Disney has dropped three new text-based games on the Google Assistant ecosystem. The new games are Maui’s Music Game, Disney Princess, and Toy Story Freeze Dance. All three games are text-based, but also fully voiced, meaning that their target audience, being kids, will have no trouble interacting with them. Two of the games, being Maui’s Music Game and Toy Story Freeze Dance, also feature music. The games all present kids with clear choices and are centered around different Disney characters. All of the games, of course, have trademark Disney happy endings.
The Disney Princess game is the only one that’s not really a game. Rather, it’s an interactive chat with a Disney princess of choice, who will talk to kids about core concepts in life such as school and careers, all through the lens of their own experiences within their respective movies. Toy Story Freeze Dance, meanwhile is exactly what it sounds like; kids take the toy oath, which is to freeze when a human walks in the room, and boogie down with Toy Story characters, then freeze when the music stops. Finally, Maui’s music game sees kids helping Maui choose his paths on the way to confront Tamatoa and get his hook back. When the duo inevitably succeed, Maui shows kids his collection of magical conch shells. Whenever one is chosen, it plays music from the movie.
These games are integrated directly into Assistant, and can be accessed simply by saying “Play”, and then the name of the game. Games like this one are already a core part of the Assistant experience thanks to partnerships with large companies and other big-name external creators. In the near future, however, indie developers and other outliers may have more incentive to jump in and enhance Assistant, along with more freedom to do so. This is all speculation, of course, based on a large number of new Assistant-related job postings that have cropped up on Google’s career website recently, with most of them being as fresh as the past month or so. Google Assistant is already quite capable, and seems poised only for expansion and enhancement going forward.