Moshi Monsters are currently trying to take over the world, it seems. The site, aimed at kids around seven and upwards, now boasts over 50 million members, many of them paying a subscription fee to keep their own Moshi Monster happy and entertained. If you don't pony up the fee, you're only allowed to have three pet 'Moshlings' and don't have access to lots of great content on the site. The shelves of every newsagent, toy store and book shop over here in the UK are lined with row after row of licensed merchandise, and every real world item comes with a special code to unlock virtual items for your monster – which is a great way of joining the two worlds, and is unfortunately something that their first proper venture into iOS apps is lacking.
There has already been one official Moshi iOS app: the disappointingly dull Moshi Monsters Mouthoff, which was nothing more than a cartoon monster mouth that animated based on microphone input. And it wasn't even a free app, either.
The latest app Buster's Lost Moshlings is at least an improvement on that, in so much as it makes better use of the rich world that has been painstakingly created around the characters. However, the gameplay is severely lacking a lot of the fun that comes in the online world. Essentially what you get for your dollar is a "find the hidden things in a big picture" game. After a nice animated intro, Buster tells us how the evil 'Dr. Strangeglove' is after all the Moshlings and he needs us to find them in Monstro City. From here we are taken to a set of doorways, two unlocked and four locked, which are the levels. In each level all you have to do is scroll around the screen and find four moshlings hidden among the crowds. That's it.
There are three 'modes' for each level, but they are essentially the same thing. 'Explorer Mode' is kinda like the normal mode, 'Tracker Mode' is ideal for younger children as Buster gives you a helping hand (which you really don't need) and the final mode is 'Time Challenge' – which is the tough one, as you have to find all four in under 100 seconds. Ooo, tricky – my five year old whizzed through all six modes/levels in about 15 minutes.
The scenes themselves are beautifully illustrated and the animation is great. Tapping on various characters in the scenes will trigger little loops and sound effects and really adds to whole immersive world thing. Having said that, though, some of them feel a little odd because certain elements that aren't animated look strange next to ones that are. For example one scene shows a character leaping out of a quarter pipe on a bike, frozen in mid-air bullet-time style, while others around him move.
Completing each level earns you a trophy for your cabinet and the Moshlings you find are added to your zoo. Once you've finished the first six games, the third level is unlocked – but doesn't offer any difference in gameplay. And here's where it gets really annoying - the three remaining levels are all in-app purchases and cost an extra 99 cents each, still with no more challenging gameplay. It's a testament to how popular the "gotta catch 'em all" mentality works with kids that, even though she seemed quite bored with the game after the first three levels, my daughter wanted to unlock the other levels just to get all the trophies and moshlings – even after I said that she'd have to give up some of her pocket money to do it because I refused to pay for it myself!
With the other levels unlocked, she found the remaining moshlings and collected the rest of the trophies (including 'special' ones for things like certain numbers of moshlings and setting a record time) in a total of about another 20 minutes – and hasn't touched the app since. So that's $3.96 for about 35 minutes of entertainment: not good value for money in anyone's book.
There's no reward for finishing the game (other than to see the backgrounds of the completed moshling sets colored in) and no connection to the virtual world, so you don't use your monster or see your house in the game or maybe win an item for your virtual monster or a medal. Also, there are no Game Center hooks to at least enable play across different devices. In short, no replay value whatsoever.
I recently attended a 'fireside chat' between the creator of Moshi Monsters, Michael Acton-Smith, and the editor of Wired UK, David Rowan. Acton-Smith came across a very clever and resourceful man – having previous sold his body for medical research to help fund his first business, firebox.com, and then creating an innovative, but ultimately unsuccessful, online/real-world game called Perplex City, before coming up with the Moshis - and then struggling to build them up to where they are now.
I feel a little let down by this game – it doesn't live up to standards set by the online world and feels to me like it's just another wheel of the licensing steamroller that Monstro City is fast turning into, rather than something crafted with the passion and integrity of what has come before it. Will that affect sales? Probably not.
Disclaimer: GeekDad was given an promo code for this app, although not for the in-app purchases!
