmVille Market during the next 15 days.
farmville large chalet     farmville swiss manor
Limited Edition Swiss Alps Buildings: (Released July 14th 2010)

    Swiss Manor – 50 FV$
    Large Chalet – 350,000 coins


This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.

Will you purchase any of these buildings? Share your pics with editors@games.com and we may feature them here.

FarmVille's Mystery Game: Is it really better than a Mystery Box?

In this week's update, FarmVille released a new Mystery Game in the Market, calling it "better than a mystery box." (We'll see about that!) If you want to play the Mystery Game, head to the Market and look under the Decorations tab. For the next six days, you will be able to play the game ... provided you're willing to part with 20 Farm Cash.

farmville mystery game

If you decide to take the plunge, press 'Play,' and you'll be given access to a Pop the Balloons! game. The game itself is pretty simple, just aim using the mouse and then click once you've targeted your balloon.

farmville pop the balloon game

Once the balloon pops, you'll be rewarded with a mystery animal, which you will be able to find in your gift box. I played a single round of the Pop the Balloon! game and was rewarded with a handsome Black Stallion. If you want to try your luck again and throw another dart, you will have to pay an additional 20 Farm Cash.
Before you decide to go on a spending spree, take a gander at the six mystery animals inside:


       
       
       

From left to right, here's a list the mystery animals you can win from the game:

    White Squirrel
    White Porcupine
    White Lion Cub
    White Kangaroo
    White Deer
    Black Stallion


My personal take: While these animals are all lovely, none of them really strike me as a must-have on the farm. I question whether this new Mystery Game really is better than a Mystery Box, based on pricing alone. The game costs 20 Farm Cash to play, a Mystery Box generally costs 15 Farm Cash. If this game yielded more useful gifts -- like a Hot Rod vehicle or a bundle of Unwithers -- I could understand the motivation behind this new mystery item. Otherwise, it's just seems like a game within a game that you pay for the privilege to play.

FarmVille Mystery Box vs. Mystery Game
Mystery Box!Mystery Game!I like bothI don't like eitherI don't spend cash in FarmVille
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FarmVille Swiss Flag Now in the Market!

Finally! The Swiss Flag is now available for you to proudly display on your FarmVille Farms.

The Swiss Flag is a permanent market item that you can purchase in the FarmVille Market at any time for
16 FV$.

You may notice that the Swiss Flag is rectangular shaped in FarmVille, however, in real life the Swiss flag is square shaped.
farmville swiss flag
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.

FarmVille Fan Sheep arrives in the Market

The FarmVille Fan Sheep is finally here and available in the FarmVille Market!

The Fan Sheep celebrates the FarmVille Sheep's reaching 2 million fans on its FaceBook Fan page.

The Fan Sheep has a 300,000 coins price tag and will be available during the next 20 days only in the FarmVille Market.

This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.

What do you think, is this too many coins to pay for a Fan Sheep?

FarmVille Limited Edition Swiss Ibex

A new Swiss Alps limited edition animal, the Swiss Ibex hit the FarmVille Market.

The Swiss Ibex is available for 16 farm cash during the next 13 days only.

farmville swiss ibex
Check out a real life Swiss Ibex in the video below. Traditionally the Swiss Ibex's horns are used to defend themselves, but this one found another use!

This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.

Bejeweled Blitz and FarmVille nominated Online Game of the Year in Golden Joystick Awards

Bejeweled Blitz, the beautifully addictive Facebook edition of the popular puzzle series by Popcap, has been nominated for Online Game of the Year in the 28th Annual Golden Joystick Awards. The gem-bursting puzzler join 15 others like Zynga's FarmVille, Champions Online by Cryptic and Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online (which recently went free-to-play).

Players enjoy Bejeweled Blitz in rapid fire, one-minute-long high score competitions that are posted to online leaderboards on Facebook. The game boasts over 12 million active users on Facebook and can also be played on most mobile devices.

The Golden Joystick Awards are run by U.K.-based Future Media and allow you, the gamers, to vote on your favorite games each year by category. For not one, but two social games (no FrontierVille?) to make it into the nominees this year serves as even more proof that the industry is taking social gaming seriously.

Unseating FarmVille: Have social games seen better days?

