Project Review : My Neighbor Alice
My Neighbor Alice is a multiplayer builder-game where players build and create their own virtual lands, interact with neighbors, perform exciting daily activities and earn rewards. Anyone can join the world by owning a virtual island and participating in various activities such as farming, fishing, bug catching and beekeeping. Activities, shared quests and competitions bring valuable rewards and upgrade players’ status in the game.
Inspired by successful games such as Animal Crossing, the game combines the best of the two worlds — a fun narrative for regular players who want to enjoy the gameplay experience as well as an ecosystem for players who want to collect and trade Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).
Animal Crossing Series:
Animal Crossing series what used to be and still is a social simulation video game series developed and published by Nintendo. The series was conceptualized and created by Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami both Japanese Game devs.
In Animal Crossing, the player character is a human who lives in a village inhabited by various anthropomorphic animals and can do various activities like fishing, bug catching, and fossil hunting. The series is notable for its open-ended gameplay and use of the video game console’s internal clock and calendar to simulate real passage of time.
Total units sold till now 70 million+ throughout the series of 5 games released worldwide.
It is considered as one of OG games by Nintendo Games standing with the likes of Super Mario series and others.
The latest version of Animal Crossing currently available is Animal Crossing: New Horizons — Happy Home Paradise (2021).
So, apparently there hasn’t been any update for the game after latest one released on Nov 2021 by Nintendo, Coz of which players are left with no choice but make their creative versions of game mods . You can also search #acnhmods on twitter to lookout for the mods community . The twitter Animal Crossing community seems pretty active and this shows that game is receiving good attraction from players end but not from game dev team side(Nintendo team here ) .
Similarities b/w Animal Crossing and My Neighbor Alice :
- Both games have Village inhabitant like setting for the game.
- Task and Quests like fishing , farming ,meeting in game characters , doing various daily tasks are pretty much similar in both the games.
- Land ownership is similar in both the games.
- Game players can decorate, furnish and accessorize their own place.
- Socializing with other players or visiting their friends land/island have similar setup in both the games.
- Both the games are having open world setup for the player.
- Target Audience : When I say open world game the first game that comes to your mind would be GTA ( grand theft auto) but games like Animal Crossing and My Neighbor Alice have a target audience who loves games with less to no violence , have building and creating stuff type of features .
Back to My Neighbor Alice :
My Neighbor Alice is trying to replicate Animal Crossing and make a web3 version of it.
Game Economics :
My Neighbor Alice game consist of various in game components and features such as :
- Avatars : Each player is represented by an avatar in the game, and players could interact with others through the avatar. Players could also modify the avatar by installing different assets to it.
- Virtual Land : In the game, players could either purchase virtual plots from Alice or in the marketplace. There is a scarce supply of plots in the universe and each piece of land is represented in the form of NFT tokens.
- In-Game Assets: There are in-game assets that can be deployed into the game and they can be bought on the marketplace. Among them — houses, animals, veggies, decorations, or cosmetic items for the player’s avatar.
- ALICE Token : Alice token is the main currency of the game, it enables players to exchange NFTs, buy land and use specific DeFi products such as collateralization, buyback, and staking, mainly in the first phases of the game development.
The Game map will be consisting of different types of Virtual islands:
Players will be able to visit those islands just like any other open world game most notably similar to Animal Crossing.
These big islands have sub-islands in them on which they have plots which will be allocated /traded by the end user.
In-game Assets and Land Trading:
Game items such as Land , plants, soil , animals and all other types of various in-game items will be tradable on their NFT Marketplace.
Currently only in-game land is tradable on their NFT Marketplace other things might show up soon after the full game launch.
There has many Land sales that have been held since launch as seen on their roadmap. These land sales allow the user to acquire the land before the game launch which they will be using while playing the game, this is similar to the other crypto metaverse games such as Sandbox and Decentraland.
Gameplay of My Neighbor Alice :
After trying to find any DLC or any online playable content ,I couldn’t find anything available . So somehow doing some research about it I got to know that the game isn’t out for the general public yet.
So I went to their discord contacted team and got to know that they have recently concluded their Alpha Season 1 of the game. And they are waiting for the launch of Alpha Season 2 .
After some digging of about Alpha Season 1 I found that it wasn’t open for the public , Only in game Land owners were allowed to have access to it.
So after this I straight head to YouTube to find a gameplay video of Alpha Season 1 which is not linked/ sponsored to the team in any way.
After some researching I found this gameplay by SuperSoju :
The games seems to be okay having all of those quests similar to OG Animal Crossing but this Season the game appears to be constrained to certain tasks currently .
This early Phase Season just has some basic tasks and quests which include talking and meeting to in-game characters such as Jose and Bjorn , do fishing and also find some ancient Tuna fish.
The game needs to improve a lot before the public launch if they wanna compete with the likes of Animal Crossing.
Conclusion :
After seeing the roadmap of the game ( My Neighbor Alice) it clearly looks there is more emphasis on the land sale and trading over the game itself .
My Neighbor Alice team till now has given more significance to token ( $Alice) and Land trading rather than focusing more on the game , it is because currently the audience that they have for the game are mostly crypto natives looking for P2E( Play to earn) game .
The already built fanbase of Animal Crossing are looking for an substitute of the game as they are not getting any kind support from Nintendo team .
This opportunity seems to be a lucky chance for My Neighbor Alice team to shift the animal crossing audience to their own game.
Disney also has came with their version of Animal Crossing just recently Disney Dreamlight Valley to cease the opportunity.
If they(My Neighbor Alice) really wanna capture the Animal Crossing audience they really have to fasten up the development process of the game . And Quality should also be up to the mark.
They also have to reduce the complexity of blockchain side of the game for the end user . The tedious process of setting up a BSC ( Binance Smart Chain Wallet ) then setting up a Chromia wallet and then transfer and buy the land from one marketplace to another . It won’t be an easy task for end user who’s just getting started in crypto for the sake of the game .
I have high hopes for My Neighbor Alice game that they will succeeded in future if they play their cards right.
If you reached till the end ,I hope you liked my In-depth Analysis on My Neighbor Alice and it’s comparison with Animal crossing.