It was my wife-to-be who told me about a “cool ‘n cute new game on Facebook”: Babies Everywhere and made me play it. I have decided to actually care about it since sooner or later I’m going to become a father and a bit of extra practice never hurts. In this article I will share with you my experience as a virtual father in Babies Everywhere.
It all started pretty nice: I had to choose the appearance for the little fellow, customize here and there – pretty few options, to be honest – and there I was, thrown into the game. The first few minutes are basically a tutorial that gets you used to playing Babies Everywhere: you learn that most of the time you will have to clean up things and repair what the baby has broken, while also making sure that you buy toys for the toddler to make him or her learn new words.
And unfortunately, that would be about everything you have to do in the game, which is at best unfinished. There are a lot of problems that you’ll encounter while playing Babies Everywhere even though they might not seem as problems at first since the game’s setting is pretty original otherwise.
As an example of bad things in the game we have the energy bar: you only have a very limited amount of energy to consume and therefore very few things to accomplish when you first start to play, even though the energy is replenished every time you level up and every now and then. I say “now and then” because that’s how the developers understood to let us know when we’ll get new energy: “more soon” it reads above the bar, without actually letting me know if “soon” means a minute, 5 or a lifetime (based on my experience, it’s somewhere at about 5 minutes).
But even with full energy, you don’t have much to do in Babies Everywhere: when I leveled up to level 5 and my bar got filled again, I found myself in a perfectly clean house, with one toy the kid didn’t want to play with and nothing to do. Even more, you can’t visit your neighbors to add some extra fun to the mix, and there’s no way to send them gifts (or receive any).
All you can do is get decorations and toys to teach the kids say different smart things, like “moo” or “baa”. Really! And everything at a very, very slow pace – the kid gets bored with a toy after he or she plays with it, and you must wait 3 hours to be able to play again. Well, sorry, but I’m not coming back if you can’t give me some solid reason to return. Sorry, Babies Everywhere, it appears that I’m a really bad father.
What about you? Have you played Babies Everywhere and found anything fun in it?
UPDATE: It appears that indeed Babies Everywhere is unfinished – at least what I have played when this review was written – as the game was still in an Alpha Stage. Normally, when it gets out of Alpha, it should have a little more depth and social options.