by RadiumEyes, HSM team writer

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but are you asking for a challenge?!!”

So quoth Strong Bad’s anime counterpart, Stinkoman, a veritable lover of challenges and owner of some awesome rocket boots. If he visted Home right now, he would find himself among a new limited-time event, the Home Challenges – various tests of skill at different games that the social platform offers. This Wednesday past marked the official unveiling of the new menu option, wherein a user can play one of five available challenges (more exist, but only five are offered at any given moment) to win some new rewards, visit spaces and socialize.

It’s perhaps a long time coming, but we now have RPG-esque quests to undertake in, complete with prizes in store for the intrepid explorer. On the tail of the Activity Board, which seems dormant right now, Home Challenges brings us a new method of traipsing around and acquainting ourselves with the numerous mini-games developers produced for the PS3’s social network.

Its arrival initially didn’t exactly receive major attention, but it quickly picked up steam since; the premise, a simple one, echoes the Activity Board, but the groundbreaking effort of including a tier-based reward system makes this unique. It’s a simple premise, but a great one – every day (for forty days or so, from its implementation), people can engage in different challenges that rotate every twelve hours, each offering 100 points for successful completion. Only a handful exist at the moment, but that’s nothing to worry about – the challenges rotate every so often, and once they do, you can play them again for an additional point gain. You can only garner so many points per attempt (300 is the max), but once it resets, you can accumulate more and continue towards the ultimate goal – a personal space.

One of the rewards (a level 2 item).

The personal space, a castle, occupies the uppermost tier, that level’s only inhabitant – before you can obtain it, though, you need enough points to purchase it, and you must unlock that tier through leveling up. This is comparable to Borderlands, where access to certain weapons requires a particular level; you’re not going to use a gun designed for level 40 if you haven’t reached that milestone yet. Home’s new Challenges section doesn’t have the intricacies of Borderlands’ story or battle system, but it doesn’t need it – you have a collection of items to obtain, and only by achieving the goals outlined in the game itself will net you them. Sony implemented this by tying each specific challenge to a particular public space; Pottermore hosts three of them, for example, while the Bowling Alley hosts an additional three. From the looks of things, no in-Home purchases are necessary to participate – everything you need to proceed is at your disposal, a great move on Sony’s part.

Having the Challenges game open to everyone, without requiring them to buy something in order to even access certain quests, makes this an egalitarian enterprise; every user can finish it without spending a single dime on things like clothing or items. If you look at the space-specific games available on Home at the moment, they all follow the freemium model – you can certainly play for free, but several of the more high-level items need certain things to complete, and having said purchasable content will definitely quicken the pace. O-Two’s peakvox labs and Sodium’s Salt Shooter are great examples of this; you can obtain several items for free right off the bat, but in order to fully appreciate the game, the developers offer items for sale that would open up more rewards. Peakvox labs, for instance, requires you to use a catalyst (in addition to the requisite ingredients) to obtain the higher-ranked companions; the same nominally applies to the Great Edo space, as purchasing various outfits greatly increase your chances of defeating the mononoke and subsequently speed up the process of obtaining ryo and souls.

Seeing a new, completely free quest-based system in place is very admirable, and it helps two important aspects of Home – socialization and introducing spaces to users both new and old. Home grew exponentially after entering open beta, and the sheer size of it can be overwhelming – where does one start, and what spaces are worth your attention? With Home Challenges, users have a wonderful chance to see various aspects of Home, while simultaneously being rewarded for their efforts. Home is a beast of a social platform, but in a great way; offering a means of showcasing different spaces and their mini-games helps tremendously with navigating, and it can get people interested in what else is out there. The bowling alley, in particular, is a popular hang-out, a great starting place for new users to get acquainted with what Home has to offer.

The challenges themselves are not taxing, and can be easily achieved through patience; enough variety exists to keep people occupied, and they regularly rotate at a set time. I found myself enjoying them all equally, and they show the care Sony put into selecting diverse options; they opted for very different enterprises, ranging from winning a Book Herding match (found in Pottermore) to scoring a single strike in bowling. Right now, it looks like the challenges primarily take place in two areas, but there’s enough variation there to warrant that decision. It isn’t elaborate, but that’s the point – you have some wonderful ways to socialize while performing quests, and it emphasizes the social aspect of Home. It’s meant to both entertain and elucidate – Home has plenty in store, and presenting a focused series of tasks goes a long way into showing how multifarious it is.

Now, I did briefly mention the nature of the challenges, but I feel this could benefit from looking at other spaces for inspiration. The Core spaces have their own unique fare, such as the dance floor in the Hub and the movie theater in LOOT’s Space Station, so bringing them into the fold would be a nice touch. One can find plenty to do here, and a bit more variation wouldn’t hurt at all. Of course, this runs the risk of making things overwhelming – too many chefs spoil the broth, so to speak, so keeping things simple makes this better overall. The prizes are as diverse as the games featured, and collecting them all will be a rewarding experience; they may not be something as elaborate as a rip-roarin’ rockdezvous with Limozeen (to reference Strong Bad again), or a collection of unique full-body costumes in the vein of the Panthabots, but they’re wonderful little additions to the Home experience.

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2 Responses to “A New Challenge Awaits”

1. Burbie52 says:

   November 6, 2013 at 10:48 am

   I like this idea a lot, it is way over due. There is one problem with it though, for many, myself included, the games in Pottermore are broken. I have not been able to even see the broom race, it won’t target when I get there, and I played Charms finally for all three levels as required and didn’t get any points for it the other day.
   So I guess I will be using the bowling alley exclusively and it is always so busy I can barely get in a game of any kind there. They really need to fix Pottermore and give us more variety as you said.
   Nice Read Radium.

   Reply
2. scamp_73 says:

   November 8, 2013 at 1:38 pm

   I have completed 3 out of the 4 challenges, but cant seem to get past 5000 points in scribble shooter. The challenges have really shaken things up. I have never seen Pottermore so busy!

   Reply