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| Begin your journey in Trinst ... | Make some friends... |
Minions of Mirth plays out like most other role playing games, you have to create characters and make a party. Choose between the dark side or the light, and once you advance you get to play the monsters in the game too!
Whilst in game though, you'll only be playing one of your party, but you can switch between members at designated points. Once you've created your party from the available range of characters, which include humans, elves, dark elves, drakken, (kind of bipedal lizardy things),orcs, dwarves, halflings, gnomes and titans, but to name a few, and chosen the class you want them to specialize in, you then log on to one of the game servers. PrairieWorld is the main server, but MoM also allows players to mod the game and host their own server. You don't even have to play a whole party if you're not that way inclined, the game is just as enjoyable and playable solo.
A single player option is also available, if you don't want to play with others, though the global chat system operates here too, to allow you to converse with other players. Either way, this game has a very friendly feel about it, the servers are populated but not over crowded, and higher level players are quite decent about giving lower level newbies "buffs" which are spells that boost various attributes and may even give you special skills.
Just a few hours after my entrance into Mirth, some kindly Titan gave me the powers of flight, enabling me to run through the air. Which is, as it sounds, a hell of a lot of fun.
The game world is exceptionally large and dense too, with improvements being made almost constantly. There are a a multitude of quests to go on, from little things like running errands, to lifting rocks, to going on great quests to save the cities from the onslaught of the undead.
If you choose the Fellowship of Light, you'll begin your journey just outside the gates of Trinst, what will soon become your home city in the world of Mirth. Go and find your first mission by talking to the NPC's scattered about the place, or just join in the global chat to get a feel for things. Most players start by slaying various skeletons just outside the city gates, and don't worry if you get into a fight thats just all too much for you, running back to the gates of Trinst will ensure that the guard will kill whatever mean beastie is trying to destroy you. There is also a grace period for characters under level 5, in which you don't loose experience if you die, which means you can make plenty of mistakes with no real consequences, which is a good way to learn.
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| Face your first foe! | Explore this amazing world... |
You don't have to be a goody two shoes though, join the Minions of Darkness and you'll start in the dark city of Kaldur, with an entirely evil agenda.
Depending on which realm you choose, you have the choice of different characters to play and different skill, spells, items, the whole lot.
There is also the ability to join forces with other players and form alliances. Alliances allow you to give things to other players and also to go on quests together, helping one another along the way. The chat system allows you to talk with just those local to you, or globally, or to your alliance, or just to one other person. There is also a decent range of actions that your avatar can perform such as waving and laughing.
There are a massive amount of creatures to fight, items to pick up, spells to learn and skills to gain. Much hard work and love has been put into this game and it really shows, in the story lines and in the detail. There did seem to be some occasional problems with server lag, but they were minimal, and fixed very quickly by the administrators, which made for a delightful experience.
The music in Minions of Mirth is one of those rare finds, a range of beautiful melodies add to the atmosphere as you battle monsters or try to find the next person to help you on your quest. The only possible complaint here is that the music does not appear to be very appropriately cued in the single player version, with sweet little trilling tunes wafting around as you are hacked to pieces by a skeleton.
Graphically, this game looks good. No, it won't blow you out of your seat with it's awesomeness, but there are some nice effects, and the environments are fairly well rendered, there is an odd kind of watery undulating effect as you run and the ground molds itself to its design however. The environments show some good variation though, and the change from day to night and various weather conditions are well represented, making for a much more realistic feel as day gives way to night and rains sets in.
It is hard to do this game justice in a review, the only way to truly see everything that it offers is to pick it up and give it a go. The demo version can be downloaded from the prairiegames.com website, and will give you a fairly good idea of the vastness of the possibilities.
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| Go off along the mountain track... | You can always come home... |
MINIONS OF MIRTH VERDICT
This truly has all the elements of a classic, and is being improved upon constantly by the development team. The sheer range of characters to play and things to learn will keep you entertained for hour after hour. Tell your family you love them and you’ll be back when your quest is completed.
TOP GAME MOMENT
Exploring this amazing world, it’s just so varied and dense. I could get lost and never come back and just not care.