We reported earlier this week that FarmVille has been ousted as the top Facebook application, with the Phrases application coming out on top as of this week. For those of us who work with these games day after day, we know that FarmVille falling to 54 million players from 84 million players isn't the end of the world. An article posted today in PC World claims that this is a sign of general social gaming woes:

    It's like Zynga is scrambling to add more sources of air to a deflating bubble. The fact that a random quiz app could unseat Farmville from its top spot, even temporarily, shows that social games have seen better days.

    [Source: PCWorld]

We think that this article was a bit sensational and overblowing the situation. Many articles on the web talk about social games as if there is only one game (FarmVille) or only one company (Zynga) who are playing a part in the massively popular gaming trend. What these articles fail to mention is that smaller developers are now showing huge successes, and that there are many more companies out there making social games. There are currently 10 social game developers with over 10 million monthly active users across their games. Another 12 with over 5 million MAU. And over 75 other lesser-known social game developers who have games with over 1 million players combined. This is no easy feat, and nothing to sneeze at.

Social games are diversifying. The days of Zynga not only ruling the roost but also being the only major player are dead. There are up-and-coming developers such as Digital Chocolate that are pumping out high quality games at an unbelievable pace. Massive brands such as Google (who purchased Slide), EA (who purchased Playfish), and Disney (who purchased Playdom) are coming in and putting existing IP and familiar faces into new and existing games.

Social games aren't dying, by any means. The loss in numbers of FarmVille is an indicator of the game's age and lifecycle, and the vast number of new games by new companies that are being released weekly. It's never looked better for social game players, nor social game developers. Using FarmVIlle as an indicator of social game health as a whole is a rookie mistake that many journalists are making, but at Games.com - The Blog, we know better because we are completely immersed in Facebook games.

Pre-order FarmVille for Dummies on Amazon.com

No folks, this one isn't a joke. FarmVille for Dummies now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. In case you still need to learn more about how to play everyone's favorite social game, this 288-page paperback book will teach you everything you need to know.

Aimed for new FarmVille players who are just starting out, FarmVille for Dummies will teach you how to find neighbors, how to achieve all of the ribbons and collections, how to shop at the FarmVille Market, how to do co-op missions, and how to deal with any technical issues that might be keeping you down. FarmVille for Dummies is written by Angela Morales of FarmVille Freak, and co-authored by Kyle Orland (who has done quite a bit of writing for us here).

The book is $13.59 USD, and has a release date of February 15, 2011. What could make a better Valentine's Day present than a copy of FarmVille for Dummies? We'll definitely be picking it up!

Preorder FarmVille for Dummies on Amazon here >

FarmVille Winter Holiday items: Sweet Shop, Pond, Stockings Arch, Winter Teddy & more

Tonight's FarmVille update brought with it not only new trees, animals, and avatar costumes, but it also saw the release of a slew of new decorative and building items in the game. There are eight new items to talk about in all - two buildings, and six decorations.

These decorations offer a combination of items that are entirely new to the game (like the Winter Home pictured above), and those that are re-releases of items from last year's theme, while the two buildings offer even more structures to add to your quaint Holiday Village on your farm.

Meet us behind the break for a full look at these newest items.

First off, let's take a look at the new buildings. They are the Winter Sweet Shop, and the Winter Home. For some of you, these items might seem incredibly familiar, and they should, as we gave you a special sneak peek of them last week.

The Winter Sweet Shop is the more expensive of the two items, simply because it is a premium item. It can be purchased for 30 Farm Cash, and you'll receive 3,000 experience points as a bonus for purchasing it. Meanwhile, the Winter Home costs 360,000 coins. No, this isn't a cheap item, but at least those who aren't willing to spend Farm Cash (or simply don't have that kind of Farm Cash available to spend in the first place) have a chance at this one. You'll gain a similar XP boost of 3,600 points if you go with this item instead.

Moving onto the decorative items, we see the re-release of an item that was first launched in the game during last year's holiday celebration, and the release of an item that is so much like one from last year that it's almost hard to spot the differences. These, of course, are released alongside some entirely new items.

The item from last year is the "Giant Snowflake I," which is available for just 1,500 coins. This snowflake was part of a three piece set last year, so it will be interesting to see if Zynga releases the other two snowflakes (appropriately called II and III) before the Winter Holiday theme ends for this year.

