Game of the week: Morning Star

by Jim McNiven, revolutionmagazine.com 10-Jul-09, 16:11

LONDON - Friday afternoon can mean only one thing: it's time for Revolution's game of the week, chosen by our resident gaming expert, Kerb managing director Jim McNiven. This week it's 'escape the room' game Morning Star.

'Escape the room' games are a popular genre online. I say popular, actually the genre creates a bit of a 'Marmite' effect amongst the casual game community. These games are not your traditional 'snackable' content. Once you get sucked into a decent 'escape the room' game you can kiss goodbye to the afternoon. The premise is simple: you point and click your way around a location collecting and using objects that you come across in combination with your surroundings with the ultimate goal of escaping the room.

The format is similar to ‘Myst', a graphical adventure game back in the early 90s famed for its impressive graphics. Similarly, the static nature of most ‘escape the room' games allows the visuals to be quite elaborate - perfect for a branded game experience that needs to accurately reflect a TV/press campaign with high production values.

A great example of this genre is ‘Morning Star'. It isn't a branded experience, just a free-to-play casual game with some pretty high production values and some decent puzzles to solve. For any brands out there that are thinking of commissioning an online game - take a good look at this. In the eyes of most casual gamers, your branded game is an ad, but one they will happily accept provided that it exceeds the quality of the non-branded game content on a portal. On behalf of these gamers, let me be the one to tell you that cheap branded reskins of Wack-a-Mole, Yeti Sports or (God forbid) Breakout just don't cut it.

Revolution's game of the week: Morning Star