Seabeard, an attractive adventure game for iOS by Backflip Studios

Seabeard is a new game by Backfilp Studios which was recently featured in the App Store’s “Best New Games” list. Having read the description and watched the trailer, I couldn’t help myself and wanted to play it eagerly. Its’ cute graphics and the nostalgic look that accompanies it certainly added to that. Even though it is a free game, it comes with the usual In App Purchases, which, similarly to most of freemium game apps, is forcing itself to the player, but we’ll come to this later.

Introduction

Let’s take a look to this new title. First of all, I’d like to point out that Seabeard is similar to Nintendo’s Animal Crossing. If you have played it, then I’m sure you’ll notice the similarities between them in just a few minutes into the game. Both games are focusing a lot on personalization/customization and include daily quests with rewards. In the other hand, Seabeard has distinctive differences from AC. In Seabeard you’re engulfed in many other activities than just the ones mentioned above, such as exploring islands, finding items and hidden treasures in dungeons, gathering crew, and being occupied in other activities.

Storyline

The seas used to have many rival tribes who were always fighting against each other. The great explorer Seabeard had a dream of uniting these tribes, and to achieve that he built a city – Accodia, where everyone lived in peace. All was good until a sea monster came and destroyed most of Accodia. In an attempt to fight it back, Seabeard and his crew went to the sea in order to stop it, but its great power caused the death of them all. Thus the city was left without citizens, and the tribes started fighting again. Now it’s your duty as Seabeard’s heir, to restore Accodia in its previous state and glory.

The game’s world is a giant ocean that includes many small islands that the player will have to explore during their quests.  The islands have villages, farms, and many secrets, and various characters reside in them.

Gameplay

When the game begins you are asked to provide your age and later you can choose between 2 characters, a male and a female, and give them a name of your choice. In your first assignment you are asked to get a Root Remover that will help you get rid of roots that block your way towards the first building. (Tip: in order to get the Root Remover you have to get rid of the bush that stands in front of it. I literally wandered all over the island back and forth to find a path and yet the solution was so simple. But that’s quite easy to miss so I decided to give you guys this tip).

After you complete that mission you are asked to travel by ship to another island. Missions that require using the ship are frequent and each time you are given one, you go through some mini games in the sea like slalom, shooting targets and other. These mini games can’t be skipped when you’re on early levels. The closer you get to a perfect score, the more rewards you are given (the rewards according to the score are bronze, silver, or gold treasure chest that each has different prizes). Sailing activities include feeding whales, defeating sea monsters, rescuing other sailors from the sea, and finding routes that will lead to places with rare items.

The game offers daily quests with all kinds of goals and rewards (based on your current level). Every time you complete a quest successfully you are rewarded XP points, coins or pearls (the premium currency), clothes for customization, furniture and other items. When the XP is full you level up. Leveling up also unlocks various items. The game makes sure that you won’t get lost when you visit a new land, by showing bubbles with the items or people you’re looking for, so you can find your way to them.

Most of the people you will need to meet (due to quests) will help built different Accodia buildings. Speaking of buildings, just like all construction games it takes time to finish building one unless you pay an amount of pearls (1 or more, depending on the building) to speed the process and have the building ready in no time. As you can guess, pearls are not very easy to get and if you are in need of many you’ll be directed to the infamous IAP. The first building you are asked to restore is no other than Seabeard’s house.

Quests also include doing favors for other characters, such as scaring away foxes that are ruining a character’s garden (with a reward of course) and hiring crew for your ship. Each crew members has a certain role to play and the money you have to pay to hire them depends on their role. For instance, your first crew member can fish. Speaking of fishing, it can be a bit tricky at first but it’s very fun to do once you get the grip of it. You can target any fish you see but you have to make sure it’s close to you or the fishing rod won’t reach it.

Except building, sailing and fishing, that you will come across early on, other activities that you will have to fulfill include cooking, combat, and thanks to the so-called “Perpetual Adventure Machine” you will never come across a village that won’t need you for something. Missions never stop showing up.

The game also comes with multiplayer mode, in which players can explore the islands together, trade, and talk about their crew.

Personalization allows you to customize your village and dress up your crew in outfits of your choice. The result will vary from funny to hilarious. You can find plenty of shops that sell items you need to personalize your village in the other islands that you will visit, so take a good look around while you’re at it.

The player can also collect and sell at the markets food and wood items that can be found on islands while exploring. Apart from that, the game has “crafting stations” where you can turn your items into different and rarer items that you can sell in a high prize or use for construction or other activities that require them.

When there’s a place you want to move to but can’t, an X shows when you press your finger. Accordingly, a green circle appears when your character can move to part of land. The player also has the ability to tap way far from their character’s spot, and the character(s) will jump and arrive there immediately, without having to wait for them to arrive there at normal speed.

There’s a nice addition of photo machines that take photos of your characters and you can share the in social media or save them to your library. It was a nice surprise and I’m sure many more are hidden in the game. The rules and controls are thus fairly easy to use and you won’t find it hard to get used to them.

Cons

As usual, IAP plays a huge role in the game’s cons, together with the annoying timers. For every major action that you take (like selling items in your marketplace, constructing buildings, crafting new items) a timer shows up. As stated earlier, to get rid of the tier you need Pearls, the premium currency. In addition, every significant main story quest requires a ton of money (among other items) in order to complete them.  And mind you, the premium currency is very expensive to buy via IAP.

Also, another flaw is that necessary items that are required to progress are given randomly because of the game’s randomization engine. All that together make the game lose in terms of freemium services, even though it’s a great game with lots of potential.

Appearance

The game’s art style is beautiful with cute 3D visuals, suitable sounds and music, and smooth easy to use controls.

Epilogue

The game is great for a casual player that doesn’t care about spending a lot of consecutive time in the game, but for someone who wants to play for hours this game will turn out to be more of a frustration than fun. I hope that in future updates the game will fix parts of the flaws and the players can enjoy this beautiful game in a more player-friendly way.

Seabeard is available for iOS only and is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch Devices that are using iOS 5.0 or later.

Get Seabeard for iOS here.

Seabeard Screenshots