One of the absolute highlights of playing Neopets back in the day was the games. Since I didn't really know how else to make money (and the site didn't just give it away like it does now with Trudy's), that meant I devoted a lot of time to grinding out scores in the Games Room. Since Flash is dead most of these games don't work anymore, so here's a celebration of some of my favourites.
Meerca Chase II
The one, the only, the classic. Neopets should be synonymous with Meerca Chase. It was basically just Snake, but with a Meerca. Collect different Neggs (rare ones give more points) while avoiding the red ones and your own ever-growing tail. Perfection.
Turmac Roll
Another classic, this was a big part of my daily activity on Neopets. The sheer thrill of a rare, high-scoring berry showing up was unmatched. Until I went face first into a tree stump trying to get it.
Sutek's Tomb
I do love a tile matching game. Getting those big combos was everything.
Hasee Bounce
This one was incredibly addictive. With two Hasees on either end of a seesaw, you had to make them jump to reach Doughnutfruit (each type earning you different point values) as well as the letters in Hasee to earn you more time. A lot like Turmac Roll in that it's heavily RNG based whether you're going to get a decent score or not.
Hannah and the Pirate Caves/Ice Caves
These were platforming games that had you solve puzzles and collect treasure, and both were responsible for my obsession with Hannah (see the characters page for more on that). Despite the fixation, I was terrible at these. I don't think I saw beyond the first couple of levels. I had a lot of fun though, and I still appreciate a lot of the mechanics, like dropping boulders through breakable floors or triggering chain reactions with arrows or dynamite. There were also plenty of secret area which I love in games.
I don't remember enough of what was different in Ice Caves, though it added a second playable character, so puzzles usually involved switching back and forth between Hannah and Armin to progress. Both games had a shocking amount of levels; Youtube playthroughs tell me that each game takes about an hour to complete, and that's without and save function whatsoever so you'd have to do it all in one sitting. Now you know why I never finished either of these games.
Petpetsitter
This game invented anxiety. You had to manage a room full of Petpets (the number of which increased as you played) and drag them over to the correct area to deal with their needs. You had to guess what was wrong with them by their animation, with a snoring Petpet indicating it needs to be taken to the bedroom, for example, and move them to the right place before a timer ran out. Petpets without any current problems to attend to would also roam around the room knocking things over and you had to clean up their messes to earn more points. Fun, but incredibly stressful.
Faerie Caves II
This is up there with the Hannah games as one I played a lot of, but never got further than the first couple of levels. In this one you had to move on a grid and solve puzzles to reach the exit, while collecting treasure along the way. There were often torches you had to use to ignite dynamite to destroy nearby blocks, as well as boulders you could push around. Non-solid blocks often held back boulders, meaning once you walked through them the boulder would fall and potentially crush you or block off an item or an area you needed to reach. My tiny brain was fried by about level 10.
Faerie Cloud Racers
Obviously I loved this one because you got to pick which faerie to play as. You competed against another faerie, both of you moving on a grid in vehicles that emitted a trail of whatever that faerie's element is, and had to try and force the other to hit an obstacle or trail to crash. Just a nice normal game about forcing faeries into traffic accidents.
Usuki Frenzy
Now this is real gaming. I was hooked on this one pretty hard. You had to walk around rooms in a house searching for various Usuki doll sets, which were random each time. Each set was always in the same place though, so you had to do a lot of memorisation. I'm not sure why this one was so good, I just liked exploring that house and looking for imaginary doll sets you couldn't even do anything with on the site lol.
Ice Cream Machine
This one was simple, just avoid scoops of ice cream that were flying towards you from the bottom of the screen. There really wasn't much more to it than that. I think I just liked it because in every level the type of ice cream was different.
Meepit Juice Break
This is a take on that classic game concept where you have to move around all these differently shaped pipes to make a connection from one point to the other, only in this one you have multiple different connection points. You would have to feed up to three different coloured Meepits, whose colours corresponded to the pipes at the other end. Just making a connection was enough to get points, but you'd get bonus points if the colours matched, and matching colours sometimes involved connecting the primary coloured pipes together to make secondary colours. So complex.
