Dream Drops Preview

And all females is poison! They're full of wicked wiles!

Of all the games shown at the first Gamania Game Show, including Core Blaze, Tiara Concerto, Langrisser Schwarz, and Warrior of Dragon (which was exclusive to the European journalists until we had "extra time"), Dream Drops is easily the frilliest, most carefree of the bunch. It has all the charm and playfulness of a Kingdom Hearts title wrapped in an MMORPG pastiche of classic fairy tales: Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan—just to name a few. As a heartwarming and bright reinterpretation of all those Disney movies, Dream Drops feels like it's been fingerpainted by a 6-year-old girl who has torn all the picture books on her shelf to make a collage of her favorite things.

But don't let that childlike impression make you think that Dream Drops is all hearts, stars, and rainbows. Though it's obviously targeted at the female audience, it still has missions, side quests, and bosses who may look as innocent as a gingerbread man on a broomstick that attacks you with lolliipops, but they also don't mind killing you. Like a Care Bear with a machine gun.

As for the story, the "Drops" in Dream Drops is a verb, not a noun. With how cute everything is, I thought it was about sweets. But no, the idea is that the preconceptions of the characters in the familiar fairy tales have been twisted into a world where Snow White is a villain and the Queen of Hearts (known affectionately by one of our US buddy journalists as the Queen of Boobs) is not as sinister as we have painted her out to be. Of course, they may be trick, since she was a boss in one of our quests in the demo, but there's probably going on here than meets the eye.

Following the typical MMORPG framework, there will be four classes with bubblier names: Indian Warrior (a rogue), Dream Painter (wizard), Pastry Chef (priest), and Nutcracker (tank). Each of them has skills with cooldown time and variety typical of their class, and all of them must work together to take down bosses like Hook from Peter Pan who in this game is a muscled tiger-man pirate with an arm cannon and a cigar. Later on, you can make amends with Hook and summon him on the battlefield for extra firepower.

Additionally, you can ride "mounts" like an umbrella and a miniature dragon, as well as transform into various characters as buffs in The Puppetry that range from a cute hedgehog carrying a giant acorn to the Three of Clubs from Alice in Wonderland. On top of that, you can also create a guild territory where you can adorn the land with buildings, statues, foliage, and nifty devices like the handy-dandy teleporter.

Gamania plans on having an open beta for Dream Drops in Q1 2012 for Asian territories, with a US release that will occur at a later date.