7Million leaves far behind the many staples of the industry, putting you in the shoes of a thief in Paradise City. The result is an unique, intriguing game that stands on its own in a sea of clones. Sadly, bold steps into the unknown are not without stumbles in the dark. This holds true, even for the most sly of thieves.

The way your account is started is strange enough to warrant a brief mention. Most games I have played required you to sign up before even downloading the client. This is the first place that 7Million departs from the norm. To create your account you must download your client, create your character, then you may “save” this character which creates your account to log into later. If you fail to save your character it will automatically deleted upon exiting the game. When I created my account, G-Mail caught the confirmation e-mail in my Spam filter. This is just something to be weary of should you not be able to find the e-mail later.

Game play is divided up into different heists, in which you enter a location to steal or plant objects. To start a heist you must either get a mission for a target from one of the numerous quest givers, or buy a blueprint to a location, which are one time use. Upon entering a location you have a limited time to complete the mission’s objectives or get as much loot as you can before time runs out. When the timer reaches zero if you were on a mission you fail, otherwise you are simply kicked out of the location. The problem with heists are they are not clearly marked for difficulty. This leads to buying blueprints to locations which you are not high enough level to complete.

Once you enter a location, in order to complete the heist you play a series of mini games with each representing an action during the heist. For example, cracking a code on a keypad requires you to play a clone of Tetris in which you match up the colored portions of the different pieces. If you are successful you get some experience and move on to the next obstacle in the heist, failure means you must try the game again. Failure to complete a mini game just wastes time, the exception to this is higher difficulty mini games. Some of these has specific actions you cannot take, if you ignore this you get an alert increase. Your level of alert increases not just from more difficult mini games, but also being spotted by cameras and guards. Should your meter fill, you are treated as if you ran out of time. More difficult actions increases the difficulty of the mini game you must play. This is accomplished by not only limiting your moves, but increasing the scores needed, or requiring multipliable clearings of a mini game to complete the action. Where this falls short, is that it gets very repetitive rather quickly. While tougher actions present you with a more challenging mini game, it is still at its core the same five mini games over and over.

Without combat to deal with, equipment takes on a new role. You still get bonuses from wearing different articles of clothing. Instead of boosting your traditional rpg stats, you get a bonus to particular games e.g. a hat may give you a scoring bonus in the Bejeweled like code cracking game, allowing you to complete it quicker. If you are reasonably skilled in the different games, the skill bonuses makes the mini games almost too easy to complete. This leaves the player free to treat equipment as more for show than stats.

Sound is where I feel the game needs to most improvement. As of this review, there is only one song that plays in loop leading me to quickly turn it off after hearing it for the fifth or sixth time. Aside from the foot falls of walking and the beeps from mini games, there aren’t many sound effects of note in the game making it feel rather bland.

The graphics while rather simple pull off their task with an amazing style. Characters are very bright and crisp, mini games all have their own distinctive look, and the world is very impressive for it’s low system requirements. It is geared for mid ranged PCs and performs beautifully under these conditions with a solid frame rate that did not falter.

Naturally with any free game, there will be options to pay for extra features. 7Million’s pay model is only half implemented at this time, leading to a road block if care is not taken. Currently, in Beta, you receive an allowance of 3000 Deep Silver Coins upon character creation. These are used for numerous things such as golden tickets to enter locked locations, bags, and tools. Once you exhaust your supply of these coins, there is no way to obtain more at this time. This means you either must restart with a new character or skip the locked content. When implemented the buying of Deep Silver Coins will supplement the subscription option, giving those who do not wish to pay a monthly fee a way to experience the subscriber’s content through the use of Golden Tickets. These are a single use key to locked locations. In addition to subscription and Deep Silver Coins, both of which are unavailable at this time, there are already several billboards erected throughout the game world to display ads at a later date. Wither subscribers will see this in addition to paying isn’t clear at this time.

7Million is not without its faults, but if it can correct some of its more glaring flaws then it will be a game to look out for. It’s unorthodox game play may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you are looking for a light game that you can pick up and play for a half an hour every so often, 7Million may just be for you. I would give it a 7 out of 10, with high hopes that it can address some of it’s problems in later builds.

The Good: Colorful graphics, Great for short play sessions, Something new

The Bad: Very Repetitive, Sound nearly non-existent, In need of polish

Graphics: 8
Sound: 4
Gameplay: 8
Story: 5
Final Score: 7/10