Playing with Your Food by shidi |  |
GAMES DINING ROOM - At dinner tables all over the world, one can hear the phrase,
"Don't play with your food!" repeated by conscientious parents and disgusted
relatives. They just don't want to see the leaning tower of Peas-ah that you've
constructed on your plate-and really could care less about how many bread rolls
you can stuff into your mouth at once. Too bad, really-but wait, there's hope.
In Neopia, it's perfectly okay to play with your food - and if you're good at
it, it can be the ticket to some great NP. This article takes a look at food
and how it appears in the various games of Neopets - so grab a fork and dig
in!
Gadgadsgame
Foods Involved: Tigersquash, purple Juppies, and other Island favourites
How much fun Shidi had playing this game: Tons!
NP Payout: Half of your score
If you haven't played Gadgadsgame yet, be sure to start playing it at a time
when you don't have to be anywhere for a while. This game is addictive and fun.
If you've ever read my Harry
Halloween series, you laugh every time a Juppie falls down the screen.
Okay, maybe that's just me and WizardofAus who do that, but still. You line
up like fruits, and then use the flaming fruit of that type to remove them from
the screen. This is the *coughletsnotmentionthatcoconutgame* first flash game
for the Mystery Island, and it's spiffy enough to make up for the fact that
there aren't any others in this world. One has to wonder, however, about the
yellow Kougra. Who is he? Why does he look so bored with your falling fruits?
Why is there a small fire under a totem head, with two mysterious vials flanking
it? The world may never know.
Neggsweeper
Foods Involved: Neggs
How much fun Shidi had playing this game: It was better than washing
my socks.
NP Payout: Urm… I'll get back to you on that if I ever win a game.
For those of you who are blessed with logical minds, this Neggsweeping must
be tons of problem solving fun. For people like me, this game could be considered
a form of torture if I was tied to the computer chair and forced to play for
hours. Object of the game is to clear the board of good Neggs without blowing
up because you've made a miscalculation, or just had to outright guess and guessed
wrong. Such fun. And as an added special joy, you don't get any NP unless you
clear the board. Yay.
Ice Cream Factory
Foods Involved: Ice Cream!
How much fun Shidi had playing this game: Pretty fun, other than the
warehouse.
NP Payout: ¼ of your total points
Hey, it's Ice Cream, and a Chia - what could be a better combination? Even
if you mess up and get hit by one of the ice creams you're supposed to be dodging,
you get to see a Chia cutely get splatted by her favourite food. The warehouse
segment that occurs between levels of ice cream dodging can be somewhat irritating
at higher levels, when it becomes practically impossible to exit due to the
extremely high number of boxes.
Jelly Processing Plant
Foods involved: Poo-shaped Jellies in various colours
How much fun Shidi had playing this game: Repetitive, but amusing, and
great NP!
NP Payout: Double your score
Bonus points to this game for involving two of the less-featured Neopets,
the Buzz and the Skeith. Foreman Buzz has to take the jelly from the conveyer
belt and drop it into the appropriate containers, leaving ice cream for the
flatulent Skeith to devour. Other nice features of this game include a pause
between rounds, and the fact that you get three strikes before you're out. This
game is a bit time-consuming and can get tedious, but just think of the NP,
laugh at the Skeith, and keep on going.
Meerca Chase
Foods involved: Neggs
How much fun Shidi had playing this game: Pretty fun, even though I'm
not good at it.
NP Payout: Equal to your points
Eat the good Neggs, avoid the red evil Neggs. Why is it always the red Negg
that has to be the bad guy anyhow? Red's my favourite colour. Why not the evil
purple Negg, or the evil fish Negg? Hmph. Anyhow, despite a bit of colour discrimination,
this game has a pretty simple concept, and can provide for lots of Negg-chasing
fun. Watch your Meerca's tail and your frustration level grow as you get more
and more red Neggs on the screen. Multiple speeds are available; they change
the point values per Negg you receive. (Don't bother with the harder difficulty
levels unless you consumed a lot of caffeine and enjoy self-humiliation.)
Mutant Graveyard of Doom
Foods involved: Spooky foods
How much fun Shidi had playing this game: Who would have thought a tentacle
beast could reach that far? Argh!
