Missing our dog Katy who had to be put down on Saturday :-(
Missing our dog Katy who had to be put down on Saturday :-(
Member since:08.07.2000
Reviews:931
Members who trust:730
Happy Neo Year!
INTRO
I used to love Tamagochis – those little electronic pets on a keyring. Then I progressed to a couple of 3D Pets on CD-ROM – a dog and a cat. But our computer was deteriorating fast and soon it became useless for all but the essentials. The sound card stopped working and I gave up playing games on it.
For Christmas, we were given a brand new computer with a faster processor and a working sound card. Suddenly, everything was faster, graphics worked, the sound was crystal clear. I knew I could resist no longer. I had read some great reviews about the site on Ciao and felt now was the time to see what was on offer. I visited neopets.com and became hooked.
WHAT ARE NEOPETS?
For those that haven’t yet experienced the addictive nature of Neopets, I would warn you to get out now, while you still have a chance! But if you’re not yet discouraged, read on…
This site is ideal for children and adults who love animals and cute fantasy creatures with Pokemon-like names. It is easy to sign up and before you know it, you will have created your own pet. You can’t adopt ordinary pets, but don’t worry, some of the creatures available do resemble our usual domesticated animals. Owning a Neopet has many of the benefits of real pets, but none of the mess or the expense. It’s also hugely enjoyable!
The most pets you can own at one time is four, but it is advisable to begin with only one at first, until you get the hang of it all. Refusing to heed my own advice, I owned four by the end of the first day.
You choose a species then decide on its gender, colour and name. This is easy to do and doesn’t take long. You browse through the varieties of creatures available then follow the instructions provided to choose its appearance. After that, its strength and intelligence are decided randomly. The lengthiest part of the process is choosing a name, as many of them have already been taken though, so think of something unusual.
My first Neopet was a blue male Shoyru (This is basically a bat with huge wings and big appealing eyes) which I wanted to call Vlad or Vladimir. Both these names were taken, so I ended up using the site’s suggestion Vladuneo. My first pet was born.
Somehow I managed to create twins, as another identical blue Shoyru was also created -Vladu. Later that day, I was coaxed to the Pound by pictures of adorable abandoned pets and adopted an unwanted blue female Blumaroo (a kangaroo-type creature with a long nose, love heart feet and a very sad expression). This was already named BouncyBlumaroo72 (so don’t blame me).
Finally, I fell in love with a species called Korbats. These are also bat-like (my favourite animal) but fly, rather than walk like the Shoyru. Korbats are small with big wings, big ears and a shy smile. I adopted a female red and white one and called it <cough> OlgaKorbat!
If you have more than one pet, you click on the one you want to make ‘active’ as you can only play with one at a time. To change over your active pet, you click on its name on the left of the screen (under your user name) and you are then taken to pictures of your Neopets and you can which one to become active.
NOW YOU’VE GOT THEM, WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THEM?
You have to care for your pet by feeding it, playing with it, buying it toys and books and generally ensuring its health, happiness and well being. For example, if your Neopet is listed as being ‘bloated’ it is not advisable to feed it. When it is ‘satiated’ or less, feeding it makes it happy. You buy it food and drink from the shops on the website.
The currency in Neopia is Neopoints. You earn these several ways, including completing surveys, signing up for newsletters, playing games, winning them and selling items. You may also be lucky and find them on your travels.
When you have earned a sufficient amount of Neopoints, you can buy food, drink, clothes, accessories, souvenirs and umpteen other items for your pets. You can put money in the bank for safe keeping, bet it on games, invest in shares or purchase some land to build a house on. You can also fight other pets in the Battledome.
There are ample opportunities to both earn and spend Neopoints, but it will take you several days to assess all the methods of doing this. The best thing to do is to explore each of the parts of Neopia, making notes of which games are free, how you can earn the most Neopoints and then what you would like to spend them on.
I found everything very confusing at first, but after creating my Neopets, I clicked on a variety of links and explored each one. I found a couple of games, bet a few Neopoints and won some. I
found the enchanting Petpets and was intrigued by the idea of a NeoHome, so looked at the relevant parts of the site. Although it did seem there was a huge amount of things to learn and discover, I never felt disheartened as the navigation and advice is very good.
Some games are free, but most cost between 5NP and 100NP per play. If you lose regularly, you will soon be running out of funds and need to acquire some more. Items to buy are usually quite highly priced. For example, a book might cost 300NP and land to build on costs 1000NP – and then extra for floors, rooms and furniture! Life on Neopia is not cheap. Think Mayfair, not Maplins.
