ABANDONED: Familiars.io
Mar. 26th, 2021 10:20 amI had no idea how to classify this one for reasons I will explain shortly. Abandoned, I guess..? It's hard to classify.
Familiars.io is a universally accessible browser game (it supports keyboard, click, and touchscreen controls, for PC and mobile consumption alike) that's basically stripped down, simplified Gen 1 Pokemon Online for the ZX Spectrum.
You pick an avatar and a starter mon and are dropped into the world with some balls, some antidotes, and some potions. Mon and bags of items randomly spawn everywhere, so go get them. There's nothing like an inn or a Pokemon Center, so healing depends on finding and using potions. There is no reviving; we're playing by Nuzlocke rules apparently. Moves do a set amount of base damage but can be modified by the target's physical/magical defense and type advantages/weaknesses. Leveling happens instantly (there is no XP gauge; you just gain one level per battle, period) and the per-mon level cap is 15, so you can raise a maxed out team fairly quickly.
This is all well and good, but ultimately this game feels more like a fun little sandbox demo project to run around in than anything else. There isn't really an... objective, per se? There is no dialogue or anything, not even so much as a way to interact with objects. There's one map, and it's a big and nice and well put-together map, but there's no real progression to it, no starting and ending areas or final dungeons or anything like that. There are a lot of rooms that look like something important should happen here, but they're all empty (remember, there's no such thing as overworld object interaction.) You really just wander around for the sake of wandering around, and collect items and grind mons for the sake of collecting items and grinding mons, and that's it. You can optionally turn on PVP and fight other trainers, I guess, but ehh.
The lack of healing besides hoping you can find enough potions scattered about makes things harrowing, too, unless you do what I did and bypass that mechanic entirely with the following setup:
1) At the start of the game, choose Patch.
2) Patch has a move called "Vampire" that does a lot of damage and drains some of that damage dealt back to you as healing.
3) Spam Vampire on everything that isn't immune to it until Patch is maxed out. (Don't fight the things that are immune to it; there's no reason to.)
4) At this point you could maybe try raising some other mon besides Patch, but like, why.
Anyway, this was neat until I finished that procedure and then the lack of there being any sort of goal or plot or progression or like, anything to do kind of led me to decide we're done here.
Is this game COMPLETE? I mean, how could it be; it's an open sandbox MMO with no actual end condition, nothing to make one think "there, I beat the game" besides self-imposed challenges like raising one of every mon or something.
Is it ONGOING? I dunno, I kind of stopped after the lack of goal got to me.
So it's ABANDONED, I guess...?
This was fun while it lasted, though. I do recommend checking it out, if only for the few minutes it takes for the charm to wear off, because it is charming.
To steal a quote about an unrelated game from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
xyzzysqrl: "An interesting idea, I hope someone makes a game out of it someday."
Familiars.io is a universally accessible browser game (it supports keyboard, click, and touchscreen controls, for PC and mobile consumption alike) that's basically stripped down, simplified Gen 1 Pokemon Online for the ZX Spectrum.
You pick an avatar and a starter mon and are dropped into the world with some balls, some antidotes, and some potions. Mon and bags of items randomly spawn everywhere, so go get them. There's nothing like an inn or a Pokemon Center, so healing depends on finding and using potions. There is no reviving; we're playing by Nuzlocke rules apparently. Moves do a set amount of base damage but can be modified by the target's physical/magical defense and type advantages/weaknesses. Leveling happens instantly (there is no XP gauge; you just gain one level per battle, period) and the per-mon level cap is 15, so you can raise a maxed out team fairly quickly.
This is all well and good, but ultimately this game feels more like a fun little sandbox demo project to run around in than anything else. There isn't really an... objective, per se? There is no dialogue or anything, not even so much as a way to interact with objects. There's one map, and it's a big and nice and well put-together map, but there's no real progression to it, no starting and ending areas or final dungeons or anything like that. There are a lot of rooms that look like something important should happen here, but they're all empty (remember, there's no such thing as overworld object interaction.) You really just wander around for the sake of wandering around, and collect items and grind mons for the sake of collecting items and grinding mons, and that's it. You can optionally turn on PVP and fight other trainers, I guess, but ehh.
The lack of healing besides hoping you can find enough potions scattered about makes things harrowing, too, unless you do what I did and bypass that mechanic entirely with the following setup:
1) At the start of the game, choose Patch.
2) Patch has a move called "Vampire" that does a lot of damage and drains some of that damage dealt back to you as healing.
3) Spam Vampire on everything that isn't immune to it until Patch is maxed out. (Don't fight the things that are immune to it; there's no reason to.)
4) At this point you could maybe try raising some other mon besides Patch, but like, why.
Anyway, this was neat until I finished that procedure and then the lack of there being any sort of goal or plot or progression or like, anything to do kind of led me to decide we're done here.
Is this game COMPLETE? I mean, how could it be; it's an open sandbox MMO with no actual end condition, nothing to make one think "there, I beat the game" besides self-imposed challenges like raising one of every mon or something.
Is it ONGOING? I dunno, I kind of stopped after the lack of goal got to me.
So it's ABANDONED, I guess...?
This was fun while it lasted, though. I do recommend checking it out, if only for the few minutes it takes for the charm to wear off, because it is charming.
To steal a quote about an unrelated game from
xyzzysqrl: "An interesting idea, I hope someone makes a game out of it someday."