The other, clone-like item that I mentioned above is called the Giant Nutcracker, which is available for 80,000 coins. For those that were playing last year, you'll likely immediately think that this is the "Red Nutcracker" from last year, but don't be fooled! This Giant Nutcracker (pictured at left in the image below) has more elaborate detailing around the crown and beard, is wearing red pants instead of blue, and is a touch smaller in size than last year's version. Still, though, the differences are so minor at a glance that this farmer is going to skip out on purchasing it, since my Red Nutcrackers from last year do the job just fine.

Moving on, there are four entirely new items, in the form of the Winter Pond, Winter Fireplace, Stockings Arch, and Winter Teddy. Three of the four are premium items, with the Winter Pond costing the most at 30 Farm Cash, while the Winter Fireplace and Stockings Arch cost 10 and 5 Farm Cash, respectively. Each of these will reward you with experience points for purchasing them - 3,000, 1,000 or 500, depending on the item you purchase (in that order).

As for the Winter Teddy, this is a large teddy bear item, that's even bigger than your in-game avatar, which is available for 100,000 coins. As usual, you'll earn 10% of the purchase price as an experience reward for purchasing it, meaning that you'll receive 1,000 points in all.

All of these items, whether a building or a decorative item will only be available for the next 12 days. While that may not seem like a long time elsewhere, in the world of FarmVille we expect to see Zynga releasing a slew of new items before the Holidays have had a chance to slip by for another year.

CityVille on Facebook reaches 22 million, rivals real world's largest cities

CityVille FrontierVille Promo
When Zynga recently mentioned that CityVille is the company's fastest growing social game it was no joke. According to Inside Social Games, the game has reached 22 million monthly players as of this morning (in less than two weeks), which would make it a faster growing game than not only FrontierVille, but all Zynga games--including FarmVille-- to date. And if this insane growth is possible after Facebook shut down nearly all viral channels for social games, there is only one question to ask: How?

The Zynga Name
Well, let's start from the beginning. Zynga already has an established reputation for social gaming being connected to FarmVille alone, so that certainly helps. In other words, folks were just waiting for CityVille since we first heard word of it back in August. But it takes more than just a reputation to garner this much of a following so quickly.

Let's take this dissection behind the break and see how CityVille became the fastest-growing Zynga game ever.
CityVille in German
Willkommen bei CityVille
That's "Welcome to CityVille" in German (roughly), one of CityVille's five supported languages and most likely key to the game's rapid growth. Translated into Spanish, French and Italian in addition to German and standard English, CityVille is open to a whole new world of players (literally) without the need for intense localization by remote studios. However, this is also because European culture is much more similar to American culture than, say, Chinese or Japanese culture. If the game were to later be translated into those languages, some more intensive localization would have to go down in order to fall in line with cultural customs--which is already underway for FarmVille in Japan and has been done with Zynga Poker in China. At any rate, being open to a more diverse range of players has almost certainly increased Zynga's reach with CityVille.

Hey You, Come Try This Game!Facebook Game Notifications
While cross promotions for CityVille have just recently been popping up in the Zynga Game Bar above each of its games, it's the in-game promotions that are likely grabbing more of us every day. And although this isn't necessarily a new method, it is effective for sure. I don't know about you, but seeing a massive billboard for another game in my farm certainly piques my interest. With results like this already blowing up, I would expect cross promotions for CityVille to stick around for a long time.

"Bobby Sue just sent you Miscellaneous Item #27 in CityVille."
Yes, viral growth has returned. Well, at least a little bit. Facebook game requests have recently started popping in our Notifications on the home page including anything from help requests to gifts. And since you can send gifts to non-players, these Notifications are likely appearing for the social game pure as well. Not to mention that Zynga's infamous "BegVille" techniques have made a not-so-triumphant return in CityVille, which in a way could be helping the game grow through persistence. It's a bit of a stretch, but being constantly reminded about a game could lead to players mentioning in conversation, spreading the news via word of mouth. Multiply that by a few million people and you've got yourself an inadvertent source of growth.

And if CityVille keeps going at this rate, CityVille will soon overtake Cafe World and later FrontierVille in the list of Zynga's top Facebook games. However, is it possible for the game to come close to FarmVille much less thwart it as the developer's number one game? Well, that's up for you, the players, to decide.

