The Toontown Game - a view from the parent's side

OK, after introducing Mom to Club Penguin, it was only a matter of time before the kids pushed ToonTown on me. So, they signed up for the trial, I let them explore and then show me around the Toonscape. After playing a few days and looking at its safety, I gave in and let them have this subscription (provided they chipped with their allowance). I do actually play once in a while, so I can say the game is safe for the kiddies.

The ToonTown Online website (another Disney venture like Club Penguin) provides a virtual world that turns your kid into a cartoon character where he or she can roam around cartoon cities, fight evil bots with cream pies and collect jellybeans to buy tricks for their pet Doodles. (Even sounds cartoony doesn't it?)

Instead of telling you how to get started, I thought we might start with what's the point of the game and what you actually do in the Toontown game.

In a nutshell, as a Toon, you are trying to make a nice home, keep the bad guys out of your town, earn some dough--or jellybeans as it were, make a few Toon friends, and have a little fun. Kind of an imitation of adult like, but a lot more fun and way goofier. Let's explore some of the aspects.

Your Toon - As this is Toontown, you create a Toon character through which you live your toon life. Your toon gets a "schticker book" keeps track of your toon's progress. At any time go to your schticker book by pressing Escape or clicking the book icon in the lower right corner. You also use the "schticker book" to log out of the game.

Home Sweet Home - Every Toon character has gets their own house where they can decorate, keep new clothes and stash their jellybean piggy bank. You can even entertain other Toons at your place and let them try on your clothes, but no Toon can take your things or go in your house without permission. But Toons don't stay at home much, there are many things to do.

Jellybeans - One of the major activities is earning jellybeans, the currency of Toontown. Jellybeans can used to buy things like decor for your Toon house, new clothes (from a 'Cattlelog'), a pet (a made-up character called a Doodle), or gags to use on the Cogs (see more on Cogs below). There are a few ways to earn jellybeans. The most popular is by getting on a Trolley which transports you to a game that you play with or against other Toons. How well you do at the game, dictates how many jellybeans you get. You can also earn jellybeans by selling fish you catch in the ponds or selling flowers you've grown in your garden. All the jellybeans you collect you keep in your jellybean jar at home.

Your Assignment - It's not all about earning jellybeans however. To move ahead in the game requires, you have to complete assignments called "Toontasks". You get assigned a Toontask when you sign up, and when you complete them you can go to one of the headquarters to get another. Completing the tasks does get you jellybeans, but it also gets you additional laff points, clothing coupons, gags, and access to tunnels other parts of toontown. Finishing tasks can heals any damage (not injury, mind you) you have taken from a Cog. Toontasks might be something simple like visiting a particular place to a bigger challenge like battling a Cog boss.

The Evil Cogs - This is the funnier part of Toontown for me. Toontown is infiltrated by boring business Cog robots in suits who want to turn this happy place into corporate paradise. If Toons don't fight and destroy Cogs, they, one by one, take over buildings and "bureaucra-tize" them (make it ugly gray according to my daughter). On the streets of ToonTown you will occaisionally encounter these evil bots like PencilPusher, Flunkie, MicroManger, and Cold Caller. When you see them, you should (but don't have to) confront and destroy them, where they ware sent back to the cog factory to be refurbished.

Because Cogs have no sense of humor, you can annoy them until they blow up by using gags on them. When you start you only have a few simple gags available but as you finish Toontask or earn jellybeans, you can collect more and more types of gags like squirt gags (fake flowers, water gun, glasses of water), throw gags (cupcakes and a variety of pies) and traps like holes and marbles. If you daring enough you can go into a CogFactory and attempt to defeat the cogs and destroy the factory if you can.

If you defeat a Cog, you can earn rewards. If you don't they can do damage to your Toon. You can't die, but you do need to rest and recuperate in a playground.

A Little Help from Your Friends - Teamwork is encouraged in Toontown especially to complete difficult challenges or perform certain tricks. For example, there are gags that heal damage called "Toon-ups" but you have to get a friend to use the gag on you, you cannot use a gag on yourself. Other gags that destroy Cogs, like trapdoors, require at least a couple of Toons, one to lure and another to use the gag.

Although you have to chat with other Toons to ask for help, the chat feature is absolutely restricted to the prepared "toonchat" phrases like "what's up", "follow me" or "please go away". They only way to type in phrases is to have a special code from a "real-life" friend to talk to that friend only.

To make new toon friends, click on that character's name and click Make Friends. You can also see their toon stats (how many gags they have) to see how powerful of a friend they'd be.

Around Town - Toontown is a big place. There are several areas, or playgrounds, named after Disney's famous characters many area Donald's Docks, Goofy's Speedway, Minnie's Melodyland Playground, and Daisy's Gardens. The tasks and games are different in the various areas, and some areas like Donald's Dreamland and The Brrrgh are harder.

Overall, this game is harmless, fun and plenty challenging. There really isn't any objectional material.

What's it Going to Cost Me?

It is free to sign up and you can have a free account as long as you want, but your Toon's activities are limited, such as not being able to purchase items.

If you choose to go join Toontown for the kids, subscriptions are $9.95/month, $49.95/quarterly or $79.95 for the year. You have to give a credit/debit card which is billed automatically. But you can have up to 6 people--6 different characters--play on the same account. If two of your children want to play, they can creat their own characters with their own character history (but they can't play at the same time-only one account logged in at a time).

Annoyances

Installation - Unlike Club Penguin, Toontown does have to install a little bit of software on your PC or Mac in order to access the Web site. The software is safe, the reason for it is because the game uses a lot of graphics and the game runs faster if some of the work on your PC. However, and this is a big however, a graphic intensive game like this needs to run on a PC with plenty of memory and a good graphics card. This game may slow down older computers or may not work at all.

Music - you are going to want to plug in the headphone. The music grates after a while!

Safety

The game is pretty restrictive of doing anything outside of the activities provided in the games and you can consider this a very safe site. (You should always monitor or even participate in what your child does online.)

• There really are no safety checks that prevens your child from opening a free account. The membership process does require a parent's email address to be entered, where the parent will get notice of this new account. But no confirmation is needed to to play the game. The child can go into the game without parent's OK. I find this a little disapointing, but the site is strictly Rated-G or Rated-Everyone, so at least there's nothing objectional.
• To sign up, almost no information is required other than a parent's email, a name and birthdate. This information is not shared.
• The chat feature is extremely limited. The Toon can only use phrases from a list that Toontown provides. You can only type in chats if the other Toon is a friend, someone you know personally and get a code from. The parent does have to provide the parent password (created when you pay for Toontown) to get the code.
• You can't even make up your own Toon name. You have to choose from words on a list Toontown provides or wait to get approved.
• If a Toon is doing anything inappropriate, your Toon can easily report them to a moderator and offending players get banned very quickly. Offensive behavior is hard to do in this game with all the controls. From what I can see, at best you might have a Toon continue try to chat you up like annoying person on a plane or follow you constantly. And even then you can click Ignore in the Chat menu and you won't see them for the rest of the game or you can click Transport and go to another part of the game, away from the offender.

Lessons learned

This is not really one of games where your kids will learn to read or where it will sneak in math lessons. On the other hand it is non-violent (unless you take issue with pie throwing), has tons of games and challenges (much more than Club Penguin) that will keep your kids occupied for years, and has no advertisements or product placement (not even Disney products) in the site. It is just a kid's game, but as diversions go it is fun (even for adults).