Recently, Disney Interactive launched their latest free-to-play mobile city-building game, “Disney Enchanted Tales.”

To help introduce it, an Enchanted Tea Party was held in which Director of Studio Production & Operations Jennifer Kropko and Art Director Jon Rick talked about the game’s development.

The framing concept for the game is the idea that an enchanted quilt ties all the different Disney kingdoms together into a playable space so that their cherished stories never have to end.

The gameplay involves placing familiar landmarks around the quilt and gradually unlocking various characters to further the story.

Each of the characters have specialized tasks and activities they can be made to perform–Gaston can be seen stomping around wearing boots, Rapunzel lets down her hair to lift Mother Gothel up to the tower window, etc.

The quilt patches can be unlocked as players reach more advanced levels and accumulate in-game currency, allowing for more space to place landmarks and ornamental objects, and eventually to start different stories. Additional tales besides the starting three “Beauty and the Beast,” “Tangled,” and “Frozen” are already in development.

Over in the art department, a lot of care was taken to involve WDAS to insure that the game not only had its own look, but was true to the heart of the original films. To date, there has been enough animation created for the game to fill an entire feature film.

Having played the game a bit, I would say that it’s a good introduction for people new to this sort of “kingdom-building” game. The art style is cute and the animations hold some neat easter eggs for fans of the films–for example, when Belle shows the book she’s reading to the sheep at the fountain, a sharp eye can see her on the same page as in the movie. It is pretty slow to take off however, as a moderate amount of grinding has to be done before the player can amass enough currency and experience to start unlocking enough characters and locales to really begin advancing the story. Prior to that, you can look forward to helping Belle buy a lot of bookmarks, and Rapunzel sweep the floors…but that may just enhance your understanding of their shared desperation for a more exciting life.

“Disney Enchanted Tales” is now available on both Apple and Android platforms: http://lol.disney.com/disney-enchanted-tales

Post a Comment