SkyDale

GENRE: Free to play RPG Farming Simulator
PLATFORM: Mobiles & Web Browser
DEVELOPER: Plinga

OVERVIEW

A free to play farming and building MMO with elements of RPG and story content, SkyDale is a fun and free to play browser title that players can access on their mobile phones and tablets. In the game players must build up their own island homestead, seek out NPCs to unlock features and level up to gain access to new items as they progress the main storyline.

KEY FEATURES

- Multiple gathering and crafting skills
- Thousands of resource nodes to acquire new resources
- Craft hundreds of items
- Build up a farmstead with crops, animals and buildings
- Colourful 3D graphics
- Browser and mobile gameplay
- Free to play

LORE

Crash landing with your parachute the last thing you expected was to wake up on an island that is seemingly floating through the sky, approached by a helpful purple rodent companion that will help guide you through these lands you must now survive and settle the wilderness!

GAMEPLAY

At its core the game plays like a farming simulator where players must gather various resources, learn recipes to create other items, and use these to either complete quests or level up and advance through the game. Advancement comes in the form of learning new skills, recipes, unlocking features and revealing new areas of the island. Players must learn to manage their resources and their time, with many different creations requiring the same resources, and everything in the game from growing crops to waiting for resources to respawn can take time.

The game is loosely tied together with a story element that is pushed through with various quests and events on the island, players will meet different characters and NPCs that act as quest givers or vendors for the different features. The game does not have a traditional end game and instead players just continue to try and perfect the look and efficiency of their farmstead and beyond.

QUESTS

Quests help guide players through the game, tasking them with acquiring specific resources, completing certain tasks or crafting specific items; in doing so players will gain a variety of rewards and XP to level up. Whilst the game is a sandbox and players can do as they wish, creating items that are not required for their quests, the quest element does give a structure to the progression and is a requirement for accessing new areas or unlocking some of the different NPCs.

GATHERING AND CRAFTING

The game heavily focuses on the tasks of gathering resources and using them to craft various other items. With a self-sufficient mechanic, players start with the basic gathering skills needed to get rudimentary resources that allow them to craft more useful tools, workbenches and food. Different tools give access to a different type of Gathering Skill and in turn different types of resources, such as shovels allowing players to acquire dirt and farmland, axes to chop trees and pickaxes to mine rocks. These individual skills are levelled up as players use them, which in turn grant a higher success of acquiring more resources from a node. Crafting allows players to create all manner of items, furniture, tools, rope and various food recipes, whereas Building allows the creation of structures that will fill a player’s island, as they level up these skills new creations will be made available. Buildings are more than static locations and players can enter them opening up a new instance and more area to decorate with crafted furniture and belongings.

ENERGY AND ELIXIRS

Each gathering skill uses up tool resources, so players must continuously create new items to ensure they can collect certain goods. As well as using tools the gathering action, and some other actions, use up Energy with the larger the task the more energy it will use up and once a player reaches zero energy they are unable to continue gathering. Energy does replenish over time, whether a player is in game or not, alternatively a player can create different types of food to replenish their spent energy or even use premium Elixir potions.

Elixirs are earned by levelling up and some other features, but they are otherwise a paid for resource that players can spend to replenish energy or speed up the growth of crops and resource nods, making things finish quicker.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENT

Web Browser