Family Guy Online isn't your standard social grind. It's not even a Facebook game. It's a graphically convincing free-to-play browser-based RPG with plenty of character, TV-showness and gameplay challenges.
The game begins with the player creating their own avatar based on familiar characters from the show. You're not exactly one of the Griffins, but you look like you might be. These are, essentially, classes.
In any case, inside the persistent world, the Griffins are big players. These NPCs send you on quests and challenges which offer rewards including funny clips from the show and points towards upgrades and items.
Quests include the kind of goofy nonsense and weirdness that has made Seth MacFarlane's show such a cultural touchstone for our times, and fans will recognize the jokes – chasing Greased-Up Deaf Guy down the street, for example or rescuing a midget from a well. Expect giant chickens.
Players pick up special skills as they progress through the quests. There are plenty of basic tasks like beating people up, rescuing and fetching. Since it's an MMO, certain quests and tasks require team-work.
The 3D world is there to explore so you can mooch around Spooner Street and its environs. The producers had to construct a quasi-realistic neighborhood because, incredibly, the TV show's makers don't have an actual map of Quahog.
Players come across certain characters just kinda being themselves who may send you on quests. That creepy old sexual predator Herbert is an early encounter.
The Griffins' home is a central location, as is, of course, The Drunken Clam.
For developer Roadhouse and publisher Fox (Disclosure – Fox owns IGN, but has received no approval rights over this story) the trick is to balance the need to create a world that is easily accessible and which which offers enough depth and challenge to keep players amused. Part of the solution is to take core mechanics from successful RPGs and simplify them. Also, to borrow from the show's own talent for improvisation and relevance – new content is planned for the game to follow TV show stories and real life events.
The game's lead is Ian Verchere, known for the award-winning TV-based game Beavis and Butthead back in the 1990s.
Family Guy Online is currently in closed beta with an open beta scheduled in a few months time.
