Heavy Water’s Avalon Keep: An Expansion Fit For A King
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
Avalon Keep is, for my money, possibly the best Home estate of 2012.
As we’ve written elsewhere, the market for personal estates in Home is absolutely saturated. They don’t show up on SCEA’s top-ten sales lists any more, and for a very good reason: most of them are little more than pretty boxes.
Raise your hand if you’ve had this experience: you buy an estate because it looks cool, gleefully explore it for about ten minutes, and then have that horrible “now what?” feeling.
Yup, me too.
Avalon Keep is one of only a few Home estates which avoided that fate, in large part because it reinvented the concept of the personal estate. Instead of just being a pretty box, it was structured as an unfolding game to be savored and explored — a game in which smaller actions would have larger consequences and unlock new areas. And, further, it was Heavy Water which first introduced the concept of free-roaming flight in a personal estate.
These are trends which have caught on, by the way. New estates from other developers are following Heavy Water’s lead. And why not? It’s driving positive feedback, and positive feedback isn’t a bad thing for sales revenue. It’s not often that a single developer can exert such strong influence on an entire market segment in Home any more, but Heavy Water pulled it off.
We also know that Heavy Water is committed to Avalon Keep. A public Avalon space is coming in 2013, along with the tantalizing Ballista Fields game (among other attractions). Heavy Water told consumers up front that more parts of the keep would be unlocked as time went on, further deepening the experience, and so far they have delivered on that promise.
First up was the dungeon (which, every time I think of it, makes me feel like Clive Folliot), and it proved to be a very successful expansion. Of course, the Crystal Hunter mini-game, when introduced, made the estate a much more dynamic environment as well. We don’t have the entire story yet as to how our actions — and which house coffers we fill — directly impact the long-term story of Avalon, but we will learn more over time.
And now comes the latest expansion: the King’s Chamber.
From Heavy Water’s Stephen Grose:
“The renovations on your bedchamber have been completed! You now have a place to lay your kingly, or queenly, head at night. This update comes with exclusive owner-only rewards: Crystal Staves. Purchasing this update will also allow you and your guests to earn the Stained Glass Wall Hangings for each of the four Noble Houses: Dumont, Raleigh, Thaon and Grimoult.
“This update is also a free update to the Avalon Keep’s Crystal Hunter. Now you and your guests can earn large Crystal Clusters in Pink, Green, Blue and Red!”
Avalon Keep benefits from being Home’s first (and presently only) medieval castle estate. And let’s face it: we’re a gaming culture that loves its castles and medieval trappings. So, by offering this estate in sections, it adds to that childhood thrill of exploring a castle. Which, for those of you who haven’t done so in real life, is incredibly fun.
One of the challenges with any Home product these days is how to keep the consumer’s attention on it. With so much content being released into Home every week, it’s no longer enough to just have one big release and then hope for the best. You’ve got to do as much preliminary PR buildup as possible, and then — even more critically — have a game plan already worked out as to how to maintain user engagement after the product has been launched, in order to drive residual sales. The more times you can appear on the official PlayStation Blog with something new to announce, the more times you get to benefit from that massive audience penetration.
The big question, of course, is how the four noble houses play into the story of Avalon (and your actions therein). But there’s also more of the keep still to be revealed, and what’s yet to come is quite exciting, indeed.
I bought this for the dungeon space particularly. And I hit my furniture limit once I decked it out, which means I have a totally empty castle. Every time I go there, I just get frustrated looking around at my empty, generic castle. If they could somehow seperate every segment to allow us to furnish each part fully then I’d be happy and I’d go back there as quick as a flash. Giving me MORE empty space to float around in won’t help though, so, this is just another dead area for me sadly. That buyer’s remorse you spoke of at the beginning if this article sums up how I feel about Avalon right now.
A real shame.
I used up most of my 100 item limit in the courtyard, copying Burbie’s idea of a medieval fair, but I don’t feel my castle is empty at all. The dining room has a few pieces and my throne room has a red (Santa’s) throne, because everyone else can stand. (Tee Hee) But I didn’t see a need to decorate the dungeon further, at all. I love how you can change the colors, the time of day and play the games there at Avalon and the space seems full to me with the fairies, decorations and NPC’s. It would be interesting to see what you did with 100 items in a dungeon, KrazyFace. (P.S. Thanks again, Burbie. You rock!)
Heh, it was for Halloween Kass. You’re more than welcome to come for a look if you’d like, just send in a FR. Same name as everywhere, but you’ll need my US acc which is KrazyFace-USA
!_! Niice.!
I bought Avalon Keep’s clubhouse and for like over 2 weeks I tried to buy the king’s chamber and the dungeon and all I get is a error message instead of a price. The sale won’t go through so I can’t buy these 2 spaces. I called Sony and I was told to wait a few days. It’s been over 2 weeks. I get the same error message if I go to the mall or whatever I try. This sucks because I bought the clubhouse in good faith I could add on. Now I can’t.
I’ve cleared my cache and waited for the shopping categories to load and not spent too much or too little time in the store. Just in case someboddy suggests these things…….