All About N-Gage - Next Generation Ready

Creebies bring virtual pets to N-Gage

Published by Tzer2 at 11:11 UTC, December 13th 2007

Nokia today announced a brand new first party franchise, Creebies, which is due out at the beginning of 2008. Going by the press release, it sounds like a cross between Fluff Friends (of Facebook), Tamagotchi and Nintendogs. These would all be absolutely great to see on a mobile phone, as there would be a constant temptation to check on your creature is doing, or to allow creatures to interact between compatible phones.

Another thing to note is a phrase at the end of the press release: "N-Gage is a made-for-mobile games service available in compatible Nokia Nseries and other S60 3rd Edition devices from Nokia."

In other words, there WILL be non-Nseries phones included in the new N-Gage platform, though Nokia hasn't announced any yet.

There are no Creebies screenshots yet, but we do have a logo and some artwork:

Creebies logo  Creebies artwork

 

And here's the full press release itself:

Create and care for your own virtual pet on your Nokia device
December 13, 2007

Creebies find their way onto N-Gage
 
Espoo, Finland - Nokia now offers a world of virtual pet-care so your pet is never left alone again. Creebies, available through the N-Gage mobile games service, gives each player their own 3D Creebi to care for, entertain, feed and even breed!
 
Supplied with a trailer and some virtual cash, you can customize your new friend and home with various accessories. Soon, the 3D pet will take on its own personality and appearance based on the attention it receives. With care, the pet will grow and become more independent. However, make sure to keep an eye on its individual health meters, which will let you know when its hungry or feeling ill.
 
"Nokia Games Publishing has brought a quirky game to N-Gage that appeal to all ages," said Dr Mark Ollila, Director of Technology and Strategy and Head of Games Publishing, Nokia. "With Creebies anyone can have the pleasure of owning a pet without the trouble of cleaning up the mess."
 
Your Creebi can also interact with other Creebies via Bluetooth technology - for instance, they can play games together or even breed. Players can show off their newborns to others or send them to new homes through the Adoption Center in the N-Gage Arena.
 
Creebies is expected to be available in early 2008.
 
About N-Gage
N-Gage is a made-for-mobile games service available in compatible Nokia Nseries and other S60 3rd Edition devices from Nokia. N-Gage makes it easy to find, try, buy, play and manage high-quality mobile games as well as connect to friends and other players in the N-Gage Arena, Nokia's mobile gaming community. Nokia is working with the world's leading publishers to deliver a broad portfolio of games. www.n-gage.com
 
About Nokia
Nokia is the world leader in mobility, driving the transformation and growth of the converging Internet and communications industries. Nokia makes a wide range of mobile devices and provides people with experiences in music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games and business mobility through these devices. Nokia also provides equipment, solutions and services for communications networks. www.nokia.com

 

Categories: Links of Interest, Games
Platforms: N-Gage

News Discussion

sandy_1988
Another 'Pet' game! The platform should be named N-Pet, not N-Gage.
krisse
Well, yeah, I guess in a way there's three of them now! :-)

I'd say this is significantly different to the others though, it's an exclusive 1st party title written specially for the N-Gage platform, and both the creatures and environments sound like they're very different to any existing game. There seems to be a lot of room for customisation, and more options for bluetooth and online interaction.

The Dogz game, despite its old heritage, does look like a Nintendogs clone, whereas Creebies looks much more like something original.
sandy_1988
The problem with it is, at the end of the day, it is a 'Pet' game. And the gamers to whom this targets, will probably won't be bothered about exclusivity or breeding by bluetooth multiplayer. Dogz or Sims 2 Pets will be a better title for them, as they probably have heard of Dogz, and almost surely of Sims. Yeah, if it's a good title, it will have its followers, but I feel, Nokia should have been involved in other genres, which have not yet been conceived in the current gen N-Gage, like, a decent RPG, or a decent action game. To many similar games mean, no one will succeed enough.
krisse
Quote:
the gamers to whom this targets, will probably won't be bothered about exclusivity
You're right, and I wasn't suggesting anyone would go "oooh, exclusive, must have that!".

