A new way to offer daily deals? Give them a dose of FarmVille

The success of Groupon has spawned countless clone daily deal sites, but not much innovation. There’s no reason for group buying and voucher sites to always to presented in the same way, which is why it’s refreshing to see DiscountCity, a social game based around deals.

The site comes from CautaReduceri, a Romanian daily deals aggregator. Currently only available in the Romanian language, DiscountCity has been designed as a promotional campaign to increase the business’ subscriber base while teaching them about how daily deals work. There’s also €15,000 worth of prizes for players in the country to win.

The game allows you to explore an interactive map with real-world deals scattered across them. Typical gamification elements like achievement and points are included, along with instant notifications about what your friends are doing on the service.

When the Romanian campaign is over, the plan is to either launch the project globally as a Facebook app, or to sell the license to daily deal sites or aggregators in other countries, tweaking the format to suit local markets.

While FarmVille-style games and Groupon clones on their own are pretty passé these days, bringing the two concepts together at least shows that there’s room for fresh ideas in the daily deals space. The actual game itself is here, although there won’t be much point playing unless you’re in Romania (and read Romanian). A demo site here features a video of DiscountCity.