An Updated Game Guide for Nabbing Neopoints

     We present Neopia with an overall ranking for the current repository of games housed in the Neopets Games Room. If your goal is to generate daily revenue, this guide will give you an updated strategy on how to get the most Neopoints for your efforts! There are many factors considered for each game, such as: time commitment, raw Neopoints earned, and even difficulty of the game itself. This list ranks the current Neopoint viability of each game from first to worst and provides helpful insights wherever possible. To the side of each game title in parentheses, the authors keep track of the following: The average amount of Neopoints for three daily plays and a running total of Neopoints earned daily should you play these games in the prescribed order. Without further ado, let’s dive into the list!

     1. Fashion Fever (900 NP, 900 NP total)

     It is highly advised that you start every gaming session with Fashion Fever. It is by far the quickest and easiest method to grab a quick 900 NP. It ranks at the top of the list because you can finish three runs of this game in under a few minutes. After waiting around 20-30 seconds, you may end the game to receive 300 NP. If you attempt to end the game immediately, you will receive an error message instead of Neopoints. The authors encourage you to experiment with how many seconds you wait before ending the game. On average, 20-30 seconds seems to be long enough. Your score does not depend on how stylish your Kougra ends up. However, if you want to have some more fun, then by all means, customize until you are content with the look!

     2. Kass Basher (3,900 NP, 4,800 NP total)

     This game is one of the most simple. Wait until wind speeds hit nine, click to drop Kass, and click again to send him flying! Stuck on a negative wind speed? Don’t waste your time waiting for it to blow in the other direction. Drop Kass to the ground, hit “Restart Game,” and start the game all over again. Do this until winds are at 8 or 9. While you do have to take time to unlock the Hard mode by beating the Easy and Medium, you only have to do this once a day. Once you’re playing with the bar, maximize your NP reward by not submitting any score less than 1,000. Do this three times, and you’ll yield approximately 3,900 NP.

     3. Turmac Roll (900 NP, 5,700 NP total)

     Like Kass Basher, you want to play this game on Hard. You don’t have to unlock this game mode, and it will earn you more points per yard travelled, even if you don’t get lucky with high-point berries. Believe it or not, holding down the right arrow key the whole time isn’t the best strategy here; you’ll end up going too fast and completely miss the berries you’re jumping for! Go faster when there are no jumps, slow down on rolling hills, and always be prepared to jump over incoming obstacles. Regardless of what berries you get (try to get as many as you can), one minute of rolling your little Turmac can easily get you close to 300 points. Submit that three times, and you’ll end up with around 900 NP.

      4. Ultimate Bullseye II (1620 NP, 7230 NP total)

     Of all the games listed so far, this is by far the most challenging and skill-oriented, which is why we place Ultimate Bullseye near the middle of our list. There is great potential for this game to be quick and generate a great amount of Neopoints daily. However, you and your Neopet will need to sit down and work out the physics governing this curious catapult contraption. It is the authors’ strong suggestion to spend some time experimenting with the power and angle to get a feeling for the arrow’s trajectory. Even the smallest amount of imprecision results in a score of 0 points for the round. The most efficient way to speed through this game is to not only have a great mastery of the catapult, but also a little luck. When a balloon appears on the screen, slow down and focus your shot. If you can manage to pop the balloon while simultaneously landing anywhere on the target, you will net 30 or more raw points. Still, there is a great amount of learning that comes with this game, so an optimistic average score for this game is somewhere in the 15 to 20 raw point range, granting roughly 540 NP. With amazing balloon luck, this author has personally finished three attempts of this game in a few minutes, but your time spent playing this game varies greatly with how practised you are using the catapult and the overall balloon luck!

      5. Hasee Bounce (600 NP, 7830 NP total)

     Before you hit play, I recommend turning off your sound. Nothing breaks your heart like Woogy and Jimmi’s sobs… At the beginning of each game, a timer is set for 105 seconds which means that submitting three scores will only take around 5 minutes. If you’re not in a rush, you can attempt to add more time by collecting colour-coordinated letters that spell HASEE, but they aren’t necessary to get an adequate score (and might actually be a distraction from earning other points). To maximize your points-per-game, try to grab multiple doughnutfruits on your journey down and up. Each delicious fruit you eat per trip adds a multiplier to their point values (2x points for the second doughnutfruit, 3x bonus for the third, etc). The game, very graciously, gives you a heads-up when special doughnutfruits are on their way, so try not to miss those! If you submit three scores of 90, you’ll bounce away with over 600 NP.

      6. IceCream Machine (2,400 NP, 10,230 NP total)

     Can we pause just for a moment here to really appreciate the absolute bop that is the music for IceCream Machine? With that out of the way, let’s get down to business. We rank IceCream Machine toward the middle of the list due to the time factor required, and also the reaction time required to truly excel. This game is more “on the rails”, a phrase the author uses to mean there is no true way to speed up a single playthrough. In each round, you must survive an onslaught of a predetermined number of scoops of ice cream. Therefore this is, in many ways, a waiting game.

     With each new round, this number of scoops grows, and the speed they come barrelling toward you increases. You will need to be fairly focused in later rounds in order to survive. One small tip is to pick up the green speed boost scoops in the earlier rounds. In these earlier rounds, the scoop speed is still manageable, so there is low risk involved in picking up the green scoops. This will cause these rounds to end faster, making for more efficient playthroughs. Even with this additional tip, a single run of IceCream Machine takes a bit more time than many of the other games on this list. Still, this game is quite easy to learn, and with enough practice, you can consistently score around 8,000 points, netting you roughly 800NP per attempt.