FarmVille Unreleased: My Snowman and Snowball Fights coming soon

My Snowman 1
If you thought the winter festivities in FarmVille would end with the Holiday Tree and the upcoming New Year's Eve Party, think again. Our good friends at FarmVille Freak recently detailed an upcoming Snowman event on their podcast, but it's just now that they've posted images of the unreleased content. It appears that much like in FrontierVille, players in FarmVille will be able to build their very own Snowman.

Find more details and images behind the break.

My Snowman 2
If these preview images are any indication, it will play out similar to several recent building events with players asking one another for gifts in order to complete the Snowman. Yet, there is one small twist. We expect this event to be rolled out in conjunction with something even more exciting: Snowball Fights. According to FarmVille Freak, this is exactly how we will "gift" each other the snow needed to build our Snowmen. A pile of snow will accumulate on our farms from throwing so much of it and with that we'll be able to build an icy, flaky friend.

My Snowman 3
Better yet, it appears that after either accumulating enough snow or giving your Snowman a special item, it will dance for you on the farm. Finally, our very own Frosty the Snowman for the farm--let's just hope this one doesn't melt away. Stay tuned to your farm for when this feature goes live and right here for a detailed guide.

FarmVille on Film: It's not that easy to Escape the Farm

Just try it, you'll see. Innocent FarmVille player Kelly is suffering in the workplace due to her FarmVille addiction, so she decides to quit. However, this short video, titled "Escape the Farm," makes one thing clear: one does not simply leave the farm. Apparently, a secret organization known as "The Farm" knows when you leave and what they do to players who quit is not pretty. Now, let's just hope Zynga doesn't resort to tactics like this to bring back retired players.

FarmVille Cheats and Tips: Nursery Barn Calf and Foal Guide

To be an accomplished calf & foal FarmVille breeder, you're going to need an adult bull or stallion, and lots of adult cows and horses to breed. An easy way to get lots of adult cows and horses is by placing foals in your FarmVille Nursery Barn. While the Nursery Barn's primary function is to harvest coins from multiple foals and calves at once, it also has a secondary feature: it turns your foals and calves into adult horses and cows.

Every time you harvest your Nursery Barn, there is a chance that one of your calves or foals will grow into an adult cow or horse. These can then be used to either breed more calves for your neighbors, or used to do the Multiple Harvest Cheat for infinite breedings. More on the Multiple Breeding Cheat here.
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
However, be careful with the Nursery Barn. Many people assume that their rare foals and calves will grow up into the adult version of themselves. This is not the case. Continue reading to learn all about the Nursery Barn and how it transforms calves and foals.

If you look at our chart below, you'll notice that there are only a handful of different adult animals your foals and calves can grow into. For example, a Green Calf will turn into an ordinary Chocolate Cow. Similarly, a Black Stallion Foal will become a Black Horse, not a Black Stallion.

This is because if you could just reproduce your rare Farm Cash-bought animals with breeding, no one would spend any Farm Cash anymore. Though it may seem unfair, all I ask is that you are careful with your rare calves & foals.

Check out our FarmVille Cheats & Tips Nursery Barn Guide chart below for more info on which calves and foals transform into which cows and horses.

Cows & Calves:
farmville breeding nursery barnTuscan Calf     farmville breeding nursery barnCalf     farmville breeding nursery barn
Chocolate Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Brown Calf
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Holstein Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Groovy Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Simmental Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Candy Cane Calf
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Robot Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Red Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Longhorn Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Purple Calf
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Blue Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Autumn Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Gelbvieh Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Disco Calf
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Holiday
Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Western
Longhorn Calf
    farmville nursery barn breeding valentine calfValentine
Calf     farmville nursery barn breeding Purple
Valentine Calf
These all grow into:
farmville breeding cheats nursery barnHolstein Cow
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Fan Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Pink Patch Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Green Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Pink Calf
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Neapolitan Calf
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Kelly Green Calf
       
These all grow into:
farmville breeding cheats nursery barnChocolate Cow
The Belted Calf cannot be put in the Nursery Barn.

