Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff will feel familiar to fans of the series - hands on

Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff launched earlier this week for iOS and Android, during which time I found myself thrust into the world of Quahog and it's long-running gags straight out of the animated series. After three days of playing, I feel I have enough familiarity with it to form an educated impression of it. Find out what I thought of it below

As you no-doubt noticed in the launch trailer, Quahog has been destroyed by Peter Griffin and his long-time nemesis, the expired coupon wielding giant chicken. Because of his usual ineptness, Peter must rebuild the town along with his son Chris, starting with Spooner Street, eventually repopulating the town by finding its residents one by one.

If this sounds familiar to you, it should: in The Simpsons: Tapped Out, Homer Simpson causes a nuclear meltdown at the plant destroying Springfield in the process. Homer needs to rebuild the town, starting with Evergreen Terrace and the help of his daughter Lisa.

While it's easy to make a checklist of the similarities between the two games, it would be a disservice to each. Both games stand on their own as fun, time-management sandbox titles starring well-loved Fox TV characters; plus I am here to give you my impressions of The Quest for Stuff, so I will stick with the subject.

The game is all about the story, and it is a rather entertaining one. This is due to the show's writers penning the dialogue and questlines. The animated show's cast was also involved with development, so you will hear familiar voices throughout.

You can also expect regular oddballs to appear such as monocle man, and it wouldn't surprise me if Vern and Johnny, the famous Vaudeville act, also made an appearance.

While the gameplay consists of tapping and buying merchandise with coins earned within the game, there are also added factors such as FaceSpace. It is an in-game social network where the characters interact with one another. As each character levels, more posts will appear on FaceSpace and photos added to the wall will show the different outfits you have purchased for the character.

With each action performed by the characters, XP and coins are earned. Once a character is unlocked a variety of actions can be chosen: Jerome, the new owner of the Drunken Clam can host ladies night; Bonnie can twerk on her stripper pole; Chris can spend some alone time with a box of issues; and Quagmire can go on a panty raid. Not only do these actions earn valuable perks, they are quest necessities at times.

For example: to unlock Bruce, you need to complete a series of four quests, one of which is to give him two Hawaiian shirts. These are an uncommon drop, so you may have to make a character perform the action more than once. This would mean that Peter would have to fall down and hold his knee going "sssss aaaaahhhhh" twice, each time for an hour or so.

Each of these actions not only complete quests, but can be performed individually to earn XP and coins. These can take anywhere from 45 seconds to 24 hours to complete and this is where time management comes into play. If you are the impatient sort, you're in luck: time can be sped up using Golden Clams which are earned through completing quests.

Clams can also be earned by syncing the game with Facebook, which will allow you to visit other Quahogs created by your friends in the MultiVerse. Visiting will also earn you coins, XP and possibly clams.

Golden Clams can also be purchased through the in-game store with real money. I found I was running out of clams, and I didn't want to wait a few hours to finish building the Drunken Clam and unlock Jerome, so I bought 50 clams for $1.99. These packages run anywhere from the aforementioned to $99.99 for 3,500 clams. This can get expensive though, so patience pays off when trying to earn coins and clams.

Some items, such as the Stewie Flower and buildings, are exclusive to the store and range anywhere from 5 clams to 750 golden clams, the later of which equates to roughly $25 in real money. That being said, the game is not pay-to-win. Players can choose to pay if they want to buy exclusive outfits and decorations from the store, but there is never a point in the game which forces the issue. It's purely voluntary. You can also buy coins in the store and earn Golden Clams as a bonus.

Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is a fun game to play five or more minutes at a time. If you want to play for hours though, you will have to fork over some cash, unless you want to try to level Chris up 1XP at a time by having him chase a butterfly for 45 seconds.

Visually and content-wise, the game is identical to the show, from it's animations to it's gags. For fans of the series, it will feel very much like an extension of the series. San Francisco-based TinyCo did a fabulous job bringing to life all the colors, nuances and familiarity of the long-running Fox staple.

Now comes the real question: will I continue to play the game? Sure. I play The Simpsons: Tapped Out a few times a week for short bursts, and I will more likely than not do the same with Family Guy: A Quest for Stuff. It's fun for fans of the series and those with a warped sense of humor and gives you a nice, short sessions of playtime while on the bus, or while commercials are running during TV time.

Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is available on the App Store and Google Play, and I gleaned my impressions of it by playing on my Samsung Galaxy Tab.