Magic Kingdoms

BASIC INFO

App Name: Magic Kingdoms

Company Name: Disney

App Price: Free

Free version: N/A

HOW IT WORKS

Mickey Mouse, the beloved caretaker of the Magic Kingdom, suddenly finds himself in trouble when Maleficent takes control, turning the park into a “playground for evil”. Now Mickey needs your help to bring happiness back to the kingdom!

The premise is simple – Mickey and his friends need you to complete a series of basic tasks that build into an overarching plot. You slowly eradicate evil and darkness from different areas in the park, and then build attractions to bring joy and laughter back in. Maleficent, Zurg, and other villains will fight you along the way though – so you have to stay on your toes.

In the end, you do rescue Mickey and his kingdom from the forces of evil, but the big selling point of this game is that you get to somewhat build your own Disney park along the way. You can purchase items like magic and gems to build up your park attractions, or focus on the plot of the game and join in the battle of good vs. evil.

MY RATING – ★★★☆☆

This app is cute, but there are two distinct ideas at play that might be better as two different games. The “good vs. evil” component is VERY slow. Most of the quests are extremely trivial things with little gameplay, like “send Mickey to go talk to Goofy”. And the wait time to continue quests (assuming you don’t make purchases), makes the game incredibly slow.

The other major component of this app is that you get to build your own park. This part of the game works almost exactly like Roller Coaster Tycoon; you place attractions in a predetermined land space, and can make changes to boost visitor happiness. While the ability to put attractions wherever you want is fun, there isn’t much flexibility with this feature. The list of attractions to choose from is fairly limited, and the size and shape of the lands in the park is already predetermined.

If Disney made this app exclusively a park building game, I would bump up this rating to four stars (and I’d give it five if you could invent your own land or if it had a larger list of attractions!). But given the limits of this feature, and the slow pace of standard game play, I give this app an overall score of three stars.

APP USE & TIPS

If you want to disable in-app purchases, you can do so in your iPhone settings. (If you have little ones playing the game, PLEASE do this. This app makes it really, really easy to purchase items, even by accident).

This game is much better with sound! Play with your volume up if you can. The background music is a medley of recognizable Disney scores, and the dramatic music when Maleficent and her evil friends show up is a nice touch.