Everyone, please meet Saucy, The Doctor’s brand new companion!
Never heard of her you say? That’s because I just created Saucy! She’s my character in the new Doctor Who: Worlds In Time web-based MMO game.
The premise is that The Doctor recruits an army of assistants to help him fight off alien threats on different worlds and in different times. Although I’ve unlocked only two worlds, there seems to be quite a lot based on the galactic map. Here’s the starter world – London in the present day. Which has been invaded by Autons!
Playing the (flash-based) game consists of going on very simplistic ‘missions’ and overcoming obstacles by playing very simplistic minigames. For instance you may need to unlock a door by playing a variant of Bust-A-Move, or charm someone by playing a ‘match 3 game’ or defeat an enemy via a Tetris ripoff:
The other characters you see in the above shot are AI players. It is possible to team up with others to solve missions (even randomly), but I haven’t bothered yet. The missions are very, very easy and take only a few minutes to solve. At the end you get money and items (for crafting, it seems) and a shard:
What is the shard for? Well it can be opened using a device in the Tardis, and inside you will find an item that can be used to decorate your characters room (again, in the Tardis). These items are purely cosmetic, and the ‘goal’ of the game – aside from seeing all the worlds and stories – seems to be to populate your room Animal Crossing style using items harvested from shards. You can see Saucy’s underwhelmingly decorated room in the first screenshot above.
The shards can also contain clothes, with which you can change your characters appearance. This can also be done via the shop (from which you may also buy stuff for your room):
And herein lies the catch. DW:WiT is a free-to-play game. But they monetize it via a currency called Chronons. Take a look at the screenshot above, see how my total would come to 3450 gold and 324 Chronons? If I play long enough I’ll get the gold in the game, but the Chronons are another matter. Each player starts with 50, and they are used for many things within the game (including opening shards and even playing missions). These 50 regenerate at the rate of 2 per hour, but will never regenerate beyond the maximum of 50. To get more you need to buy them from a cash shop.
“No worries”, I thought, “I don’t need the premium stuff!”
And then I completed a mission and got a ‘Large Temporal Shard’. Which cost 60 Chronons to open. I rage-quit immediately.
The game is fun in a simple way, and has a lot of cute little DW touches (including many references to classic Who). The graphics are cute as well. But the Chronon requirements give me pause, and I have a feeling the free element will eventually hit a wall, and unlocking missions and even planets may eventually require the cash shop. I’ll continue to play for a while, but if that wall exists and I do hit it then I’ll be waving goodbye to Saucy forever.