Horses & Foals:
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Pink Pony Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Reitpony Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Purple Pony Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Silver Pony Foal
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Pony
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Black Pony
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Blue Pony
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Candy Corn
Pony Foal
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Yakut Pony
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Candy Cane
Pony Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Pinto Pony
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Disco Pony
Foal
farmville nursery barn breeding valentine pony foalValentine
Pony Foal            
These all grow into:
farmville breeding cheats nursery barnLight Blue Pony
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Autumn Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Breton Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Brown Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Appaloosa Foal
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
White Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Haflinger Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Grey Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Pinto Foal
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Black Stallion
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Mustang
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Morgan
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Black
Foal
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Snow Stallion
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Red Pinto
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Saddle
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
New Year
Foal
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Asian Wild Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Red Pinto Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Green Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Palouse Foal
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Buckskin Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Fjord Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Red Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Forest Foal
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Brown Gypsy
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Harvest
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Gypsy
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Camargue
Foal
farmville nursery barn breeding pink stallion foalPink Stallion
Foal     farmville nursery barn breeding pink gypsy foalPink Gypsy
Foal     farmville nursery barn breeding icelandic foalIcelandic
Foal    
These all grow into:
farmville breeding cheats nursery barnBlack Horse
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Percheron
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Cream Draft
Foal
    farmville breeding cheats nursery barn
Clydesdale
Foal
These all grow into:
farmville breeding cheats nursery barn

FarmVille: Husky Puppies now available for adoption

As we told you yesterday, Zynga had been working steadily on bringing more dog types to FarmVille, specifically Husky Puppies. Now, those three dogs that we talked about yesterday are now available to adopt from the game's store, but only for a limited time.

The Husky dog breed is part of the Winter Wonderland item set, and as such, this means that you'll only be able to adopt one of the three available colors of Husky until they expire from the store in 20 days. There is only one listing for the Huskies in the store, but rest assured, there are three colors to choose from, each costing 65 Farm Cash.

Clicking on the "Buy" button in the store brings up the customization window, where you can choose the gender and name of your Husky, along with choosing which of the three colors you'll adopt - Black, Brown, or Gray. Don't panic - you'll be able to change your mind about making a purchase before actually going through with it, so you're more than welcome to get a preview of the three dog colors (including a few of their animations) before you invest such a large amount of Farm Cash into them.

Remember, puppies must be fed Kibble until they grow into adults, and as this is a Farm Cash puppy, you'll be given your free (and complete) two week supply of Kibble when making a purchase. After two weeks, your puppy will grow into an adult Husky. Level this Husky up with Dog Treats and it will eventually be able to "fetch" things for you.

Again, the Husky breed of puppies will only be available in the game for the next 20 days, at which point they will expire from the store, likely to not be seen again (at least for a very long time - and by then, the prize might have increased). If you've been looking for the perfect dog breed in FarmVille, make sure to give this one a second glance.

FarmVille Sneak Peek: Fantasy / Fairytale theme coming soon

It's not often when we have unreleased FarmVille images actually being released by Zynga before the items are launched in FarmVille proper, but such an instance has happened today, as Zynga has released a single sneak preview image of a new limited edition item theme that's "coming soon," over on the official FarmVille Blog. The image is of a tall tower, with what appears to be Rapunzel's hair cascading out of the tall window.

We've been able to add to the theme's sneak peek, as we've come across an additional image - that of a Fairy Pig, complete with crown, wings, and magical, sparkling wand. This leads us to believe that this new item theme will be one concerning either fairytales in general, or a wider range of fantasy items (more likely the former).

We'll be sure to keep you updated as to the development of this new theme as we have more information in the future. While it's unknown when this theme will be launching in full, it is nice to have this official confirmation from Zynga that it is indeed coming. Just how many fairytales or fantasy items will be represented, however, remains to be seen.

FarmVille Sneak Peek: St. Patrick's Day treehouse coming soon?

If this newest batch of unreleased images in FarmVille is anything to go by, it looks like Zynga will be carrying out this year's St. Patrick's Day celebration in two parts, just as it did for Valentine's Day this year (with the Cupid's Castle and the Valentine Mailbox). While we've already spotted an image of the interior of this year's St. Patrick's Day Wishing Well (which will apparently act like the Valentine Mailbox, but require you to complete collections with items in order to earn better prizes), we've now discovered what this holiday's equivalent of the Cupid's Castle will be - that being a grand treehouse.

This treehouse starts out as a simple hoe with a small tree sprouting out through the roof. By adding three three buildings materials however (Bricks, Boards, and Nails - see below), you'll be able to upgrade this treehouse a total of four times, until you have an item that has the home perched high in the trees, surrounding by foliage and even a lovely rainbow.

It's presumable that this item will function it the same way as the Cupid's Castle, allowing you to "harvest" from the building to collect items - likely the Lucky Pennies we showed you earlier - which can then be traded in for prizes in the Wishing Well.