      7. Igloo Garage Sale (960 NP, 11190 NP total)

     Engaging, hilarious, and full of strategy, Igloo Garage Sale is an exciting game that tests players’ reaction speed and decision-making skills. There are two glaring drawbacks, however, that result in this game being placed in the bottom half of our list. First, an average score of around 800 points on Igloo Garage Sale will bring in a paltry 320NP. Along with this, each round is roughly 30 seconds long, resulting in approximately 5 minutes of time commitment per play. Therefore, even if you play all three attempts optimally, you’re committing at least 15 minutes to this igloo insanity.

     Here are a few tips, however, to get the most out of your time sliding around this slippery sale: Your number one priority while playing this game is to have as many “perfect” early rounds as possible to bolster your score. A perfect round consists of never letting a single item drop. Achieving this will effectively double your score (and NP earned) for that round. Executing this on a round that simultaneously throws coins at you (worth 50 points each) is highly desired. In later rounds, be very mindful of the piano being dropped (an instant game over if it hits you) and the bomb (briefly stuns your character). Items will be dropping very quickly beyond level 6, so choose your battles wisely. It is often more desirable to grab a group of three items all falling together than to miss ALL items trying to grab a fourth that is hurled on the other side of the screen. The code “frozensnowflake” may be typed once per game to allow an additional item to fall in a round, only helping marginally in later levels.

      8. Faerie Bubbles (1628 NP, 12818 NP total)

     The object of this game is to fire three (or more) faerie bubbles of the same colour together from your bubble cannon in an attempt to clear the board. By clearing all bubbles, you finish a level. Faerie Bubbles has had a fairly notable change to its game mechanics that unfortunately lowers its position on this list. Unlike its Flash counterpart, the HTML version of Faerie Bubbles will provide you with bubble colours which are not currently present on the screen. This makes clearing levels significantly more difficult as you can be waiting for a while to pull the colour that you need. In the midst of this randomness, you may completely perturb your board beyond repair. The silver lining, however, is that all the codes from the Flash version still work on the HTML version. These codes are: stardust, faerieland, slumberberry, and bubbles. When used in a pinch, these do wonders for clearing colourful clutter!

     Because of the new randomness mechanic of bubbles drawn, this spikes the difficulty and makes it harder to progress in the game (and thus earn Neopoints). With adequate practice, we place an average score around 800 raw points, which nets 1628 NP when submitting a score three times. Even if this game is a little low on our list, playing may be just the right vibe you need. I know when I settle down for the day and listen to the calming, atmospheric music from this game, I feel very much at ease.

     9. Destruct-O-Match III (1,128 NP, 13946 NP total)

     This is by far the most strategy-intensive game out of the entire list. While simple on the surface, there are many advanced techniques that are well beyond the scope of this article. For our purposes, we simply speak to how beneficial this game is for the average player in earning NP. Play this game on Zen mode in order to maximize your gains. It is up to you how to pace yourself during gameplay. Your goal in this game is to match at least 2 of the same coloured blocks together. If you are slow and methodical, you can build a great deal of points through combos. The larger your combos, the greater the score! However, the trade-off is you are spending a large amount of time per level. Your score will vary depending on how comfortable you are with planning out your destruction thoughtfully. For about 15 to 20 minutes of work, the authors place an average score at around 1,800 to yield 376 NP’s. Like most games, the more you practice and dig into the advanced strategies, the more efficient you will be in future attempts. This rather large learning curve present at the outset of this game places it in the number 9 position of our list.

      10. AAA’s Revenge (1,200 NP, 15146 NP total)

     The penultimate position is awarded to the yo-yo slinging snooze-fest, AAA’s Revenge. This game has a very simple premise. You must ensure that the King Roothless in the centre of the screen does not fall asleep. Do this by tossing your yo-yo often to keep him awake. Stray from this duty for too long and receive a game over.

     The gameplay mechanics are easy to learn, and the Neopoints up for grabs are decent... An average raw score of 80 points nets you 400NP. However, this game rates so low due to the sheer monotony of the gameplay as well as the time required to achieve an adequate score. Once you get the hang of the cycles to throw your yo-yo in, there is potential to speed up your game attempts. However, it is the author’s humble opinion that the time invested will not give you as large of a return as some of the other games on this list. If you are up for the task, though, you can bring your raw score up to 1,000, as this is the game’s limit.

     11. Rink Runner (450 NP, 15596 NP total)

     This game is last on our list for a reason. Not only is each round of Rink Runner time-consuming, but your score is also unpredictable. You can only submit a score after you lose, whether it’s by falling in a hole or not getting a high enough score from the judges. If you choose to play this game, we would personally try to get as close as you can to the score of 21 required to move onto level 3 without actually hitting it. We say this because should you get the 21 needed to move on, you might fall into the even bigger ice holes on level 3 and risk ending on a low score. If you’re able to submit a score of at least 15, three submissions will earn you 450 NP, one of the lowest total payouts for any of the above games.

      This concludes our ranking of the Neopoint potential of the current HTML games in the game room! We hope that you found this helpful in managing your time and deciding which games you would like to play for Neopoints. With a great deal of time, you could take on the entire list daily and see your skills improve. However, if you’re stretched for time on a certain day (my Korbat has tap-dancing lessons on Wednesday), then you may only choose to play through the first few games on the list. No matter your course, this list is built with efficiency in mind to get you the Neopoints you desire and on to the next fun adventure Neopia has in store for you. Have fun out there!