Get Your Freak On in Abandon Interactive’s New MMO — Freaky Creatures

Dan Landis — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:03:33 +0000

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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GDC 08: Day Two

Dan Landis — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:16:27 +0000

Unlike most sequels, the Game Developers Conference Day 2 did not suck. The Ripten crew actually did stuff today! Amazing!

We met up in the press room to get our schedules straight (again), eat muffins, and get our daily recommended allowance of Mountain Dew. Jon Zungre drew first blood by attending the Independent Games Festival Mobile Awards, making us all look bad with his go-getting initiative.

When Jon got back, we headed over to the D3 Publisher’s GDC 2008 Press Event. While we were there, we got some hands-on time with the Dark Sector multiplayer, which we can’t talk about, and got demoed three more upcoming games.

The first and only game we are allowed to talk about was NARUTO: Ninja Destiny for the Nintendo DS. It was surprisingly solid for a handheld 3D fighting game. Look for our full impressions of the game later this week.

The other games we were shown were Bangai O Spirits and an as-yet unannounced game that we will spill the beans about next week, so be sure to check back for that. We were treated to some cheesecake and cupcakes before heading back out into the recently nerdified San Francisco. We had a few things to see, so we split up from here.

Jon and I went to see a new game called Freaky Creatures, an MMO game from Abandon Interactive. The concept was actually very cool, and even though all of the art and effects weren’t in the game yet, we walked away pleased. Look for our full impressions of the game very soon.

We headed from there to a press conference about the Emotiv headset, a device that reads your thoughts, emotions, and facial expressions. The event was almost a complete train wreck, mainly because the douchebags in the audience refused to disconnect themselves from dork headquarters — all those wireless signals in the room were messing up the headset’s reception. They promised us some hands-on time with the thing tomorrow, so hopefully we can get a better idea of whether it’s actually cool or just another expensive way to make me look more retarded.

While we were doing all that, Chad went to an ominously vague PC announcement, which turned out to be this. The invite did a good job of making it sound extremely important while also not saying anything at all. Those crafty bastards!

He then met up with a few others at the Sony Online Entertainment party. Apparently, Sony really wanted to solidify the competition they have with Microsoft by throwing an equally shitty, fallopian tube party — the female version of Microsoft’s Sausage Fest 2008. Packed with a bunch of old ladies, Chad fled the scene before the combined might of their mental undressings left him naked (the room was cold, too, so we couldn’t have that).

After that, we all took refuge in our overpriced dumpster that is somehow considered to be a hotel. As I said before, we don’t get to bite into the meat of the GDC sandwich until tomorrow (or technically today, considering what time it is), so things will only get better from here on out. If we somehow manage to stay awake and experience it, we’ll be sure to tell you all about it first because you are our very bestest friends.

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Get Your Freak On in Abandon Interactive’s New MMO — Freaky Creatures

GDC 08: Day Two