Need some help with the game? Check out our Oz World fishing guide and recipes!
Here’s another game I just found recently and that caught my eye for the cute artwork and some original ideas about gameplay. OZ is a bit like a life simulation. It’s a virtual world where you can live the life you ever wanted and be whoever you want to be. You can make friends, organize fishing trips and even get married and divorced.
When you register for a new account, your nickname will be your character’s name, as well as the sex choice you make will be the gender of your character. These parameters will create your avatar for when you log in for the first time.
Unfortunately, when starting out, all females look the same and all males have the same model. A bit of diversity in newbie clothing and body shapes would be perfect, since the rest can be altered by purchasing good and services: clothing, shoes, accessories, skin tones and hairstyles.
Your avatar comes equipped with basic clothes that somehow resemble a lifeguard outfit (red and white shirt and shorts), a fishing rod and a flea’s liver (don’t ask, it’s a recipe ingredient). You can start fishing right away and make some gold that way. Characters have skills that are directly related to their fishing ability, such as being able to call certain species only or improve the elasticity of a rod.
Be warned though, if you don’t like fishing, don’t bother playing the game. You will probably spend 90% of your time fishing in order to gain social points and make money, unless you want to purchase Cash.
OZ is a free game, but you will need to purchase Cash to access certain content. Cash is mostly used outside of the regular gameplay. You need it to purchase combination ingredients, party scrolls and other special goodies. Cash is purchased with real-life money. Don’t confuse Cash with Gold, Gold is the currency of OZ. You can convert Cash to Gold at any time, at a rate of 1:1. Purchasing Cash is also a way to support OZ.
In OZ you can buy and decorate your own house. You can customize several things in it, from floor tiles to balconies, window frames and wallpaper, even the color of the light on a lamp. If you’re a building and decorating freak like me, you will certainly enjoy this aspect of the game.
In the towns, you can find a variety of stores: clothing, hairstyle, skin, furniture, flowers, electronics and fishing equipment. In total, there are six clothing stores, three hair stylists, a skin clinic for your tanning needs, two furniture outlets, one electronics store, a florist and a fishing equipment store. Shop stocks also vary from town to town. You can also buy items straight from your inventory too. There is a sort of a “bazaar mode” to search for items, but it will cost you extra Gold for delivery.
Each item has a set life span. Be sure to watch for your items’ durability: when that value reaches zero, the item will disappear from your inventory. To prevent this, repair your belongings in advance.
There are a couple of things that I found to be pretty cool in the world of OZ , aside from the fishing.
One was the flowers concept. You can buy or receive flowers as a gift from others, and each different flower has a meaning, just like real flowers but with a twist, since they will add to your popularity points (either to love or friendship scores). You also start with 12 flowers to give to others (four types, three flowers of each).
The other was the Tarot card readings. If you buy a deck from the furniture store, you can have your fortune read and you can do it to others, with the advantage of customizing the text you want the other person to read in the result.
These are both original ideas to include in a game that promote social interaction.
Characters actually level up by accumulating social points, which allows them to experience more of the world by “unlocking” items they couldn’t use before. You can earn extra social points if you’re in a party, just hanging out and fishing with other people.
And since the game is based on socializing, the entire environment is a lot friendlier than in regular mainstream MMORPGs where everyone competes for spawns and gear. Of course, you will get your odd nutcase chasing you around repeating “I love you” (like I did not even 10 minutes after logging on), but hey, it’s who they choose to be online. Personally, I’d rather not be a stalker… but that’s just me.
OZ World would greatly benefit from different music styles (all are very relaxing), more polished graphics and full camera controls. But it truly is an innovative concept with some original ideas, and from my contact with other players it’s a game that appeals to both male and female audiences in their teens and up.
OZ has a bigger community feeling than any game I’ve experienced before. I wish The Sims Online could have been more like this. Even with doing nothing but fishing to make money and chatting right now, I am having fun with it.
If you enjoy hanging around in chat rooms, you should move over to OZ. At least you get to fish, gain money and pick out cool clothes instead of just staring at text all day!
System Requirements:
- Windows 98 or higher
- Pentium 166 Mhz
- 32M RAM
- 50MB disk space
- DirectX compatible video card (3D acceleration not required)
- Direct Sound compatible sound card
- Internet connection