Inside Social Games

A Facebook role-playing title by the name of Dream World is not exactly dreamy, but it has some redeeming qualities. A form of actual combat, for example — something most RPGs have on Facebook have yet to add.

The game takes place in a medieval realm where players choose from a selection of three character classes and find themselves at a crossroads. They start with a sign post centered within small village and a number of areas in which it leads. This is your “Town.” From here, players can visit healers to restore lost health, armories for armor, stores for basic item purchases, as well as the more important Village Chief.

Upon visiting the head of your village, your first major quest will begin; to destroy a “Lake Monster.” Players will equip whatever items they can and make their way out into first area: “The Marsh.” As it seems, each area is broken up into five explorable sections with each section unlocking as the player levels up (level one equals section one, level two equals section two). Exploration is accomplished by a simple click of an “Explore” button, which will, in turn, allow players to discover a myriad of both friendly and hostile encounters through a static screen.

Interestingly enough, and somewhat refreshing, is the fact that such encounters are the primary source of leveling and are much more interesting than your typical Facebook RPG. Normally, such games have you collecting gear, doing missions, and garnering friends for your guild or mafia, and while that is no different here, the traditional game concept is all done with a simple point and click interface. That isn’t to say Dream World is devoid of such – on the contrary, it has quite a bit – but rather, its “combat,” at least, involves much more manual control.

Combat more in-line with traditional, mainstream, console RPG titles. As was mentioned, when exploring the various areas, players will randomly encounter monsters (though The Marsh seems to only consist of snakes, frogs, and birds). For each encounter, players can attack, run away, or use a skill. Once attack is chosen, the player will melee automatically, exchanging blows with the enemy until a skill is selected for use (or one of them is dead), in which case, a fluctuating power meter appears. From here, the user needs to click the attack button again, when it is full, for maximum damage. Moreover, once you start getting larger variety of skills, this actually does make battles quite a bit more interesting.

Also in one’s travels, players will randomly encounter friends, pets/allies, treasure chests, and non-playing characters. While friends, can merely be waved to, finding (or purchasing) pets/allies will open up further skills, while the latter two will allow for some more… curious meetings. The treasures, usually involve a puzzle of some sort (though most of them seem to be simple math questions), whereas the characters will grant players a range of opportunities such as simple side quests (i.e. kill X amount of frogs), games of chance, or offerings of rare items for trade.

Unfortunately, while this does lead a bit away from the drab, point and click methodology, it doesn’t really do much for the game play, as combat is the only thing that feels different; the puzzles are a bit redundant. Furthermore, most Facebook RPGs are centered on a visual style that is appealing to the player. Dream World – while some of the environments and creatures look okay – isn’t quite at the same level

Frankly, most of the artwork looks very sophomoric. Everything feels very washed out, color-wise (though that might be part of the whole “dream” concept), the user interface is very basic, with most of its elements floating about with no unifying factor, and the anatomy of the human characters is drastically off and out of proportion.

Suffice to say, Dream World is an okay attempt at adding some new concepts to a very carbon-copied Facebook genre. Unfortunately, it is merely a watered-down rendition of something mainstream RPGs have been doing for years, and with artwork that hardly compliments this attempt, it is an idea that, while having potential, still feels very much like a dream.