It is worth checking out the Auctions. You can often get a bargain, but it is advisable to start on the auctions numbered 80-100 as earlier ones have often already finished. These auctions can become as addictive as Ebay, but at least you can’t overspend here. If you don’t have the Neopoints to pay for your bid, you lose it. Simple.
You can apply for a job, which will help fund the daily expenses of Neopet life. You need to visit the employment agency in Faerieland, but jobs are snapped up very quickly. You need to keep refreshing the page and click quickly for the best chance of gaining employment.
Basic jobs are really little missions – you have to earn a certain amount of points at a game, for example, or find so many objects in a set time. You are rewarded for each mission you complete with a pre-determined amount of Neopoints, but if you fail, you may end up losing some, so be careful.
If you are low in funds, there are helpful parts of the site that you can visit in your hour of need. You can go to the soup kitchen or Tyrannia for free food, if your pets are hungry. (You can check this by consulting the statistics under the pictures of your Neopets in the link under your user name.) You can also go to the Money Tree and pick up discarded freebies from other users, but click quickly or they will be gone!
Basically, this site is a virtual simulation where you need to complete tasks in order to be able to provide for and nurture your Neopets – rather like sustaining a family in real life, in fact!
PETPETS
One of my favourite features of the website is the ability to purchase pets for your Neopets – Petpets. These are mini-creatures, which can be beautiful, ugly, cute and cuddly or just very strange.
These are available at several places on the site and match the theme of the area you buy them from. For example, ordinary Petpets are available at the shop in Neopia Central, Faerie-type pets are available in Faerieland and spooky ones in the Haunted Woods. It is advisable to look round to find one you like, before buying it and try to compare prices, as some can be over 20,000NP each!
These add more play value to the site as you can collect various types, then give them to your Neopet. They may reject them or they may love them and announce you are the best owner ever. They can interact with them too, by you typing in phrases and discovering the Petpet’s response.
Each of my Neopets has a Petpet of its own. You can name your Petpet too and each Neopet is allowed one Petpet at a time. Their image is displayed under your Neopet’s picture and statistics, so you have a handy record to refer to all on one page.
SOUNDS AND VISUALS
The graphics on the site are in keeping with the cartoon nature of the Neopets themselves. They are also appropriate to the land they are situated in, following the themes closely and incorporating relevant stories and characters into each one.
The games usually contain relevant sound effects too, depending on the theme. These are usually fairly minimal and rarely distracting. Some examples include a witch cackling in the Haunted Woods games and water splashing in the Deckball game.
In Meridell, the sound and visual effects are well demonstrated by the Ultimate Bullseye game. This is a virtual archery game, where you control a turtle-type creature by positioning the angle of the arrow and the speed at which it travels. You earn points by hitting the rings of the board and your total score can be converted to your Neopoints total. Another one the kids enjoy, with its medieval quality to the graphics and its more comical sound effects.
The Virtupets Space Station provides one of the funniest games visually – the Evil Fuzzles game. Here you try to shoot red fuzzy enemies who are trying to get in your ship. The graphics are very funny for this, with the Fuzzles gurning maniacally and it always makes us laugh.
Different outfits are available for your Neopets, but you need to find a Paintbrush first. As you would expect, each costume section fits in with the particular section you are in, so you would find fur coats and festive fashions at Happy Valley and Egyptian style ones in the Lost Desert. You can also change your Neopet’s colour by finding a magic paintbrush and visiting the Rainbow Pool in Neopia Central, but the magic paintbrushes seem rather elusive and I haven’t managed to find one yet!
NAVIGATION
Although neopets.com seems very complicated and confusing at first, it becomes easier to navigate quite quickly. The links are usually clearly labelled and if you get lost, you can always return to a familiar location through the links on the left of the page.
There are very helpful ‘info’ buttons for the games, a good search engine for the site and plenty of ‘help’ links for assistance. It is also worth reading the Neopets Hints which appear on several pages.
Dead links are few and far between, with almost every page loading quickly. The site is occasionally down for maintenance work, but this is clearly shown and will inform you how long the work should take.
ACTIVITIES FOR CHILDREN
One of the best aspects of this site is that it can be both fun and educational for my children. For example, in Faerieland, there is a colour game whereby you are given a black and white template of various Neopets, which you can colour in online using the tools available. Once you have finished colouring it to your satisfaction and chosen a suitable background, you can then print it off to keep.
