Distribution:Download | Retail Price:n/a | Pay Type:Free | Monthly Fee:$05.95
Browser Game
Pixie Hollow Review: Pixie Hollow Review - Edit
8.5
Great
| Pros |
|
 Browser-based, no client required Interesting, varied mini-games |
| Cons |
 Limited activities No real group play Small world |
Mini-games
Most zones have a mini-game and unlike some games with mini-games that are all just variants of "match three," they are quite different. One required you to bounce fishes in bubbles up the falls with a lily pad. Just beware the falling prickly brambles. The game continues until you lose all of your lily pads. Boosts that enlarge your lily pad and additional lily pads could also be obtained.
Another was lighting up fireflies. Your fairy received three baskets with which you had to pick up a light then catch up to the ever-moving firefly and light it with a mouse-click. This one was rather fun as you could light more than one if you caught them together, and as you progressed, there were different colored lights that did different things. One passed from a firefly to another as they met, another lit an area for a short while and all fireflies passing through were lit. Then there were moths which knocked your basket out of your hands and some would actively go after you if you had a light in your basket.
;)
One run by Tinkerbell was a sorting game where you grabbed things off a conveyor belt and put them in the right basket. Some items actually would fall off into the correct basket, so we did not have to worry about those, but it went from one conveyor to two and increased from three items to sort to six.
Each mini-game gave you a choice of three different rewards, so if you prefer not to flit around competing for the item spawns, you could simply play the mini-games. Prowess in the mini-games also gives you Medals.
Sound and Graphics
Sound and Graphics are top notch. Disney is the granddaddy of epic movie cartoons after all and the artists have managed to create an amazingly beautiful and lush web-based flash world. Movement in a zone is seamless and the zone is seen in an ornate window with your fairy centered. Once your fairy starts moving toward the edge of the pane, you know you're at the edge of the zone. For players with less powerful machines, each pane of the window will load as your fairy flies to the edge of the pane, and an arrow indicates that there is more "pane" to fly to. UI elements are outside the window with representative icons such as a bag for your ingredients for crafting and a trunk for inventory items such as additional pieces of clothing. The fairy journal gets you to your crafting recipes, your profile, quests, and etc.
Social and Community
;)
Designed for little girls 7 - 14, Pixie Hollow is COPA compliant and chat is limited to Menu-chat, although kids above 13 have Menu-chat plus which allows you to use short typed phrases. Girls love making friends. You can expect to receive invitations to be friends everywhere you go, and the stream with the Goldfish game in Neverberry Thicket seems to be the happening place where fairies gather. There aren't any official forums, but fan forums have popped up where fairies gather to chat about the game and just about anything else. Every fairy gets a fairy house and these can be decorated and fairies can throw a party and invite their friends to their party.
Phoebe's Party Place is where you buy parties and games for your parties. To encourage this social activity, the activities are relatively cheap compared to say... getting your hair colored or re-styled, costing 12 blueberries instead of 62.
Live events happen quite often as well and last over several days, the last being a Games Week where the zones were decorated with bunting and party streamers and the servers were hopping with fairies who came together to play mini-games.
Reviewer's Opinion
;)
If you look at Pixie Hollow from a hardcore gamer point of view, it's unbelievably "grindy." It's a collections game and the trendy items you want for your house or your fairy can require a large number of these items. Unlocking tailoring patterns require doing the same mini-games again and again to "practice" your skills.
However, little girls don't seem to find harvesting a boring process, and neither do they have hours upon hours to play the game like hardcore gamers do. They actually harvest together, flying to zones in pairs to harvest and talk about what and how many items they got, and there are other activities on the website for young girls, such as printing your fairy for coloring.
I tried the game out on several young children, girls of ages 7, 9 and 12. They don't play the game every day, but the seven year-old's favorite thing to do is to fly around picking up stuff. She'd rather collect things than play the mini-games, then rush to the store to see if she has enough to buy more accessories. The nine year old loves the mini-games and the 12 year old bribes her 10 year old brother for help to unlock more tailoring patterns. The five year old boy loves the mini-games and doesn't care that they are all girl fairies as he watched the Disney Fairy movie just as many times as his sister did. As for myself, there are nights where I just want to kill something and nights when relaxation is just... flying around harvesting so I have half a bazillion dandelion fluff and acorns to restyle and color my fairy's hair
What's the best dps class? How many fatality moves are there?
Grind I can handle, so long as the pvp is brutal and there's full corpse-looting.
Wow, yet another Disney MMO fail. If I was to suggest a game to kids. It would be play Free Realms or Fusion Fall. I don't think much more than a small group of girls would play Pixie Hollow and that's only if they do like Tinker Bell. I think more girls would have more fun in Free Realms or Fusion Fall.
Fireballs da fairies.
Ooops.
I rolled on the floor laughing xDDDD
I'm going to have to look into Free Realms and Fusion Fall!
I played Pixie Hollow for about 6 months, and the game nearly always had a few glitches, and it used to be even kinds funny, and it WAS fun UNTIL... myself and many other players started having problems with the storage and closet features in July. Despite reporting the errors, which one has to exit the game to do (unless you already have the email address or phone number - which BTW they haven't been able to answer questions by phone, even though the phone system says to press 3 for game support - it all leads to the billing department!)
After playing for about 2 months, I was at a standstill for things to do, as there was not enough storage or closet space to do the "tailoring" or buy anything else. They added some new features, and after quite a while they added some more spaces, then at a standstill again! All the quests were done, and there was little to do except collect things and again wait until more spaces were added.
