Thanks to a tweet earlier today by Carl about my excitement for the upcoming Disney Magic Kingdoms Mobile Game, we were tweeted a link to the game itself…which had been out for hours, a whole day ahead of schedule!  I quickly went to download and start playing.  I’ll be chronicling my journeys with the game, perhaps not every day, but at least once or twice a week.  Hopefully some of you will be giving the game a try as well.  It is free to download and free to play…unless you’re impatient.  Let me jump right in and you’ll see what I mean.

Congratulations! You made it!

If you’ve played one game like this, you’ve pretty much played them all.  You start out by gaining Mickey and being told that an evil curse has taken over the park and that by bringing magic and happiness to the land, you can restore it to its former glory.  As you go, you have Mickey perform tasks like reading a book or searching his house and in doing this, he gains magic (somehow) and you then get to do more stuff.  You are also trying to gain different items, because with enough items you can level a character up in order to get them to do even more silly tasks.

Mickey, go meet Goofy. That should keep you busy for 20 minutes.

Before long, you’ll be bringing in Goofy and then you’ll start to build.  Buildings, once complete, provide more magic and experience, which in turn allow you to build more things and level up.  These, along with gems, which I’ll talk about my dislike for in a moment, are your currency.  I acquired Goofy and then Woody from Toy Story and I was feeling pretty great!

In the menu, you can see a little hint of things to come. Wall-E? Tangled? Monsters Inc.? Yes please!

The eventual slog with any of these games hit pretty quickly.  Everything takes time.  When you start, summoning a character or building Mickey’s house might take six seconds and as you play, the timer increases.  The hope here is that eventually the timer will be so unbearable as you seek instant gratification and more stars and more magic that you will use gems and gems are what they want you to spend real money on.  As they say in the home of someone who thinks the world is an evil place, “That’s how they get ya!”  Before long, I was, and am currently, looking at two hour wait times for Mickey to read a book about magic in his house.

Welcome to the most colorful Main Street ever!

Here’s the thing.  If you’re looking to play a game where you are always doing something and there is no downtime, well, I’ll be honest.  This is NOT the game for you.  Luckily, I appreciate the wait times.  They give me the time to walk away and do other things like live my life.  Think of this like a Tamagachi pet.  With the notifications on, the game will make sure to let you know when its time to interact and the in the meantime, you can sort of just let it do its own thing.  I’m okay with that.  I want to unlock characters and grow my park and eventually get all my friends to play and for me there is no hurry.

Slow down kids, we got time.

The game is adorable and brimming with color.  Because of the simple nature of the game, anyone can play it.  I see a lot of potential in this game and seeing as how both Disney and the developer Gameloft seem to support their games heavily, I think we’re only seeing the very surface of what this game has to offer.  Clicking around the dark portals at the exterior of the map, I see the words “Coming Soon” quite often and that gives me high hopes for the future.  I imagine as you unlock more heroes, you’ll get to see even more of the park and then be able to do even more fun things.  I like the idea of villains and a bit of story and it all seems pretty cute an entertaining so far.

We have got a lot of curse to wipe out.

So before I sign off for the night, I want to leave with a few things I hope we get.

More Heroes, Bigger Park area, More Story, Less wait times

Whether or not I get that last one, only time will tell…get it?  Time will…never mind.

If you haven’t checked out the game yet, you can see it over at their website HERE!

Let me know if you’re playing yet and what you think in the comments down below and I’ll  make sure to update you guys once I have a bit more of a park to talk about.

Let’s get this party started!