My children particularly enjoy having something to show for their efforts and the printed pictures are great fun – although make sure you have plenty of paper and ink, to avoid disappointment!
Other activities on the site include printable Neopet gift tags to personalise your presents, cave painting, spooky Neopet masks and other colouring pages. The Art Centre in Neopia Central is a good resource too.
The interactive elements of the site mean that the whole family enjoys Neopets and we will often be found fighting over our new PC!
THE NEOPET WORLD
If you click on the ‘world’ link on the left, you are taken to a page, which lets you know a few interesting facts. As I write this, the date in Neopia is currently the 1st Day of Sleeping in Y5 – so Happy Neo Year to them too!
This page informs its readers that there are over 45,000,000 Neopet owners on the site with almost 68,000,000 pets. No wonder it can be hard to find an unused name!
Click on the link for ‘explore’ and you will see Neopia consists of ten different sections. These are rather similar to the separate lands you find in Disneyworld. Each one follows a certain theme, they have their own font, they all look different and each one has games and shops to fit in with that theme.
Each area also has its own shops to reflect its local culture. So you can buy souvenirs from Smugglers’ Cove in Krawk Island. If you visit Mystery Island, you can buy souvenirs including sandals, palm fans and toy boats from Tiki Tack.
In the Lost Desert, you can buy Egyptian-themed books in Sutek’s Scrolls, earthenware from Osiris Pottery and local delicacies from the Food Stall. A sand apple, anyone?
At Meridell, be sure to visit Ye Olde Food Shop. Sludge Pie, Stale Bread and Gruel are just some of the treats you can buy here. Or would you prefer Tentacle Sprout at the Tyrannian Food shop?
Let us explore…
***FAERIELAND***
This is a world set on clouds and is very purple and pretty - a perfect place for faeries to dwell. You can complete a maze in the Faerie Caves, bet on the Poogle Races or race your opponent in the Faerie Cloud Racers game. The magical Healing Springs is a useful place to visit, if your Neopet is in need of a potion. The Employment Agency is situated in the Faerie City.
My favourite part of Faerieland is the Maths Nightmare, because I find the game to be mentally stimulating and you can also earn lots of Neopoints from it. I never found Maths easy at school, but this is an interesting way of testing my mental arithmetic and checking on my children’s educational progress in a fun way!
I also enjoy the Wheel of Excitement, which is a game similar to the Wheel of Fortune. It costs 100NP a go and you can try every two hours, once your Neopet account is 48 hours old. I like the idea of safe gambling and waiting to see what the Wheel delivers.
***HAUNTED WOODS***
This is a very dark, spooky area with lots of skulls and scary images. I would advise that young children who are easily scared might prefer to play in the more pleasant areas of the site, but those that loved the Forbidden Forest scenes in the recent Harry Potter film will have no trouble here.
There are lots of games here that will please those who love a good ghost train or haunted house. You can shoot ghosts in Magax: Destroyer or blow up Robot Chia clowns in Carnival of Terror.
There are quest games as well, a Choose Your Own Adventure game and the Deserted Fairground. This includes the Wheel of Misfortune (100NPs a go, one spin allowed every two hours), where you gamble in the hope those spooky symbols pass by and you end up with some Neopoints!
My favourite part is Korbat’s Lab because I find it can be an interesting game, one you can win points at quite easily and it doesn’t get boring too soon. In the game, you enter the spooky laboratory and destroy the boxes on the shelves with a ball, while catching falling potions to earn Neopoints.
***KRAWK ISLAND***
This is quite a small island and home to pirates, so you will find boats, dark looking buildings and a few suspicious characters. The currency here is Dubloons, which you have to earn by playing pirate games. The games have a nautical theme, including their national sport of Deckball and if you fancy training your Neopet in a few Errol Flynn-like swashbuckling tactics, you can enrol it into the Academy here.
My favourite part is the Deck Swabber game, which was easy to pick up but a lot of fun with cute sound effects. The children love watching the endearing little Blumaroo bouncing round, changing the colour of the squares, accompanied by an appropriately comical noise.
***LOST DESERT***
This has a very Egyptian feel to it, including pyramids and a Sphinx on top of beautiful golden sand.
The Fruit Machine is worth a daily visit here, as you have one free spin and the possibility of winning something for nothing is always a tempting one.