More details on this new building item are forthcoming, and we'll make sure to bring you all of the details about this new feature as it launches in the game.

FarmVille English Countryside Sneak Peek: Music to your ears

Music can define a videogame as much as its gameplay, graphics and art direction, and Zynga knows this well. It's exactly why Zynga released a sneak peek on YouTube of the tunes behind the English Countryside expansion in FarmVille. Frankly, it sounds an awful lot like a toned-down version of FrontierVille's music. Nothing sounds particularly "English" about it. I'm no composer, but I would have created a FarmVille motif that built off of the original theme song. At any rate, enjoy the minute-long clip of what you'll likely hear on loop for months to come.

[Via FarmVille Freak]

What do you think of the English Countryside music? Would you enjoy listening to this music every time you logged in?

FarmVille: Mac & Cheese Tree and Giant Mac & Cheese Tree now available in the store

Earlier this week, we brought you the news that current Stouffer's promotion in FarmVille has seen the release of a new Mac&Cheese Tree in the game. If you liked receiving one free tree from the Stouffer's Farm, but wish that you could have more, your wish has now come true, as Zynga has released the tree in the marketplace - wait for it - for coins!

That's right, not only can you purchase the Mac& CheeseTree for coins, but only 1500 coins at that! This is a great opportunity to stock up on these trees and increase the rate at which you master them, without having to wait for your single tree to be ready to harvest once every two days.

Additionally, the Giant Mac&Cheese Tree is also now available in the store, at a price of 5 Farm Cash. One final thing to note is that the Mac&Cheese Tree, when placed inside the Orchard now offers the Giant Mac&Cheese Tree as a Mystery Seedling (when it was first released, it only produced more of itself).

Feel free to take all the time you want with purchasing these trees. Both are listed as permanent additions to the store, with no time limit, so we can at least expect them to be around longer than we'll actually need to continue purchasing them.

What do you think of these two trees? Will you purchase a slew of these cheap trees so that you can master them more quickly?

FarmVille English Countryside: Mail delivery offers free English Calf

With the FarmVille English Countryside 20 Comments, we've received another Mail Delivery on the outskirts of our farms, giving a recap of activities that will be available in the new expansion from a few of the game's new characters: Lily, Agatha, and Professor Milton.

We've been reminded that we'll be able to farm on rich English soil, plant new crops, craft new items, and breed new sheep, but the main reason for this new Mail Delivery is the prize that we'll receive inside - a brand new (and downright adorable) English Calf. This calf looks like a regular brown and white calf, only it has been given a large themed hat that covers up half of its face, due to the calf's small size.

To receive one of these little cuties, remember to click on the plane on the outside edge of your farm, and then take note of the fact that you can share an extra English Calf with your friends via a general news feed post. Hopefully with this recap postcard, Zynga is trying to tell us that the English Countryside will be here very soon. We'll make sure to let you know if that's the case.

Have you claimed the other prizes being given away through these postcard deliveries in the past?

FarmVille: Green Roses Crafting recipes now available

So, it turns out that the three unreleased Green Rose crafting recipes in FarmVille won't be coming to the English Countryside version of a Crafting Building after all (or, at the very least, they won't be exclusive to the expansion), as Zynga has launched all three recipes in the game this afternoon.

As usual with new recipes, there is a new offering available in each of the three types of Crafting buildings. The Spa will be able to create wooden containers of Green Potpourri, the Bakery can make Green Mocha Cake [pictured] and the Winery can make Green Rose Water.

Luckily, all three of these recipes require just six bushels to create, three of which are Green Rose bushels. The other bushel you'll need varies depending on the crafting building. Spas will need three Morning Glory bushels, Bakeries need three Wheat bushels, and finally, Wineries require three White Grape bushels.

The Green Rose crop will be available to grow for the next 19 days, and we can't imagine that these three recipes will be available for much longer after that time. You'll be able to master these limited time recipes for those highly prizes mastery signs, so this very well may give you enough reason to grow more Green Roses, even if you have already mastered them prior to the release of these recipes. At least, I know it gives me enough reason. Will you join me?

Check out the rest of our St. Patrick's Day 2011 coverage right here.

Do you like completing limited time Crafting recipes, or have you already mastered Green Roses and don't see this as a good enough reason to start planting them again?