Today I had the opportunity to sit down with Gamania for a two-hour
presentation demo of their upcoming Fairy-Tale based MMOG, style="font-style: italic;">Dream Drops.




A fairy tale may seem an odd choice to some to place as the backdrop
for a fully-featured MMOG, however the implementation revealed that
this could, indeed, be a uniquely fun experience. The premise is
simple. Snow White has turned rogue, and the Queen of Hearts has a
vicious loyalty to defending her kingdom.

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Players will be helping the
Queen of Hearts.

Throughout the game players will partake in scenes, which are all
classically-themed events from familiar European Fairy tales, such as
Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, the Gingerbread man, and
much more. The twist is that Gamania has taken the stories into their
own hands and offers a unique spin on the tales to intertwine them into
a challenging yet engrossing tale of their own.



The gameplay from my hands-on time seemed to be pretty standard fare,
which will make it easy for MMOG fans to pick up right away. The flavor
here lies in the truly unique makeup of the classes. Players will get
to choose between four different character types including the healer
"Pastry Chef," the "Blue Bird Dream Painter" which serves as a
wizard-type class, the "Nutcracker" tank and the "Indian Warrior" melee
DPS. Each class plays with a novel appeal and skill set from the
extraordinarily imaginative. For instance, the Pastry Chef has a ranged
attack in the form of a launched  ice cream cone, while the
Nutcracker Warrior can taunt and attack with the expected weapons a
Nutcracker would carry.

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The Pastry Chef healer class.

It may be easy to dismiss the game as a title targeted towards children
but Gamania assures us that it is not. The themes and challenges in the
game can become quite complex and the twisted versions of some of the
fairy tales may not be well suited for the young. The immediate target
audience for the studio remains the Asian market of 18-25 year old
males. The game does, however, offer a softer, more casual taste to
online gaming meaning it is unlikely any e-sports teams will be lining
up to have their way with the Queen of Hearts.



Each character has an exceptional history of his or her own. The Pastry
Chef, as an example, is canned from her gig without cause, and takes
the opportunity to travel the world to sample all the cuisines. These
stories tie into the universal story arc giving each player a way to
experience the fairy tales in their own tailored way.



The European Fairy Tales seemed to be the most obvious place to start,
Gamania feels. However this will not stop them from further developing
the game after launch to branch out into other regional fairy tales.
Fans can eventually look forward to some Eastern twists.

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alt="dream drops"
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The mighty Indian Warrior.

Does the game have a shot with North American audiences? It may be a
stretch, mainly due to the game's target audience. It's hard to imagine
the 18-25 year old males of the US and Canada trading in their
headshots and rocket launchers from the Halos and Calls of Duty to don
Pooh-bear costumes and lollipop attacks. That being said, it does have
enough of a captivating story and imaginative game world that there may
be a small niche out there somewhere. It is unlikely, though, that this
would be enough to warrant a full localization.



If the target audience was changed a bit, with some in-game
modifications, this game could make a mark with a teen audience. Given
the trends and interests in recent re-imaginings of Vampire lore (refer
to Twilight
to see where I'm going here) I could see some of these tweens finding a
home in Dream
Drops. Sure, it's not sparkly
vampires with too much hair gel, but the game does seem to successfully
marry classic fairy tales with slightly nebulous more modern themes.



Dream
Drops is scheduled to launch
in the first quarter of 2012 in Hong Kong.