My favourite parts of this area are the card games, which I find myself returning to time and again. These are Scarab 21 (where you need to make each column of cards total 21), Pyramids (where you need to take cards away from a pyramid shape) and Sakhmet Solitaire (an Egyptian-themed version of the familiar game most of us have on our computers). I find all these card games are good fun, easy to play and you win Neopoints too.
***MERIDELL***
This is mainly green, but a cheerful and interesting looking land. It has purple mountains, a bright blue river and a red, white and yellow castle, which makes it appealing to children too.
The Meri Acres Farm must be the area with the most dull and pointless games in it, but I think they are meant to be! You can see how many turnips you can pile up, go on a berry treasure hunt, guess how many potatoes there are or guess the weight of the marrow. Fascinating.
Although Kiss The Mortog is a rather cute game - where you pay 50NP to kiss the Mortog (Think ugly toads with wings!) and win if you find the prince or princess – my favourites here are Round Table Poker and Ultimate Bullseye.
Round Table Poker is complicated at first, but follows the rules of regular poker, so it can be useful to learn. I found it hard to pick up initially, but I kept consulting the page of rules and managed to get the idea after a few lost Neopoints!
***MYSTERY ISLAND***
This is a lush green island with a strip of golden sand. There are unusual trees here, huts and strange sculptures. You can visit the Island Mystic once a day and have your fortune told for free or you can consult the Haiku Generator, which will produce a daily Haiku for your perusal.
Tiki Tours is a unique feature, where you can pay for your Neopet to take an Island Tour for 50NP. This is displayed in a similar way to a holiday brochure with information and pictures about the Island, but is only worth a visit once. Look out for the beautiful native dancing girls!
I found this Island rather disappointing and lacking in interesting activities. The games were substandard to those on other parts of the site and the Techo Safari took five minutes to download!
My favourite part was the Gadgads game and this is one of only a couple of reasons why I return to Mystery Island. The Gadgads Game is a bizarre kind of Tetris game with fruit and vegetables dropping from the sky and another one the children find incredibly funny.
***TERROR MOUNTAIN***
This link takes you to a place called Happy Valley. It is snow covered with candy sticks, an igloo and trees. It is very pretty and festive and obviously an ideal place to visit over the Christmas period. This does mean though that several of the attractions here – such as the Advent calendar – are seasonal.
Terror Mountain provides a slightly intimidating and unsettling contrast to the beautiful and friendly Happy Valley, but this is the venue for the Igloo garage sale and the Happy Icy Fun Snow Shop (frozen treats).
The Cliffhanger puzzle game - where you fill in the gaps with letters to complete the sentence, as in Hangman – is well worth playing and the Grundo Snow Throw. This is a series of snowball fights between Grundos and the evil snowbeasts. This is visually comparable to green alien frogs versus the Yeti and provides many comical images, as their opponent’s snowballs hit them.
My favourite part is the Kiosk in the Ice Caves where you can buy a Scratchcard for 600NP. This is because I enjoy the odd scratchcard anyway, but prefer this sort, as they are risk-free. I might also be biased, because I won 10,000NP with my first go!
***TYRANNIA***
This is the prehistoric area for dinosaur lovers. The Jungle area is green and brown with a bright red sky. Here we have the understated Wheel of Mediocrity, always worth a quick flutter at 50NP a play.
You might wish to purchase some furniture here, maybe a Dung Sofa Chair or a Stone Kitchen Shelf Unit? Or perhaps you fancy playing Keno by betting on which eggs will hatch.
There is also the Tyrannian Plateau, which is brown and sparse. This is where you go if you want a nibble, as the Giant Omelette is here. You can also purchase tickets to see the shows in the Concert Hall, but they sell out fast and you won’t see Will Young.
My favourite part is the Pterattack game, which is a Space Invaders style shooting game. I am a fan of all dinosaurs, including Pterodactyls and I can well remember teenage days spent on arcade machines, so it comes as no surprise that I enjoy this game.
Virtupets Battle Station #4 is a round grey land with a colourful centre containing Grundo’s Café, where you can purchase your ‘out of this world’ delicacies. Not surprisingly, everything follows a futuristic space theme.
The attractions here include Code Breakers, which is a game similar to the 1970s Mastermind board game, where you try to guess the correct sequence of coloured stones. Another highlight is Splat A Sloth, where you try to hit a Sloth on a slide with a rolled-up newspaper. (No, really.)
