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jp's The Daring Game for Girls (DS)

[June 2, 2021 11:57:47 PM]

I seem to be playing a lot of games for which I am not the target audience.

However, that doesn't mean that I can't learn anything!

I think this game is based on a book? (and there might be a similarly titled book for boys). I don't really know anything about the book- but the game was quite surprising in some unexpected ways.

First, it's essentially an "open world" game - you wander around different places, meet people, play mini-games and make progress. You're informed early on about what the "win condition" is and, as far as I can tell, you can really pretty much do whatever you want in whatever order. You're supposed to earn 500 pts to get a badge, and there are 6 badges. You win if you get 4(?) (not all of them) win some additional conditions thrown in. It's sort of like girl scout/boy scout badges - and they're tied to different "areas" (adventure, knowledge, stuff like that). So, you might meet someone and play tetherball - if you win you get points towards the badge. If you lose I think you still get some points. And so on.

There's also crafting, a simple economy (you can set up shop to sell stuff and then hopefully get money to buy different materials to build things to access new areas, make friends, etc.). As I write this it's pretty wild to think of how much variation there is in all the things you can do. It really feels more like an "urban adventure" than many other games that claim the same. However, there's no aliens, violence, or other nonsense.

Technically the game is...uh.. pretty weak. It was released in 2007 - but still.. There's significant loading/wait times between activities of all things! And the art and controls are functional but wouldn't amaze anyone. Maybe I'm being a bit unfair w/r to the "state of the art" at the time and what you could pull off on a DS? Still...it's definitely underwhelming.

But still...so many things to do! There's trivia (very few questions - I was getting duplicates on a 2nd match - and each match asks 3 questions only!), there's "tap on the bird you saw fly by and hope it's one you haven't seen so you can add it to your collection), and more.

I guess I'm just impressed at the general structure of the game - open world? Wow. Sure, the world isn't very big (I didn't play that long - but there's a "town" a "campground" and a "cave" The first is by far the largest with the other two locations much smaller.