NP Payout: Equal to your total score.
This game is pretty fun; you help poor little mutant Albert the Kacheek in
his eternal torment - feeding the greedy Espophagor. Ghostkerchiefs and a ghostly
devil that can pretend to be a tombstone stand in your way. There's also a stationary
tentacular robot who has jealousy issues against the Esophagor, and wants to
prevent him from getting those yummy Spooky Foods, as near as we can guess.
At any rate, he will grab you with a tentacle if you get too close to him. If
you manage to get through a stage without being injured at all, you get a bonus
based on how quickly you did so. I've yet to have made a serious amount of NP
off of this game, but this is most likely due to my lack of dexterity. Bonus
points for mutant pet, and spooky foods, though.
Cheese Roller
Foods involved: Medieval Cheeses
How much fun Shidi had playing this game: There were only a few moments
of wanting to put my fist through the monitor. Honest.
NP Payout: Variable.
Oh, the frustrating fun that is Cheeseroller. Allow me to tell you an amusing
and brief anecdote here: On the first day the Cheeseroller game came out, I
was the proud winner of a Bubbling Blueberry Cheese. That was my downfall -
I really liked the cheese, and put it into my shop on display. I thought to
myself, 'Wow, wouldn't it be great if I could win all the cheeses?' Weeks
later, I'm still struggling through three games a day of mostly unsuccessful
cheese rolling goodness. If you don't know the names of the cheeses, try looking
under cheese in the shop wizard. The more expensive the cheese is to buy from
the cheese vendor (who must enjoy laughing at you as you push his wares down
the hill), the better it seems to hold together for the trip down the hill.
It's pretty much random though, so pick an option, close your eyes, hit go,
and hope for the best. Evil, evil game. Want more cheese now - must play again.
The fact that you can only keep what you've bought if you run down the hill
quickly, and not just run as far away from the cheese shop as possible with
it, make this slightly more irritating.
Potato Counter
Foods involved: Potatoes, of course!
How much fun Shidi had playing this game: One… two… three…1387?!
NP Payout: Variable
This game isn't exactly exciting, but you can get 50 or 100 NP three times
a day just from counting potatoes. No problem, right? Of course, sometimes there's
a bumper crop of potatoes numbering in the thousands! I'm tempted to sit down
and count them all just to see if you get some special prize for having that
much patience (maybe winning that amount in NP, say?), but come on. Close to
2000 potatoes? I do have a life! 134, 135…
Guess the Weight of the Marrow
Foods involved: A huge marrow
How much fun Shidi had playing this game: Best ten seconds of my life!
No, really.
NP Payout: Items only.
Well, Guess the Marrow is pretty much a matter of making a guess and hoping
for the best. Eventually, you might even guess correctly like I did - once.
I won a Marrow Pie, which I proudly put on display in my shop, and never won
again. I'm still trying though, it's pretty simple to just make a quick guess,
if you can find a time that the contest hasn't been won for the day already.
That's the trick right there; the rest is all luck.
And Many More… Scorchy Slots features fruit (though you don't win it), and
the Fruit Machine does as well (and gives you desert fruits if you get a lesser
win.) Food Club is annoying to me, but hey, it's full of food and betting on
fat pirates, and just might be your thing. Omelette Defender annoyed me to the
point I didn't want to play it to write about it, fair warning. Dice A Roo gives
out food sometimes on the higher die levels of the game. Sakhmet Solitaire occasionally
gives out a desert food for beating a level. Ultimate Bullseye has a power-up
(if you manage to land a bullseye) that involves shooting an apple off of Punchbag
Bob's head (very entertaining, even if you hit Bob instead.) The Carnival of
Terror involves toxic pies… but, seeing as they're toxic, you should probably
focus on shooting them rather than 'playing' with them. The Battledome (if you
can consider it a game) lets you throw or wield food-based weapons (exploding
pastries, muffins, Asparagus Swords, etc.) in combat. And of course, there's
those great games Extreme Herder and Feed Florg. PetPets may not seem like good
food to us, but Balthazar and Florg sure seem to like them. I hope you've enjoyed
this article, and encourage you to go forth and play with your food today! As
always, thanks for reading, and feel free to Neomail
me with your comments or questions. |