What I meant was, if you look at the N-Gage games from last generation, the first party exclusive games designed specially for N-Gage tended to be much higher quality and much more playable than third party ports from other systems.

Nokia's own games tend to be much better than third party N-Gage games. There are exceptions, but in general the first party games got better reviews than the third party games, and the first party games used the N-Gage's features more too.


Quote:
Dogz or Sims 2 Pets will be a better title for them, as they probably have heard of Dogz, and almost surely of Sims. Yeah, if it's a good title
I honestly don't think these games overlap as much you're making out.

Saying that Creebies must be similar to Dogz because they're both pet simulators is like saying Mario Kart and Project Gotham must be similar because they both involve racing.

The artwork and the description of how Creebies will work sound like the game will be very weird and way out, whereas Sims 2 and Dogz are basically just standard dog simulators.

The thing Creebies reminds me of the most is the Fluff Friends service on Facebook, where people can buy a pet, raise it, customise its surroundings and send them to play with other pets. Fluff Friends also has a rather weird bent, with very strange pets allowed such as lumps of tofu.


Quote:
Nokia should have been involved in other genres, which have not yet been conceived in the current gen N-Gage, like, a decent RPG, or a decent action game
I would also like to see an RPG, but there's already an action game called Brothers In Arms:

http://www.allaboutngage.com/games/i...rs_In_Arms.php

Yes, that's one game, but there's only 17 games at launch anyway, which are spread over pretty much all other genres. I suspect what they'll do is use this launch to gauge which genres do well and concentrate on those.
sandy_1988
Yeah, I agree that first party titles are really good and certainly better than the 3rd party ones (in fact, all the games in my wishlist are first party titles). It will be good if they do something new with this one, but you got my point wrong. The target customers are a big issue, and probably, they are going to be more interested in what they know about. That's why, the gaming companies get film licenses and blah blah. The thing is, the 3rd party publishers want the 'target' to know about them, that's why they have chosen popular names. Players of Mario Cart and Project Gotham Racing DO know the difference between them, but those who play only Dogz or Brain Challenge, may not know the difference between Creebies and Dogz. Hope you got my point.

And regarding Brothers in Arms, it is again a lame port of the DS game. The graphics is not MUCH better than the Symbian version. The number of missions is okay, but a multiplayer deathmatch was necessary. The replayability of the game is going to be questioned, I bet.
krisse
Well, let me put my opinion this way: as far as I can tell, I think Creebies has much more to offer casual gamers than Dogz, so I'm glad Creebies is on the platform. I could be totally wrong, haven't tried either game, but that's how it looks at the moment.

These games will all be free to try, and extremely cheap to buy, so name recognition might not be as important as it would be on consoles (New N-Gage games are 6-10 euros, console games are 30-60 euros).

It will also be very tempting to try a game if you can buy it at any time of the day or night with the press of a button, especially as people tend to keep their phones with them all the time.

But no one really knows what will happen until the platform launches, so this is all just guesswork. It should be interesting to see where N-Gage is in a year's time, we should know by then which kinds of games are selling well.


Quote:
And regarding Brothers in Arms, it is again a lame port of the DS game. The graphics is not MUCH better than the Symbian version. The number of missions is okay, but a multiplayer deathmatch was necessary. The replayability of the game is going to be questioned, I bet.
I agree that if someone wants the very highest quality graphics and gameplay they should get a console game. BUT... you can't really compare N-Gage games to anyhing on consoles because the price difference per game is so enormously huge.

If someone pays 6-10 euros for a game, they're not going to expect more than Java quality.

As far as I can tell from what I've seen so far, the new N-Gage games are generally much better than Java quality, so they're probably about as good as they can be at this price level.

Having said that, there's absolutely nothing technically to stop Nokia releasing some more expensive, higher budget games in the future. They did high budget games on the original N-Gage, Pathway To Glory had probably the highest budget of any phone game ever. If a lot of hardcore gamers start using the new service, maybe Nokia will do something like that (or perhaps divide an expensive game into episodes, or whatever).
sandy_1988
Agree with your optimistic remarks. :)
pl_pirat

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