There's pirate settings (where pirates are the goodies, clearly), a medieval area, Candyland, and so on.
While they're not touching any of the licenses - Star Wars, Indy, Batman, etc - they are putting in the recognisable Lego areas. There's also the rather enormous factor of familiarity. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Combine that with an environment familiar from Travellers Tales' massive LEGO series (TT aren't involved in this game, but Funcom have certainly mimicked some of the more distinctive features), and you have something with instant appeal. In the game, the collectable figures (added both by buying bags, and earning them in-game) are used in a solo-co-op that scales from super-simple for the very young, to really quite complex mixing of special abilities for older kids and (they hope) adults. And there are probably ways kids will want to approach it too. Play it in the back of the car on the way home from swimming, pick it up straight away on your mum's PC when you get in. First up, you've got a family-friendly MMO that plays on both PC and tablet, with seamless switching between the two. Especially when the game itself will be free-to-play.īut how is the game? Honestly, I'm not yet sure.Īs a list of selling points, the game does very well.
In a world of enormously expensive collect-em-ups like Skylanders (£12-£15 per figure) and Disney Infinity (£10 a figure), having something slightly similar at £2 a pop is going to be mighty attractive to cash-strapped parents. It is this, I suspect, that will give the game a mighty bump. And here's the masterstroke: from the game's launch later this year, each of those pouches will come with a code, that when entered into the game makes that Minifigure available to play. Bought in foil bags, they're like 3D collectable cards, little plastic chaps and chappesses randomly distributed in surprise pouches. LEGO estimates that at some point this year there will be more Minifigures in existence than humans. Minifigures, if you're not familiar, are currently quite the thing with the little humans. I don't know if it matters whether Minifigures Online is any good or not, because Funcom and LEGO have done something rather smart.
I sat down and had a play of the family-friendly brick-me-do. It could well be a much needed cash cow for the milking.
However, things appear to be back on track now, and last week they were showing off their next MMO, LEGO Minifigures Online. The Secret World performed under expectations (although these were expectations based on their delusionally thinking they could charge a box price and subscription for a new IP MMO), and in January they were briefly suspended from trading as their offices were raided. Funcom haven't had a smooth ride of late.
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