I'm afraid I don't believe this game should have been released in its present state, even as a "stealth release". I'm sure that if the LDW team alone had been involved in the development they wouldn't even have made it available for testing as a beta. At the moment the game is liable to put people off from buying LDW's regular games, rather than act as an advertisement.

It is far too buggy. Although the developers have fixed a few bugs, other important bugs remain, and new ones are being reported that prevent the players from advancing. For example, the peeps' experience isn't saved between sessions, so every time the player opens the game they are all totally untrained, and are just standing around doing nothing.

Also, the gameplay doesn't seem to have been thought through completely. The game follows the common formula for FB games of having your friends playing the game as 'neighbours'. Although you can visit neighbours' islands, there is nothing you can do to interact with them. In the FB forum one of the developers asked for suggestions from players in response to complaints along these lines, which to me seemed to indicate that they hadn't paid enough attention to gameplay as the thought hadn't occurred to them.

However, I think this can become a good game in time, once the major bugs have been squashed and gameplay is developed. Certainly, the graphics are excellent and the general way of playing is the same as in VV/VF. The villagers are recognisably those from Virtual villagers, although, since they interact more with items such as trees (by cutting them down) the plants and so on remind me of My Tribe. One action in particular I enjoy watching: when a villager isn't doing anything s/he'll stand there scratching. Their expressions also change, and can be seen if you use the zoom facility to get close up.

At the moment, it's certainly worth a look out of curiosity, but don't expect a finished product.