RATINGS:

DBT

Pros: Huge array of items to use for your creations, ability to create your own quests.

Cons: Not quite genre redefining & a bit too similar to Minecraft.

                                                                                                                   

We were granted the opportunity to participate in the MyDream alpha testing and obviously leaped at the chance. This Minecraft styled, voxel-based building MMO provides players with an entirely open sandbox world in which you are able to create collect resources, construct enormous buildings and other structures to create your personal world. The title is crowd-funded by a Kickstarter campaign that has recently reached its minimum goal, which is an indicator for a promising project and its capability to hold its own.

Entering the alpha without any hints on what to expect, we immediately were up to the tutorial mode to get to know what the title already had to offer. Although we’ve never got deeper into Minecraft, we had difficulties to not compare both games, for there’s a certain similarity apparent right from the start. MyDream is a 1st-person building MMO where players destroy and recreate the environment with several button clicks on their hotbar and collect materials to craft fantastic and bizarre construction components like glass windows, wooden blocks and doors, as well as some more ambiguous stuff such as carrots or signs on which to write your own texts.

The most evident difference in MyDream is its voxel-based nature, making the title a bit more comparable to EverQuest Landmark, which doesn’t restrict gamers’ creations to cuboids but indeed allows for spherical shapes when slicing out portions off the soil to create massive caves or piling up dirt, rock and grass formations to create a more naturally rounded landscape as opposed to different layers of cuboids. Having said that, the vast majority of items players are able to create/ place are still cubic blocks, meaning the worlds as such maintain the sense of Minecraft they breathe.

Upon our first log-in to the MMO, we were presented with three options: either directly starting the creation of our personal world (either on- or offline), joining the world of someone else or playing the tutorial mode. And as this was our first encounter with MyDream, we decided for the tutorial mode that explained the fundamentals of moving around, selecting items and placing blocks, with which the host of convenient signposts located throughout the world helped a lot. We were led through a tiny pre-constructed building that looked like a castle and then brought into a zone where open pits were brimming with spikes. We obviously had to find a way through and started constructing a bridge with stairways leading upwards. One of the handy things players are able to create is a set of several steps filling one block, which can be combined to swiftly make an extended flight of stairs.

We managed to reach the tower’s top where we located a chest we were able to open and use as a storage for our items, which furthermore demonstrated the opportunity of the regular game. Having quickly explored the tutorial world, we decided it was time to load up what was supposed to become our new offline world. (In fact, we were aiming at creating an online world or even joining the world of somebody else but were left waiting for much too long for that to load up, causing us to wonder if that feature really was available at that stage.) Due to the game’s sandbox nature, we dearly missed any guidance regarding what to do or where to go in our personal world and therefore set off to have a quick look around our randomly generated world.

Not knowing any better thing to do, we utilised our great digging tool to create a self-made underground cavern, literally destroying enormous portions of the soil when swiftly digging into the land. This tool even hollows out whole mountains or hillsides if necessary or desired. Our cosy little cavern created, we then constructed a small room with several wooden walls and even integrated a glass window as well as a door we were able to open and shut. As we were provided with a stack of 100 of the game’s resources and items, there was no need to sit or run around, but to start building straight away (however, this might only concern the alpha test and not necessarily the final version of MyDream).

From the video footage we were provided with, we got to know that players will be able to create quests for the community and even gain EXP rewards for successfully completing them. Although we didn’t figure out how to start creating a quest, we feel this is an attractive feature which will without pretty much any doubt contribute in a positive way to the entire title.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2014 at 12:54 pm and is filed under MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o un trackback desde tu sitio web.