Save Quahog in this surreal city-building game
This program can no longer be downloadedFamily Guy: The Quest for Stuff is a free-to-play, city-building game in which you must rebuild the town of Quahog from the ground up. Along the way, there are plenty of weird and wacky missions featuring the main characters from the popular FOX show.
Tapped Out for adults
Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff begins with an exclusive clip explaining how the town of Quahog was destroyed by a politician dressed as a chicken. It transpires that it’s up to the bungling oaf Peter Griffin and his cohorts to raise the city from the ground.
The introductory clip sets the tone for the whole game. The humor is often crude, bordering on offensive, and the jokes are as hit and miss as they are in the series.\n
The gameplay in Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is undeniably similar to the mechanic of The Simpsons: Tapped Out. The idea is to build houses, businesses and leisure areas by earning, or buying, virtual currency. In this case the stuff in Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff can be bought with cash and clams.
As you progress through the game, you unlock different characters from Family Guy and must put them to work on a variety of absurd tasks in order to win cash, XP points, and to a lesser extent, clams. Clams are the precious manna of Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff and it’s very hard to progress very far without spending them. The trouble is, they are hard to come by, so it’s likely you’ll need to spend real cash to buy them if you want to avoid the frustration of waiting days and days.
Quests in Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff are pretty weird. They range from getting Peter to stub his toe for four hours, to making Quagmire pass a gerbil through his trousers for hours on end. By completing these quests, characters will level up, unlocking new tasks for them to perform. You will also need to make characters perform tasks for other characters to unlock them.
Many of the quests take a long time to complete, so progress is slow unless you’re prepared to spend cash.
Besides just building stuff and completing quests, there are some other elements to Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff. For instance, there’s a ‘FaceSpace’ social network, where each character posts comments and photos. Again, some of these posts are funny, while others miss the mark entirely, or just seem designed to shock.
If you’re a fan of Family Guy you’ll be used to this off-the-wall humor, but if not you might find the quips downright offensive. What’s more, many jokes that would work in the show don’t seem to have the same punch in the text format of Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff.
You can also visit other players’ virtual cities, although interaction is limited to exploring and collecting coins/clams where you see them.
Visit Al Harrington’s Costume Shop and you’ll be able to dress your characters up in different outfits, unlocking new ones as you go.
Quahog at your fingertips
Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is pretty easy to pick up and play, even if you have no experience with these type of city-building strategy games. The first few minutes of play are accompanied by on-screen instructions, and the general principle of tapping on buildings or people to collect money and XP doesn’t require a genius brain.
Moving around the city in Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is straightforward enough. You simply swipe across the screen to move around and pinch to zoom in or out. Placing objects is a bit fiddly at times, especially if they are small and you’re using an iPhone.
I ran across some glitches in the game, such as quests not opening when you press ‘Go’ from a task list, and splash screens sometimes freezing when characters level up.
Bringing Family Guy to life
The graphics in Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff manage to encapsulate the look of the show. The cartoon artwork and animation makes you actually feel like you’ve been transported into Quahog, although I longed to be able to zoom in a little further to get closer to the characters performing their bizarre acts.
The soundtrack is no-less irritating than any long-winded world-building game. It’s a version of the Family Guy theme tune, stretched out and looped to play consistently. It’s more orchestral than the TV version though, so it has a more sedate feel.
Not for the faint-hearted
Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is a hard game to rate, since your enjoyment of it depends so much on your appreciation for the show’s dark and surreal humor. No one will enjoy all the waiting around/spending money that’s required, but it’s a good enough game to keep you coming back if you’re a fan of the show.
