Code of Everand

There are dozens of free-to-play online roleplaying games available.  Mostly they run in an internet browser allowing access for everyone. The funding for these games has to come from somewhere though, they may be simple by the standards of modern videogames but they still require a reasonably large team to develop the games and a smaller team to maintain it. This money will usually come from either advertising or in-game micro-transactions, Code of Everand though is different, it received its funding from the British Government.

Code of Everand was conceived as a videogame which helps educate children in the safest way to cross roads and developed by Area/Code and the Department for Transport. Instead of making a road-crossing-simulator though they have created a full-on fantasy adventure set in a world criss-crossed with dangerous spirit channels. The players take control of a Pathfinder, an adventurer trained in crossing these channels, and set off on many adventures. Well, not quite adventures. Mostly all Code of Everand will have you do is go and speak to so-and-so in the next town over or find something and take it to Some Guy in Yetanother Town. Really they are all just excuses to make you cross the spirit channels since that is where all the action is.

Any crossing starts with choosing where to cross. There are safer points where it is recommended that you cross but you can cross anywhere if you want to. After choosing a crossing point you get a character's-eye-view and you have to look both ways to see which monsters are present, so far so sensible. After that though, the concept falls down a bit. Rather than waiting for the traffic/monsters to pass and crossing when it is safe you actually have to fight them by laying magical traps. The monsters whiz past, take some damage from your trap and probably reduce your concentration a little bit. They then turn around and come back and you repeat this trapping process until either you lose all your concentration and get returned to base by a blimp rescue squad or you kill the monsters, look both ways again and cross the road/channel in safety.

Other slight problems with the games structure become apparent in the quests. Certain ones require you to cross and re-cross a particular channel repeatedly until you have enough of an item that you can gain from the fights there. Crossing the channels should be an unavoidable risk when going about your business in Everand, not the actual goal of your quests. Then you have the fact that Code of Everand awards experience points, money and loot in proportion to the power of the creatures you are fighting. This means that anyone who survives a shortcut across a channel at an unsafe location will actually be rewarded for taking that risk! Then again, maybe after they have died a few times trying to cross these busier points they will decide that it is better to take the long way round.

There is no question that Code of Everand is a well made and professional game and both Area/Code and the Department for Transport deserve credit for trying something new here. It is a shame that the road-crossing analogy breaks down after a bit of play and that the game is at its core so repetitive but it is pretty and I could easily see some kids getting a lot of fun from it. I am no psychologist so I couldn't say whether it will actually make its players more road savvy but it certainly can't hurt.