RATING:
Pros: Lots of mini-games to play and an entire world of discovery, education and responsible child focused content.
Cons: Heavy membership restrictions on all areas of customisation.
Graphics: 7
Gameplay: 7
Performance: 10
Overall: 8
We recently took a more extensive look at Animal Jam, a free to play browser-based children's educational game from WildWorks and made in partnership with National Geographic, the game is filled with cute creatures, fun mini-games and a wide variety of customisation options. The game is most definitely geared towards children and so this was something we had to keep in mind when checking out the content.
By the way, check out our first look video.
When starting out we got the chance to choose from a variety of different cutesy creatures, from tigers, koala bears, turtles, rabbits and more all of which can be customised in a variety of different ways ranging from eye shape to fur patterns and colour. We got to name our character using pre-generated of words, three names in total, the first giving you your first name and the second two words being combined to create your surname; a good idea to avoid offensive names, though we did try as hard as we can, so among the various Fabulous Shiverfox, Sir Cooltiger and Laughing Prettypaw, we tried to be as vulgar and inappropriate as possible and thus arose Grand Chunkyhorse; an albino monkey with red loveheart patterned fur. You do also have the chance of wearing a variety of clothing items, ranging from wings, dragon masks and more, however we simply opted to go for a classic and understated blue tie.
Our character made we headed off into the magical world of Animal Jam, the main purpose of the game is for players to interact with each other, make new friends and play games with each other, well as a 32-year-old guy (albeit I personally have two children myself) we thought it might be a little bit too creepy to try and befriend some children and so we ran through the game solo. Players get the chance to acquire Gems, the standard currency in the game used to purchase pretty much everything from new clothes, pets and items/furniture for your own personal Den which you can customise and invite other players over to hang out. From a few of the different games (see below) we managed to acquire quite a few stuffed animal trophies, by purchasing a few shelves we were able to display these items proudly as a sign of our amazing accomplishments!
For the most part we played a lot of the mini games, most of them are reskinned animal themed versions of games you will already be familiar with such as typical tower defence game, a horse racing game where we had to time our jumps right, a trivia quiz, a hurl the Armadillo game where you have to throw an Armadillo as far as possible, lots of cutesy type flash games we’ve played before usually from some email that gets sent around the office. As much of this is a kids game we have to say that some of these mini games were actually quite difficult and incredibly addictive. You wouldn't think that we could spend a good 10 minutes in a Best Dressed competition were each round the competing 10 players get given a category e.g. Most Epically Dressed, Best Dressed for Summer, Snappiest Dresser, etc. then all competing players have 30 seconds to choose an outfit from all the different clothes and then vote for their favourite and the first second and third position get gems as their reward. It was simply a matter of pride that made us play for 10 minutes trying to at least get first place once (we managed in the trivia quiz and proved that we can absolutely dominate children with our knowledge of the natural world), alas it would seem our threads are dated and not good enough for the youth of today.
Exploring the world we discovered an Adventure zone that allowed us to enter an instanced based adventure either solo or with friends/random players, the main premise of these zones is that players have to fight against Phantoms, ghastly enemies that roam around the instance map and when players come close to them then they get chased and can either dispatch them by leading them towards a venus fly trap or simply hiding in grass until they go away. Obviously as the l33t gamer pros that we are the game wasn't much of a problem, though it was surprisingly long and we reckon for a younger audience that it would be a bit more challenging, albeit with a group they might have a little bit of an easier time though from many of these games you can typically set the difficulty level which allows players to acquire more gems.
The world which we could explore was pretty extensive, different zones had different themes and generally focused on different activities, but throughout we could find various mini games or a new pet (though the majority of them were exclusive to subscribing members only). The amount of educational material subtly placed in the game was good, ranging from little facts about the animal kingdom or built-in videos from real-world biologists and specialists, as a parent I'd approve of my children learning whilst playing. The security features are also good, whilst it was restrictive for an older player they are ideal for the age range you would expect/hope to find in the game, from requiring a parent's email address to register an account and start playing, the name filters as we've already mentioned and filtered chat where certain words and combinations are limited. There was also an area in the game where children can carry out a "quiz" about how to interact with other players, how to handle/report "Bad Jammers" and what type of information you should never give out to other players; again, all commendable stuff.
The game is free to play, most of the content is accessible, all the mini games that we found could be played and acquiring the in-game Gems currency is pretty easy (at least for a 32-year-old man playing a children's game...) and we had around 10,000 gems at one point. However, spending your gems was considerably harder and it is here where it feels perhaps like a bit of a bait and switch.
The main customisation areas of the game are your characters clothing/accessories, acquiring pets and a players' Den, their own personal living space that they can decorate with all different types of furniture and trophies/figurines that they earn in game or purchase from the shop. When checking out our Den we could put up some shelves to display our trophies, but when looking through the available shop items to actually decorate our home, or when we came to upgrade our characters clothing, it became all too clear just how much of the items are locked up as Members only. With a "look but don’t touch" shop we feel that it would be a little frustrating for children playing the game whose parents can't afford/don't want to pay a membership subscription, kind of unfair on the children and unfair on those parents whose children might incessantly badger them to become members (i.e. the majority of kids).
Fun, colourful and with plenty to do the game definitely ticks a lot of the boxes when it comes to being a successful and responsible children's game (we've seen plenty of "children's games" that promote ad banner clicking and survey form filling to get in-game currency and some of the surveys and external websites they lead to are very much NOT for children). The Membership restrictions are a little excessive, but the fundamental gameplay content is still accessible giving players plenty to do.
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