Needs Download?: No.
Time Commitment: Some aspects of the game, like farming, require you to check in periodically. Otherwise it’s a drop-in game.
Need to buy in: The in-game currency is used to pay rent on lots as well as on cosmetic and functional items. It’s possible to make enough money to be profitable without buying currency, but it may require a large time commitment. You can also only create custom content if you pay the $5.95 monthly fee to become a Resident.
Overview: Tirnua is a virtual world along the lines of The Sims Online, but with an environmental theme. You can build your own house, farm, casino, store, etc, visit other lots, play games creatively invented using random objects, and dress up your avatar. The items and systems are all geared towards a “green” theme – your carbon footprint is effectively your “score,” and recycling, gardening, and using and selling green energy are major game components.
Lack of direction and poor UI are the downfall of many virtual world games, and Tirnua doesn’t make a particularly impressive showing in this regard. If you find your way to your own house after creating your account, there is a set of tasks triggered by objects that walk you through interacting with items, but once those are done you’re left to your own devices. To its credit, though, the Help pages are reasonably thorough, and the Things to Do page will point you to Jobs, which are activities that further instruct you on how to interact with the world and also pay you small amounts of TAU for completion.
There are quite a few things to do, once you get the hang of looking for them. In your own space, you can grow and harvest plants, make or grow food, and generate and sell energy – or keep it for your own uses. You can also buy (or, if you’re a Resident, create) clothes and accessories for your avatar. (Incidentally, when you create your character, you can be male, female, or animal – the “animal” option puts you in a human-shaped fur suit, but doesn’t appear to have any other obvious differences in gameplay.)
The other main attraction is visiting other folks’ spaces and interacting with them. There are gambling games, mazes, and other assorted activities available to make your lot a gathering place for other people. You can also force your visitors to listen to music, which is a neat effect, for about a minute. It seems like the population of Tirnua is spread rather thin, though, and this reviewer didn’t run into anyone else in her wanderings.
If you loved The Sims Online, or virtual worlds in general, Tirnua is a solid offering. The environmental message is pervasive and some people may find it off-putting, but it’s an effective theme for gameplay and no more intrusive than the more typical “kill the bad guys” theme most other games have. Virtual worlds are often very hard to get into, but once you do, there’s a lot of reward.
June 3rd, 2010 at 9:22 am
Enjoyed the review.
June 3rd, 2010 at 10:06 am
I’m one of the Tirnua players, been playing now for about a year. I saw your link on Tirnua forums and this is my response.
I think your review is fair.
I also think you should do a followup review later – when you’ve experienced even more of what Tirnua has to offer.
Some things I missed in the review:
For the social aspect of the game:
You should come visit our Goat Racing and other game lots and I sometimes host Fashion Shows (contest where we compete with best cc clothing). We also have Liars Dice games and a tournament was planned. We recently had competitions for Tirnua’s best garden, something that got the whole community buzzing. We’ve also had a contest to make the best promo T-shirt for Tirnua and so on. There is always something happening in our community, even though it’s still a rather small community.
Another social aspect of the game is oil drilling. Many people are doing this on their own or in groups, and a few of us have attempted to make a company that actually hires other players to work for us. We’re turning this into a social thing like it was probably meant to be, by the developers. We’ll see how far we get.
For the gameplay aspect:
I also missed the HUGE part that is the new environmental simulation. It’s in the works right now – some of it we have already seen – they are effectively turning the whole Tirnua world into a simulation game, while still keeping the social aspect and the solo play gardening etc. You can see on the map that some of the world has become polluted, there are readings for wind, water, ground. This simulation has turned the whole game into something much more than any other game of this type.
You can choose to play with “good carbon footprint” or “bad”, and your choices will have an impact on both your own persona and on the world as a whole. It’s meant to educate people about green practices in real life, before we run both our Earth and the Tirnua world totally into the ditch.
The green message isn’t overpowering, and if you’re not interested in it you can play the game as a social game or as a gardening or moneymaking game, or you can be creative and make and sell your own custom content. It has something for all. It is quite difficult to start with, and can be confusing to an extent, but that is a good thing in my opinion – most free flash games in the browser attract very young people and drives older people away with the quality of chat etc. The goals in Tirnua are harder to reach and the game is confusing at start, which is a good thing for the quality of the crowd imo.
I know some of this is hard to spot while trying out the game as a new player. Check out the blog and see what they have typed there.
The team behind the game:
Luc Barthelet who is the CEO of this game, and also worked on The Sims Online (with most of the dev team), is interested in having the players help build the online world. This is totally unique in the online game world I think. They listen to the fans VERY much.
One of the greatest strengths of this game is the community – both the great developers and the dedicated players.
I like your review but there is so much more to Tirnua – than just the newbie experience.
I hope you do a follow up in about 6 months and see where we are then. It’s gonna be a huge difference.
It’s still being developed with breakneck speed, and we get new features every week (usually wednesday or thursday). So it’s worth checking again and well worth getting into already. For a free game it’s amazing how much you get.
June 3rd, 2010 at 6:04 pm
(Just thought I’d help you advertise TirNua Help, Qute.
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Awesome review. It was thorough and to the point – however, like Raisin suggested, perhaps you could give us a more in-depth review later on? Just to show the ins and outs and minor details of the game experience.
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(If you’d like to contact any of us to help you collect information/to interview us, etc., myself and the two commenters above have posted using our in-game names, and if you stop by in-game any time soon, I’m sure we’d be willing to help you to our fullest capabilities!
Anyway, it was a great read. Sorry you didn’t run into anyone on your travels – we’re all sometimes a bit exclusive in our gameplay, primarily either for lag issues or our general fear of invasive, click-all-touch-all newbies.
June 3rd, 2010 at 6:12 pm
I’ll keep an eye on it for sure – I often do “update reviews” when a major update comes out, and online games change so much over time that these would be pretty useless if I never went back to them! But for right now, you’re more than welcome to add detail right here in the comments – you know much, much more about the game than me, and while my goal is to give people enough information to decide whether or not to start playing, y’all are the best people to give them the in-depth info!