Neopets: Puzzle Adventure

Proving that it sometimes pays to blatantly rip off other peoples’ ideas, Neopets were originally unleashed upon the world via the internet in 1999, four years after the birth of Pokemon. Like Nintendo’s pocket monster franchise, Neopets are virtual pets which can be tamed, trained, and interacted with in a variety of ways, albeit through Neopets.com rather than a highly popular Gameboy game. While not nearly as successful as its obvious inspiration, Neopets has garnered considerable earnings over the years through merchandising and microtransactions, surprisingly very little of which has involved video games. If NeoPets Puzzle Adventure is any indication of what we’ve been missing out on all these years, that’s likely a good thing.

The titular puzzles come in the form of gameplay similar to the board game Othello, where two opponents match wits on a grid by alternatively placing coloured tokens in strategic points. If one player has one or more of the other player’s tokens next to a token of their own, they can then place a token on the opposite side, effectively flipping all of the tokens in-between to their colour. It’s not nearly as complicated as it sounds, but the AI definitely doesn’t make it easy either. Victory comes when the board is filled with tokens or one player has flipped all tokens to their colour. It’s inherently very simple, but the game throws a number of video game paradigms such as power-ups and bonuses into the mix to keep things fresh.

The adventure implied in the title is a bit misleading, however. After selecting and customizing your Neopet with a smattering of meaningless options, you enter a world of intrigue and excitement; only, replace “intrigue” and “excitement” with “indifference” and “happenstance”. No matter which Neopet you choose, whether it’s the weird mouse one or the weird dragon one, they are all more than willing to help a random stranger who barely has the time of day to complete their sentences before running off. In fact, your Neopet is the ultimate definition of good Samaritan, willingly throwing themselves into danger’s path to appease every passer-by with a problem.

The utterly substandard character design is just one of many key reasons Neopets takes a backseat to the likes of Pokemon. Every character or creature is the most basic of concepts, with little to no imagination associated whatsoever; one Petpet is something called a Cobrall, which is basically a snake. Genius! There is also a Puppyblew, Angelpuss and a Spyder, but I’ll let you guess what those are. It wasn’t until several hours in when I realized the anthropomorphic pink cat demanding my unquestioning servitude was a girl. They kept referring to “her” and “she”, and since I couldn’t be bothered to remember any of their absurd made-up names, I repeatedly found myself wondering who this so-called female they constantly spoke of was.

It’s all just as well though since even if the cast were birthed by Picasso himself, you’d hardly be able to make them out. Most of the game is static 2-D, grade-school artwork which will have even blind babies scoffing at the lack of effort. The map itself is one giant page torn from a children’s colouring book and even with such subpar craftsmanship the game will constantly chug along at an unbearable framerate as if it was actually doing something. Things only worsen during the puzzle battles, especially later on when the grids expand into low resolution abstract paintings. To be fair, there is a wealth of RPG-flavoured hybrid gameplay for those willing to dig for it, but the atrocious technical execution obliterates what little potential it began with.