Since July, the game has been full of glitches, typos in quest, incorrect directions on the quests, and again the storage and closet space issues. Every time there was an "event" or something new was added, and I mean EVERY TIME since July, when they have events the servers can't handle the traffic, the are wide-spread disconnects, and the Space they added in the storage and closets for things you worked for have had items disappear, they work on the game, have it OK for a day or so and the items returned for most of those I spoke with and myself, but only for a day or a few days, then when they add a new quest, its again a major problem!
Some have had items returned, others have said that they were asked to prove they had those items and even a screen shot wasn't enough! One player I know was told that even a screen shot was not enough to prove it, and she was dismissed (and she plays this with her grand kids, who are no longer interested in the game as a result!)
Another friend's kids played the game until the glitched started in July and then the quests that would tell you to "go back to" another place where you hadn't been before.
Despite MANY players calling, emailing and sending in error reports, we all sometimes would get an auto-repsponder email, and then those stopped, and we would start getting letters asking us to check OUR computer, as if something we wrong at our end, and we were the ONLY ones having the problems! I played on over 10 separate computers, and I certainly am not the only one having the problem! I'd say of those that have been on the game since around May 2009 and before, we've all had the same problems with items disappearing, and when you call them or email Disney Interactive or the Pixie Hollow number, they either can't help you, will tell you that they are working on it and it should be fixed within 24 hours, yet never gets fixed, and I have to wonder if they don't have their programmers stretched far too thin, or if they simply do not know how to correct the problems.
They also need to upgrade their servers, as at busy times one is often disconnected, and doing tasks in the mine or wilderness areas becomes nearly impossible because of the lag of their servers.
They've added a "Tinkering Nook" where you can now make items for your virtual "Home", yet there is no storage space left to do so, and it appears, from what a friend was told (which seems to be the only straight answer any of us could get), that they have a parameter for the storage and closet space that is not correctly configured, so you end up not being able to buy or make or even finish quests without getting rid of something, even if it shows you have room. Apparently visually they have added 5 more spaces, but they are not usable, and make items disappear and stop players from adding anything else to their collections of goodies.
IMHO, this game should still be in BETA stage and not being sold yet until they get the bugs worked out.
It seems the game has been let go, and despite the new release of the Nintendo DS game, which is supposed to interface with this game, that is going to be released this month, there has not been much of anything to do other than collect "ingredients" since July 2009, as no matter how much you have, you can't buy or make anything new, there have not been any new quests for months, other than a one step quest to introduce you to the Tinkering nook (where you can make items for your home), which is essentially playing a modified Tetris game over and over, BUT once your spaces are filled up, which happens quickly, you can't make anything new and are again stuck with only gathering to do, and the same trade quests with the same text, and the same wilderness quest with the same thing to do (as well as a "Kit" quest, which are things you do at home away from the cmputer and you can check in ever 24 hours.
The game USED TO have really cute stories for quests, but since July, there has really been nothing new to do... Sure they add new clothes, and are even having a costume festival, have "Famous Fairies" events when they have people on computers play a famous fairy or two and drop presents, but then the traffic goes up, the game freezes, drops connections, plays slower (or not at all) and the "Party Sub-Games" crash about 1/3 to 1/2 of the time, unless you are up at midnight or are playing during the morning on a week-day!) The other functions of the game also have problems when the traffic is even moderate on the top screen full of "server names."
In addition, I have seen apparently teenagers (and who knows maybe some wacko adults?) ask me if I were single, if I had a boyfriend, trying to hook up with each other (One time boys dressed in blue and girls in red or pink) talking about grossly inappropriate things, even with the limited chat, with strong sexual content, especially on the top servers.)
I would not allow a child in my care to play this game as a result, and some kids who I know used to play the game quit on their own because they were confused by the quests that went nowhere or had problems.
It seems to me they do not test the new code on anther system before they put it on the main game everyone plays.
VERY disappointing and frustrating coming from Disney! Walt Disney would be rolling in his grave if he knew the garbage they've turned it into...
Used to be a really nice, fun game, but when you spend more time playing beta tester than you do playing the game, even as an adult, it's simply not worth it. I felt like I should be getting paid, or at least get some compensation for telling them what's wrong with the game (some free play IF they fixed things maybe, but with nothing new to do, it's not worth my time!
I would have given this game 4 stars in February, but I wouldn't give it a single star after the BS they've sent to many of us about the problems with the game and how they handle their "error reports", emails and phone calls.
I CAN say that he artwork is beautiful, but cute only gets so far! There are many, many more free games out there for kids (and the kid inside us all) that are FAR more fun and are shareware or even free!
This is one to pass on! And God help them when they try to interface the DS with it already having so many problems!
i guess its cool that someone is trying to attact kids to gameing, but this is not a good way to do it. I wont lie, i tried the game. you cant really chat ( unless you want to say a prewritten message). There are no enemies that i encountered. Even my 10 year old sister got bored within a few days. Not great for someone who wants a solid game, but if youre one of those people who spend 3 hours createing a character on other games, you might want to have a look. no offense to any fans of the game, but thats the only real use i found for it
You have my nods. No offense but the game is nothing like I expected. Why did i even try it? My Grade school cousins are nudging me to try it and I was totally disappointed. Guess they were trying tooooo hard that it ended up sooo bad. Sorry.