Neopets - Gamesite review

Neopets, the free online virtual pet website, is frequently marketed as a children's game.  Don't let that fool you.  Originally designed to allow college students to have virtual pets, this is far from just a kids' game.  It has been shifted, over time, to focus more on children but there are still a lot of adults who play the game.

The virtual pets themselves are only half the story.  There is a large selection of games you can play 'with' your pet (actually, most of them you just play by yourself) that are similar in play and style to the ones you find by PopCap games or on ClubPogo and similar sites.  They have a wide variety of games, as well, from roleplaying to wordpuzzles to arcade-style and silly shooting games.

You 'win' neopoints that are only good for buying virtual game items, such as food for your Neopet.  You can also house and clothe your Neopet, buy it toys (playing raises its mood) and read it books (which raises its intelligence).  Users have access to an auction house, trading post, and can set up their own shops in the shops area.  By use of these, you can earn Neopoints through selling your unwanted items, buying and reselling, skillful trading, and auction sniping.  Auctions and stores are automatic and don't require your presence to operate. The trading post is automatic except that any trade requires your approval.

There's also a very useful tool called the ShopWizard which can be used to search the user shops for the lowest priced items, when buying, and the average price of items, for selling.

But first, you need a pet. There are two ways to get one - you can create one, or you can adopt from the pound.  Adoption costs more, but gives you the chance to get types of pets you couldn't create.  Sometimes you will find a rare pet or a painted one.  Rare pets are only able to created at certain times, or in specific ways.  Transmogrification potions can change them into rare pets, as can the Lab Ray.  My pets, pictured throughout this article, started out as a common pets and those two methods were what I used to get them.  The Lab Ray can only be accessed after collecting some horrendously expensive map pieces, and then its effects are random.  You can also paint your pets different colors or styles through the Lab Ray or by using a potion or paint brush (sounds inhumane, doesn't it?).

I have one and used it for a while to adopt pets from the pound, 'zap' them until they were a desirable color or rare species, and then re-donated them to the pound knowing they'd be snapped up by someone thrilled to find them there.

I've been a member of the site for almost five years and have seen a lot of changes.  I'm not happy with most of the recent pet re-draws, which standardized the pets to all be able to wear clothing, nor with the increasing commercialization.  As a parent, I'd have misgivings about my daughter seeing that much promotion for breakfast cereal and McDonald's, but she doesn't play often.  Since they've added a lot of text ads all over the place, I don't either, but the games back in the game room are still fun so I play those.

And I still collect my freebies from the site now and then, in case I decide to go back to playing more frequently at some point.

Here are some of the freebie locations:

The Fruit Machine - daily

Tombola - daily

Underwater Fishing - every twelve hours or so

The Deserted Tomb - daily

Coltzan's Shrine - every twelve hours

Lunar Temple - daily.  Guess the phase, win a prize.

The Healing Springs - you can visit this one every half hour.  She gives snowballs, healing potions, and sometimes feeds your pet or heals it completely.

Snowager - you can only go in and get something while he's sleeping (which is usually too hard for me to remember so I skip it).  His naptimes are between 6-7 am pst, 2-3 pm pst, and 10-11 pm pst.  (Neopian standard time, the time on the clocks in the site, is Pacific time)

Once a Month Food and Neopoints Giveaway - each pet gets a random food item and your account gets 2000 Neopoints.

Omelette - daily.  Don't eat the rotten ones you might occasionally get. :X

Jelly - daily.  Watch out for the poison jelly.

The Soup Kitchen feeds pets whose owners have less than 3000 np.

You can collect interest every day if you have a bank account.

During the month of December they have an Advent Calendar that gives a prize every day.  (For Halloween, your pet can 'Trick or Treat' at a few locations in the gameworld and be given a bag of treats, which I completely forgot about and missed this year.)

The LetsGetSerious guild has excellent tips on making more Neopoints, as well as tips and codes for the games on their website.  When I was playing a lot, I found them to be a mature, knowledgable guild.  You can also find lots of information, and more on freebies, at Jellyneo.net.