ToonTown

Reviewed by Ted Bade

Toon Town is an online game (similar to World of Warcraft or EverQuest),that is based on the concept of a (car)Toon universe and is designed for children. (Think back to the “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” Movie. It has an easy interface just about any child in the 8 year or older category can learn. It’s a great game, it’s fun, and it’s easy to play. Take a look at this complex yet deceptively simple gaming world.

Toon Town is a massive online RPG (Role Playing Game) designed for the younger crowd of the 8 to 12 year olds. It is based on the cartoon characters of Disney, so you’ll see references to Mickey, Minny, Donald, and the rest of the crowd. There are six different themed areas that make up the Toon Town world. Each area is related to a particular Disney character. For instance, Donald Duck’s area has a nautical theme and Minnie Mouse has a musical theme, all themes are based on having fun. Each area has a main (and safe area) called the playground, this is where you buy gags (your “weapons), earn jelly beans (the money of Toon Town), turn in your quest items, meet other players, and decide what to do next. Areas are connected by named side streets in which you interact with the bad guys (called Cogs) and other Toons.

The game starts with you creating your Toon. You can change the head, body, legs, and apparel of your Toon. The Apparel consists of a shirt and a skirt for girls or pants for boys. You can change the colors of all these things as well, creating a wide variety of very interesting creatures! Although you can type a name for your Toon, the program has a fun name creator feature. You can select from a title, first name and last name. The choices are very diverse and all a lot of fun. After viewing a variety of choices, I settled on Noisy Ricky Thundersocks for my Toon’s name. One could spend a lot of time just naming their Toon.

The game then brings your new character into a tutorial that teaches how the game and its interface works. The tasks begin easy and become harder as your progress through the game. Instructions are pretty clear, but it does involve a lot of reading.

The basic idea of most games is to defeat the “bad guys”. In Toon town the bad guys are called Cogs, they are robots that can’t take a joke. Slowly the Cogs are trying to change ToonTown from a fun and colorful place into a boring rigid place with metallic colorless buildings. The object of playing is to defeat the Cogs. You defeat a Cog by playing jokes on it, such as a pie in the face, a flower that squirts water, a bottle of seltzer, and so forth. Think of all those cartoons you watched as a kid, the gags those Toons used are all here! (There are over 40 different gags to learn).

The Cogs attack back by doing stiff boring things like an accountant Cog will make a bill do, or a Name caller Cog will flip business cards at you. The health or vitality of a Toon is measured in happiness. If ones’ happiness drops too low, that Toon is teleported to the playground so they can have fun and get their happiness back. Spending time in the playground increases happiness and there are various activities that can speed the process up. After a Toon looses all their happiness, they mope around, head drooped, until some happiness returns.

As the player progresses through the game, they gain experience and can then learn newer and better gags or other abilities that help with playing the game, for instance, making a sad Toon happy. But jokes aren’t free. The Toon needs jelly beans to buy gags. You earn jelly beans by taking part in several different activities.

First of all you can hop on the trolly and play a game. Inside the trolly game area there are several different games to be played. For instance, you might catch falling apples, swim through hoops, or try shooting your Toon from a cannon into a bucket of water. The better you succeed with these tasks the more jelly beans you win. As with most aspects of Toon Town, other players can join in the trolly games with you. Another way to win jellybeans is to go fishing. If you manage to catch fish, you can sell them for jellybeans. The fish you catch have fun names and descriptions. Fishing is east, although it costs to play.

Once you collect jellybeans you can use them to buy gags to use on Cogs. Since your Toon can only carry 40 beans, you will need a place to store the extras. The Game’s solution is to give each player a “house” which contains a place to store jelly beans in addition to other things. The house starts off with the basics, some furniture which can be rearranged, but has no real function, a fireplace, and the jelly bean dispenser. You get two rooms, a main room and a sleeping room.

Oh yeah, there is also a Toon telephone which can be used to call Claribell the Cow to order things for your Toon pad. There are a lot of interesting things in Claribell’s Cattelog! You dial her up using the telephone in your house and can purchase items. I haven’t yet tried this feature (lacking sufficient beans as I write!)

