Yes, you read that correctly - pirates. They may be coming to the Pioneer Trail in the future, if a recent fan survey (released by the big Z itself on the Pioneer Trail fan page) comes true. We've been given quite a few options to toss around in this new survey, but unfortunately, we're not told if these are story ideas that would pertain to Pioneer Trail itself (either the Homestead or actual Pioneer Trail portion of the game), or if this is just a general survey about future game ideas that Zynga is exploring. As it stands, no other fan page, as of this writing, has linked to the survey, which does give some weight to the former idea above. As for this pirate story itself, we're told that we could "set sail for Booty Island," and play pirates with a full crew. We'll plunder ships and neighbors' islands, and can match up friends with others (this portion is lacking in fine details) for either love or "pirate mischief." If that isn't a wild enough storyline, then how about heading into space? In this storyline, we'd find ourselves crash-landing on an "uncharted planet," where we're forced to build a farm using alien plants or creatures (that is, instead of Cows or other traditional farm animals).
When it comes to this space storyline, I'm reminded of Astro Ranch on iPhone, which is a space-themed farming game allowing you to grow crops and livestock with the help of aliens. As we all know Zynga likes to cop---err, draw inspiration from other titles, could this be a definite game in Zynga's development cycle?
As with all things, we're left to speculate about which of these storylines/game ideas (or lack thereof) will actually come to light, but if you see something in the survey that you're more excited about than others, make sure to give it your vote. Who knows? Your vote could be the deciding factor between playing pirates and launching off into outer space, whether we do so with our Pioneer Trail characters, or in a whole new game.
What do you think of these new storyline ideas? Which ones did you vote for? Let us know in the comments.
