Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
On paper, Seabeard looks like it should be my favorite mobile game of the year. When a friend pitched it to me as "Animal Crossing with Pirates" and showed me its adorable cut-out inspired visuals, I downloaded it that same night (since I happen to live in one of the few countries where it's currently available). I played intently for a little while. I bought a $0.99 bundle of in-game currency within my first 2 hours. I recommended it to my mother. She took an immediate shine to it as well, flicking back and forth between Seabeard and Hearthstone on her iPad. It's colorful and spirited and sweet.
Now a few days have passed, and both of us have hit a wall. My mother still seems charmed by the game in spite of this, but for me its veneer has faded. I will probably stop playing by the end of the week.
Charm will only carry you so far, and although developer Handcircus and publisher Backflip Studios have put together a very charming package, it's falling short in a very big way.
A Day in Doremia
Let me tell you what an average Seabeard session looks like for me: I launch the app, collect about 50 coins from my fish merchant, then give him two more fish to sell. Typically, that's it. I am saving up for something that costs 500 coins, and I have been saving up for it for several days. After that there is something else that costs 200 coins, but frankly I'm trying not to think about it.
When I look around the island I'm tasked with restoring (which I renamed "Doremia" during a more optimistic time in the game), it just feels impossible. It fills me with a very mild but very real despair. I'm the sole, hopeless caretaker of a dead thing, and I don't think I'm up to the task.
I put a red bow on my head.
A Land of Adventure
Instead of leaving the game right then I may decide to sail around a bit, since I have time to kill before I can collect my next miniscule payment. As I travel to other islands, I can't really afford to pick up anything of interest I might find, or even win any rewards for doing well at mini-games during my adventures, because my pack is constantly full. It is always and has always been full. I can't fathom ever having the pearls needed to expand it -- especially not if I want to be able to expand the merchant stall so I can sell more than 2 things at a time. Even so, 50 pearls (which are given out so rarely in such miserly quantities they may as well be crown jewels) will only buy me 5 more slots. 5 slots which will immediately be filled up with things I can't even sell until I save up another 500 coins for a new merchant house, plus the cost of building their market stall.
My character doesn't even have a house of her own yet.
Of course I could also just buy all of these problems away, and I briefly tried to do just that. Within about 5 minutes I was right back where I started. I didn't get to ride the wave of my IAP more than a few inches, and the game had barely progressed at all. It's not like putting a quarter into an arcade machine to continue when you run out of lives, but rather putting a quarter every 5 minutes just to keep playing.
Seabeard suffers from the same things that many free-to-play games with poorly implemented profit models do: For a player like myself interested in paying for their progress only occasionaly, its pacing is aggressively dull nearly from the outset. It feels far more like work than play, and I say that as someone whose favorite game series (Harvest Moon) involves monotonously watering crops day-in day-out, essentially forever.
A World of Fun?
Let me be clear: I know there's no such thing as a free lunch. Someone, somewhere needs to be (and should be) paid for their work, which is why I will gladly indulge in a little in-app purchasing now and then. Likewise I'm no stranger to the free-to-play structure of most iOS games and while I still prefer being able to sit down and play a game for a while in one sitting, there's room in my life for a game I can pick up and pluck away at when I need a 5 minute break from whatever I'm focussing most of my attention on. But to put it simply, Seabeard in its current state just isn't fun, and it hasn't been fun for me since my first day with it.
Many of the players rating the game on the App Store seem to agree. The game sits at a lukewarm three stars, with some utterly brutal reviews. "I have no clue why dev's put a lot of time and energy into a game that they clearly don't want you to play," writes one user, and while like many others they go on to take issue with the presence of in-app purchases, they still really hit the nail on the head. It doesn't feel like Seabeard even wants me to play it.
A Glimmer of Hope
It remains to be seen if Seabeard will stay this way. The game is currently only available in Canada, Mexico and the Netherlands, and that means there's still a good chance that these systems will be re-tuned. Apps are often published in smaller markets prior to their full release so that they can be tweaked based on user feedback, so it's quite likely that the Seabeard you play will be very different than the one I've been playing. Hopefully that will be the case, because beneath this IAP-driven drudgery there is a charming gem of a game that could be something special in the crowded free-to-play mobile space.
If you have a Canadian, Mexican or Dutch App Store account, check out Seabeard for yourself here.
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And THAT is the main reason I think people are better off playing their games-on-the-go on DS's and Vita's. Sure you might pay $30 up-front for a DS or Vita game, but you pay that and get ALL the game and can play as long as YOU want to, not as long as the Designers think you should play.
It's the same with things like Clumsy Ninja or the Kardashian game. You play it...and then you can't actually play it because the game makes you wait to play more. Why should I do that when I can just play a "real game" with "real controls" on the Vita. Heck there are 15 year old games available for the DS/Vita that are better than that IAP stuff on Android/iOS.
Posted by: CronoCloud Creeggan | Thursday, November 06, 2014 at 09:10 AM