To get the player to explore Toon Town and to help them gain experience, the player is given various tasks to accomplish. It usually involves defeating a number of a certain type of Cog and/or finding a particular Toon and interacting with them. While the tasks are usually within the abilities of the single player, sometimes finding the area you need to go to can be a challenge. some younger players might not have the patience to search around. However, since this is an online game with other people, one can always ask someone else.

The process of battling a Cog is simple. First of all, you bump into (or get close to) one. When you do he makes a snide comment then you pair off. Battle sequence it easy. The Toons get to select which gag they are going to play in the Cog. If you are playing with a group, everyone needs to select a gag before it starts. The Toons do their gag and the Cog gets a chance to return attack, if he hasn’t been defeated. His attack is related to the type of Cog he is.

If the Cog is defeated, he spins around faster and faster then explodes. Explodes like a machine falling apart, gears flying in all directions, not like a body exploding. Remember, this is a Kids game! Participating Toons have a window showing what they gained in the interaction, such as skills with a gag or if they completed all or part of a task.

A major aspect of Toon Town is interaction with other players. While it is possible to progress through the game alone, you are better off working with others. You can either go after the Cogs alone and hope someone comes by to help or you can bring friends along as you go. When players work together each player gets full credit for every Cog defeated, unlike many other games where “experience” is shared proportionately.

Interacting with other players is interesting. There is a “speed chat” feature to let you select a canned phrase from a long list. The list covers a variety of topics and can serve to complete many interactions. It also keeps conversations safe. Players cannot type out vulgarities or other unnecessary things that only detract from the game. There is a way to type chat with another player. You can only do this with a “Secret Friend”. The Secret Friend option includes parental controls. The Parent has to turn this feature on and can turn it off.

If you are a parent letting your child play, you will need to spend a little time learning the use of turning on and off permissions and how to log into the web site to do this. The makers of this game put a number of controls into it to make it safer for kids, but it is up to the parent to make sure they are set properly. The game defaults to the safest mode, so if nothing else the parent will have to deal with being asked to turn things on.

The graphics of this game are cartoonish, as would be expected. I had expected cartoonish, but expected a bit better. Having played other on and offline games, I have come to expect terrific graphics. The 3D graphics in Toon Town are okay, not terrific. However, this makes the game significantly smaller than World of Warcraft. So the download time is a lot less and it take up a lot less space on the hard drive. (ToonTown takes about 1 MB on my hard drive, WoW uses over 5 GBytes!).

The audio aspects of this game are mostly fun. There is a fun Cartoonish music track that plays in the background and there are a variety of sounds things make. All very toonish and appropriate for the game. When you interact with other players or game Toons, they make small creature sounds like monkey calls or animal squeaks and squawks. While this is fine for players, I was surprised that the Toons that are part of the game don’t include some speech. You have to read the text in the balloon over the Toon’s head and you need to press a small right arrow to continue to the next balloon, as each new bubble opens the Toon squeaks, grunts, or whatever. The squeaks can get a bit annoying as you read through several balloons of information.

I found the Toon Town online environment very friendly. I “assume” most of the other Toon there, were being played by kids, although I am sure there are a few adults there as well. What I found was an environment that was open and friendly. Players seemed very willing to help out if asked or even jump in when not asked. Players seemed as willing to help out as they are to ask for help. When one is wandering about the playground, other players will often come up and just say “hi!”

The speed chat interface can be a bit cumbersome until you get a feel for it. Pulling down a series of menus to find just the right statement seems to take longer then simply typing something. There have been a couple of times when I accidentally let the wrong phrase go. Still, it is a fun and safe way to interact with other players, and it works.

There are many aspects of this game I didn’t cover. For instance the player can customize a race kart and adopt then train a pet “Doodle”. There are a lot of places, quests, and aspects of this game available to be explored. It is up to the player and his or her imagination to take full advantage of all aspects of this game.

Toon Town is just terrific! It is an enjoyable, relatively non-violent, and very friendly game. It is fun to play and easy enough for a younger child to play. It would make a great gift for any kid, from 8 to, well heck adult! I had a great time during my visit there and look forward to playing some more. If you are looking for an interesting present for a child, definitely consider Toon Town. It’s a real hoot!