Get Your Freak On in Abandon Interactive’s New MMO — Freaky Creatures
by Dan Landis on February 29, 2008
The world’s first Massively Multiplayer Online Collectible Trading Card Action Figure Comic Book Game (or MMO-NERD) is set to be a good one. Jonathan Zungre and I sat down with the creators to discuss all things Freaky Creatures.
Essentially, Freaky Creatures is a MMO, but the game that you buy is basically a “starter pack” that comes with two creatures. Those creatures are exemplified by actual toys (or action figures, whatever) and comes on a reusable flash drive. You are also given random “cards” that you can use in the game to change abilities and/or change the look of your character. You can then buy “booster packs” that come with another action figure (which unlocks that creature in the game) and more abilities/body parts. Confused?
Let me break it down like this: You buy the game. It comes with creature A and creature B. You can then choose between those two creatures when you make your character in the game. These are just base models, however, as you can then customize your look and abilities by adding parts like a tail, wings, horns, and weapons. The options you have are somewhat random (except for the base creatures), but you can acquire more by purchasing more action figures, which also unlocks that particular creature as a selectable model in your game.
Some of the Freaky Creatures action figures from Series One
Once you are in the world, you can travel around to different lands and interact with other players. You can challenge these other creatures to a fight, and if they accept, you enter a battle of rock, paper, scissors, uh…. duct tape, and… stapler? It’s a five-way this-beats-that showdown consisting of head, body, tail, left arm, and right arm. You then have the option to use a special ability card that you’ve put in your creature’s “deck” to assist in your attack or defense skills for that round. You battle it out until, obviously, one creature falls, and you are awarded with experience points and some more abilities (you can choose something from the other person’s “deck”).
There are a few options like a house-type area (your lair) to rest your ass-kicker and feed it or play with it, but these were not fully implemented when we saw the game. Matt Saia, creative director behind Freaky Creatures, told me that they have a lot planned in this area, and will continue to offer more content even after the game ships. “We want people to have a lot of reasons to come back to our world,” he said.
The great thing about Freaky Creatures is that it’s one of those easy to learn, difficult to master type of things. The target audience is boys age 8 to 16, but hardcore gamers can really dig into the depth accompanying the collectible card game mechanics. After all, there are 50-year-old nerds playing professional Magic tournaments as we speak. You could also buy the action figures for your little brother while you hog the game for yourself, disguising your geekdom as just being a nice guy. The possibilities are endless!
Me and Jon with the Abandon Interactive crew
Speaking of endless possibilities, Freaky Creatures ships with over 3 billion creature combinations! Considering that this is only taking into account the 10 creatures that comprise Series One, that’s a lot. We weren’t told how many series were being planned, but Jonnathan Hilliard, technical director on the project, stressed that the game will be constantly expanding in these areas as well. They will even be explaining how the new content fits within the context of the world through the magic of comic books.
Another first is that Freaky Creatures will also be playable on your cell phone. There will even be cross-platform play between mobile and PC users. The mobile version’s graphics consist of sprites instead of the 3D characters of the PC version, and in some respects it looks even better (though we were told the PC version’s graphics were still not finalized, so that may change).
Freaky Creatures sure looks like an interesting combination of the many forms of nerdiness — quite appropriate considering the premise of the game. If you are interested in what Abandon Interactive is offering with this game, you can sign up for “a sneak peek and priority on the beta list” by visiting this website. Additionally, we will try to score some review copies and give you the full report when Freaky Creatures releases this Spring.
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on February 29, 2008 2:14 pm
wow, you guys look freaky in that picture…
on February 29, 2008 2:31 pm
Nice horns.
on March 1, 2008 1:21 am
sweet pic! Yo, the guys from Abandon were great. seriously some of the nicest dudes we met all week. think Lan Dandis would agree.
on March 1, 2008 2:18 am
Yeah, tortellini.