I was tempted to adopt a Grundo here, but I wasn’t allowed to, as I already own four Neopets. But maybe you will have room in your hearts for one of these bright creatures, available in six different colours.
***NEOPIA CENTRAL***
This is the centre of Neopia and the starting place for many of your requirements. It is bright and colourful with a rainbow in the middle.
Here you will find the bank, post office, bookshop, food shop, magic shop, school supplies shop, Petpets shop and the Money Tree. The hospital and the pharmacy are both located in this area, if your Neopets become ill.
There is also a hotel you can book your Neopet into, if you are going away or your Neopet needs a holiday. The hotels available range from Cockroach Towers (5NP a night) to the top of the range Astro Villa at 500NP a night.
You can also buy real Neopets souvenirs such as plush toys and T-shirts by visiting the ‘99dogs store’ and ‘Neopets stuff’ links.
This area contains two obvious ‘product placements’ with links to both Disney and Cartoon Network. You can earn Neopoints by clicking links.
The Art Centre is where you go to read the Neopian Times, visit Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe, look round the art gallery and learn to draw Neopets.
THE GAMES
The games vary in skill level and are labelled as easy, medium or hard. It is advisable to read the instructions carefully before playing each game for the first time, as some of them can be quite complex. You will either use your mouse to play the games or the arrow keys and space bar.
Some of the games have a limit of three scores being counted per day. This means that it is a good idea to only count your best scores, as this will increase the amount of Neopoints you earn. There is usually an option to ‘send’ the score you have achieved (i.e. earn Neopoints from it) or to restart the game, losing your previous score.
Besides the games in each of the worlds, there is a complete list of all the games available by clicking the ‘Games’ link on the left. They are in four sections – Luck and Chance, Action, Puzzle plus a Featured game. The first three sections will take you to a long list of available games there, where you can click for more information, see the difficulty rating of each one and play them.
DISADVANTAGES
Some of the games do need to be downloaded, but this only takes around thirty to sixty seconds on my 56K modem. (There are a few larger games though, e.g. Deckball is 546K.) This would be an irritating wait with a slower connection or older computer though.
You will find that most of the shops will be out of stock when you visit and all the jobs will be taken. Keep these pages up and refresh them regularly, until the goods and jobs come back. This does take patience, but is worth it. Each page will say how often they are restocked - usually every eight minutes for the shops and every ten minutes for the job vacancies.
ADVANTAGES
Neopets are very appealing and endearing, if you like that sort of thing (and I do). The creatures are cute and often funny. If you love dinosaurs, dragons and faeries, then you’ll be happy here as well.
The children enjoy seeing all the different types of the pets, the bright colours, their cartoon-like facial expressions and the quirky names.
The games often contain cute expressions and lots of smileys or emphasised gestures (e.g. * YAWN *). The language is often humorous too and makes you grin. It is not patronising for the kids, but it isn’t too adult either, the site seems to get the balance just about right.
The site is written using British English, which means you can let your children loose here without danger of them believing colour has no ‘u’ in it.
It is generally educational for children anyway, as they can play some of the games and enjoy them, while actually practising their Maths (e.g. Maths Nightmare) or English (e.g. Cliffhanger) skills.
There is so much to do on neopets.com that it is almost impossible to become bored. It is easy to while away the hours on here, escaping to another world, forgetting the daily chores of real life and having a great time too.
It is interesting, creative, imaginative, intriguing and lots of good fun for the whole family. It is also completely FREE.
OVERALL
This is a wonderful site for all ages. Highly recommended – but very addictive!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
i upgraded my rate as i feel you've included a lot of information on each land which a stranger to neopia would find extremely handy! :) x
fabfrog5 18.08.2006 01:21
yes, its tooo adictive! i laughed at your choice of pet and name (bat called vlad!) very gothic indeed!! im borin, with a chia and a quiggle! think my fave place is the dessert, so much games there and there are two freebie points! (although the shrine usually tells me useless things such as "there was a slight breeze"! hehe!) a cracking review of a fab site! well done! :) x
allissa 28.10.2004 21:56
great review thanks for the info,,,,I have already signed up and I am hooked sarah
Advantages: free, easy to use, lots of games and activities, safe for children Disadvantages: can be so addictive that you forget about the outside world
Dizzy_Lizzy 05.10.2004 ·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of neopets.com
Jan 4th, 2003
(Feb 28th, 2003)
exceptional by (4%):
very helpful by (96%):
