Puppet nightmares
| title: | Puppet nightmares |
| url: | link |
| download page: | No link! |
| license: | Donation |
| genre: | Mmorpg |
| developer: | Eric W Robbins |
| platform: | Online, web brouser. |
| release: | 2009, ongoing |
| features: | text, visuals |
| last edit by: | Dark |
Description
Puppet nightmares is a very unique brouser rpg, both in it's setting and in it's mechanics. As something of a homage to anime such as digimon and Rosen maiden, the game is themed around a surreal world contained within an old Gypsy caravan in a small German town. over the past few days, children have been lapsing into comas, most recently your little brother. A mysterious child however promises to give you information on your brothers' coma if you follow, and leads you to the caravan and the enigmatic toymaker. here, you find a synister world where children trade their spirit energy to control a number of magically animated dolls known as soul puppets, forcing them to battle both against each other, and against some rogue, wild soul puppets that have mutated and twisted into weerd forms. The monstrous but friendly inhabitants of the caravan however do let slip that your brother was there, so with three newly hatched soul puppets, a supply of spirit energy and an enquiring mind, you set out to find out what you can.
the game therefore revolves around you training, feeding, hatching, breeding, building and batling soul puppets, undertaking a number of tasks as you try to find out the whereabouts of your brother. Battles are extremely unique, sinse your three soul puppets can each act independently on each turn, either attacking or defending, or using skills, items or diciplins on either friends or enemies. You might for instance have two fighting soul puppets supported by a healer, or a large tough fighter acting as a meat shield for some swifter ranged attackers. There is a massive amount to customize in battles on each turn, meaning you need to think extremely carefully, combine this with elemental weaknesses, a variety of weapon and other equipment types, skills that you can learn, steel or customize, a huge number of soul puppet types from trol to zombi, and you've got the recipe for possibly the most tactically complex battles seen yet in a brouser game.
The complications don't stop when you leave the battlefield either. Gaining marbles to build equipment, crafting food or weaponry, getting your soul puppets tatooed, or even breeding them to produce children, this is not a game for those who want things simple, sinse literally every aspect of the game and it's affect on your soul puppets six stats is discussed and shown in mineute detail. Fortunately, there is a large amount of help text continually on the game pages, which should come in very handy as a constant reference for what you need to know, so there is always the chance to go and look up a skill or check the help text about a given item or aspect of the game if your confused.
Uniquely, Puppet nightmares functions almost as a single player rpg, sinse you can playand replay different episodes of the story, in difficulties from normal, to nightmare, to dazy pusher, performing a variety of quests, some with secrets and unlockables, earning different bonuses each time. new content, both new episodes and new content for old episodes is also frequently added to the game, along with various holiday or other events that happen from time to time to keep things interesting.
You can also battle other players as well, either offline players in auto battles similar to other brouser games like torn city, or rather uniquely in real time online, which functions similarly to a turn based game in which you take a turn and then wait for your opponent.
Puppet Nightmres is also a game you can pay as intensively or casually as you wish. Various activities such as feeding your soul puppets or sending them to the Gym to train provide ways of levelling your creatures while you wait, or of making sure that not just your main battling party gain experience. You can also send extra parties off adventuring in a given dungeon for items, equipment, coins or soul puppet eggs as well.
As with many complex games, the pages can be rather tortuous to navigate. For starters, literally all! help directories are available from the page at the start with the game text undernieth, meaning that most any area of the game is accessible straight off the bat, but also giving a lot of links to navigate through, so a good working knolidge of your screen readers' ability to navigate through large areas on web pages is also recommended. Fortunately, all the important info is text and buttons, and in game images are mostly labled, however the game makes a very heavy use of none standard textual hotspots on web pages. For instance, to select a soul puppet in your camp, you need to click it's name, then click one of the buttons. The name won't show up as a normal link or button, so be aware that when the game says "click here to access" you will need to position your screen readers' curser on the word "here"
There are also a heavy amount of tables in the game, especially in battles. at the top of the screen is listed the amount of turns you have left, your battle formation and the names of all the participants in the battle. Then will follow a table, with each creature both yours and enemies. Clicking on a creature's name will bring up a page of details about that creature, while under it's name is the last thing that happened to it, eg, minus 2 hp or death should it have been killed. Benieth this for your creatures are a set of buttons which either attack, defend, or bring up links to use the creatures skills, and a dropdown for targits, and at the bottom are several buttons to either change your soul puppet's formation, execute your given orders in battle, or repeat the last turn. a full battle log of what is happening each round appears below this, and clicking on the names of any skills will give a handy instant explanation of what is happening. It's also worth remembering Battle is probably the most complex part of the game, but it can quickly become second nature, especially if your familiar with all your screen readers' navigation functions for flicking between headings, links, dropdowns and buttons. Also note that many of the elements, from puppet's use of skills to each enemy have mouse over text, including the links that lead to pages for each soul puppet's info, so checking how to position the mouse without clicking a link helps. Just remember the order of battle events, first clicking an action for one of your creatures, then clicking the name of a targit, then repeating for all three of your creatures and hitting the execute button, you should find battles quite possible, indeed if you have premium supporter status for the game, you can use hotkeys to perform several of these actions more quickly.
Mouseovers are also needed for the parties menue, where placing your mouse over a soul puppet in your party will let you swap it out for an alternative member, or on the party's name will let you change formation.
The game is completely free, and there are no limits on play such as a limited amount of dayly turns, however creddit, a special in game currency can be acquired through either donating to the game or through various other means (including rewards in battle or just reading the news letter), which can be exchanged for a variety of helpfull items. Every 10 usd credit perchice automatically earns supporter status which allows viewing of some extra informationand handy shortcuts in the interface such as a quick town and dungeons menue, removes adds and allows use of the hotkeys in battle. of course, credit is mainly used to buy various upgrades from the creddit shop which can alter the chances of good events such as recieving items after battle, or give an instant good quality equip. In addition, each month special forms of soul puppets known as limited edition soul puppets or lesps are available for a donation, though older lesps are also found through a token system to give everyone a chance of getting them. Lesps have Higher stats that regular puppets and can also help by producing random items on a dayly basis or performing other helpful survices.
the gm of the game has responded very quickly and promptly to access issues such as unlabeled images, which contributes significantly to the welcoming ethos of the game and is just one other reason this one is really worth a look.
while the game focuses a good deal more on it's tactical combat and creature creation than textual description of events, the story and atmosphere of the game, it's npcs and world are nevertheless quite unique in themselves. The tactical elements of the game are also extremely deep, thus making this ideal for those who love their strategical turn based battles and management, albeit this is probably not a game for first time players, both because of the complexities of the game, and the complexities of the interface.
NEvertheless, a significant amount of help is available, to make learning the game easier, and the interface is nothing that can't be mastered with a little application and good use of a screen reader. Both of these are well worth it, sinse puppet nightmares is quite unlike most other brouser based games and provides a highly unique experience and challenge which some have called the closest to a console rpg on a brouser.
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Updates: entry 2 Feb 22 and description 2 Feb 22