Castle Battles
This one had everything: hideously barren 3D graphics, actual physics, hitting blocks with a very small ball. You had to pick a castle design and hope it was strong enough to hold as the enemy pelted it with a small cannonball, while you did the same to his. The goal was to knock a tiny golden oblong (apparently a treasure chest) out of the square it sat in. Strangely compelling.
Toy Box Escape
This one feels so obscure I've never seen it acknowledged online even once. Kind of like Lemmings, each level gave you toy Neopets you had to guide to an exit, with each species having its own skill you had to activate to solve puzzles. You had to react quick since they just walked back and forward endlessly, often straight into traps. You could push blocks, burn them, build ramps, dig down through certain blocks. This was another one I didn't see beyond a few levels of.
Wingoball
I recall this one giving out a decent amount of money without being too painful, so I played it more than I definitely would have otherwise. You had to bounce a ball off obstacles and often through moving gnomes to get it to a goal. I'm pretty sure this is one of the only Neopets games I ever managed to beat in its entirety.
Cliffhanger
Basically just hangman except the answers are absurdly long phrases that no human being would ever actually guess. This isn't like Wheel of Fortune where the phrases are common idioms or anything, we're talking phrases like "Pet rocks make the most playful of Petpets" and "Jarbjarb likes to watch the Tyrannian sunset while eating a ransaurus steak". Madness. Oh the fun I had sending that Tuskaninny over that cliff.
Cheat!
So close to gambling while not being gambling at all. This is actually a real card game, if you're curious about how to play maybe just read the Wikipedia article because properly explaining this one would take a while. It's basically a game of getting rid of all your cards, and the way to do that is to lie about what you're putting down, whether that's saying you have one more nine than you have or playing a three of clubs and telling everyone you played a king of diamonds. It's always a risk though, as other players can catch you out based on the cards they have or based on their own memory of what's been played previously.
What was fun about this one is that each level had different players who increased in skill level, and they all had their own personalities and lore. For a bunch of AIs it got pretty competitive. I actually beat the final level of Cheat! on my original account, something I've never managed to do since.
Snow Wars
Battleships but with snow. This is another one I beat all levels on with one of my accounts, giving me another pointless trophy for my userlookup. This one gets pretty challenging, and since it's always going to be luck based it gets a bit frustrating.
Pyramids
I have spent more time playing Pyramids than probably anything else on the entirety of Neopets. It's not really like the actual Pyramid solitaire game, and is more like Tri-Peaks but in a pyramid shape. You get a card from the pile and have to try and chain it with cards either above or below it in value. Cards are layered so that once you remove all cards overlapping another, it turns over. The goal is to clear the entire pyramid - a feat I have achieved at least once! It only took about eight years.
Plushie Tycoon
I hesitated putting this in the games page because, while it technically is one, it's so complex it's more like a whole other site feature entirely. It's a text-based tycoon game with no flash that relies on the real-life time for actions. It's straightforward at first, you buy a plushie store and get given your starting budget, and it all gets absurdly complicated from here. To make plushies you have to choose materials, stuffing and packaging, all of which vary in quality and price. Then you have to set your factory to start making batches of them, which requires you to hire staff, choosing from different qualities of workers and managers. Then you also have to set up a store to sell them, once again choosing option upon option for upgrades.
All steps involved in ordering materials, making the plushies, loading them and finally shipping them to your store all take place in real-time, so unlike any other simulation or tycoon game you can't just speed it up. And did I mention you have to pay rent? There are also taxes! Every time I played this game I remember setting everything up and then never returning in time to see any plushies actually be produced and sold, going bankrupt by default for never showing up to pay my rent. God bless anyone who actually put any significant amount of time and effort into this to win a trophy.
Gormball
This page ends with a true classic, one that really brings me back to where it all began. No fancy Flash stuff or 3D graphics, just some brightly coloured still images thrown together as a game. Gormball is another game that relies on not much other than pure luck. You picked a character (for me it was usually Ursula the Usul or Ember the Fire Faerie), and waited your turn to receive the ball. You could choose up to five seconds to keep holding the ball before throwing it, gaining more points for holding it longer but increasing the risk of it blowing up on you. Whoever the ball blew up on was out of the game. Nice and simple, and with lots of page reloading to help increase your chances of getting a random event...
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By the way, I don't own any of the Neopets branding images or other graphics used on here!
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