Neopets

Brief Description

Want a virtual pet? Want to explore a world? Want to meet some new people? Want to play some games? Neopets has all this and more.

The Neopet site has online games, virtual shops, virtual theme parks, and numerous other activities. You can write and share stories, poetry. You can join a guild or offer your own pictures to a beauty contest. There are lots of competitions to join on the site.

Game play and hints

You want to earn neopoints. Neopoints are the basic currency of the site. The more of them that you have the more things you can do or buy. Winning games, selling items, building a theme park are just some of the ways that you can earn neopoints. My current favourite is playing the stock market.

Go to the game room. Play games. Find your favourites and keep with them. Why? A lot of games offer good neopoints for winning. Other games require you play to a certain level, and once you get there, you'll win both items and points. I was beginning to think that Dice-a-roo was worthless until I finally made silver level. In just a few throws at that level, I more than made up all my loses.

Pay attention to your pet. They don't need to be feed that often, but they do need to be read to and played with. Buy them toys and many books (books make a pet smart). Find the training ground and develop their abilities.

Explore the world. As you explore, random events may happen including finding food, neopoints and even valuable items. There are treasure maps to be found and quests to be completed.

The site encourages you to

• get more people to join and

• visit the site sponsers.

Neobadge

Freely available are banners (Just one small example. There are many more.), neobadges, a 50 megabyte web site (with prizes for signing up), a web site for your pet ( Timmy the Lupe's page and Indiannette's page), neofriends (currently limited to 4 people), and neomail.

Gripes about the game

If you are at the edges of the net (in a physical sense), things like ChiaBingo and the main shops are just too frustrating. You just can't load the pages fast enough to be effective. I did get something from the money tree once, but only because it had a number of items at the time.

Conclusion

Suitable for all ages and game playing types. There is plenty to see and do on the site, whether you want to play other games, help your pet develop new abilities, or battle other pets.

I found the site highly addictive and I highly recommend that you give it a try.

From Neopets

Some final thoughts on the game.

By the time you read this review, the site will have changed. It may be minor, it may be major but they are expanding the number of small games in the site and other ways to earn neopoints. Within a week, I've seen a new item be added to the sidebar and a major new function added to the battledome.