Android games: "Alchemy" -- a glorious waste of time

Android Game Review: Alchemy
Android Market link: https://market.android.com/details?id=me.zed_0xff.android.alchemy&hl=en
Android games: "Alchemy" -- a glorious waste of time
Game category: Puzzle game
Game type: Similar to ...alchemy, actually
Initial review: Five stars
Recommended device size: Any
Who'd enjoy it?:   Most ages

Andrey 'Zed' Zaikin's lovely time-wasting Alchemy game is one of the classics of the free game market -- and if you haven't tried it yet, you really should.  It's sort of a twist on the Greek view of the Universe -- that there were four elements that made up everything in the universe.  You start with fire, earth, air, and water and drag them on top of things to make new items.  So, fire plus water equals steam.  That was easy!  You can take elements you've already made (steam) and add it to something else (air) and make something new: a cloud!

But it gets weird after that.  "Ash tray" = ash + glass.  "Grape" = earth + wood.  "wolf" = werewolf + moon.  "Star" = sun + scientist (I like that!)

The final list of elements?  Well, the app maker updates it occasionally, and there's always new combos.  I had this on another device and downloaded it to my new Samsung Galaxy and was very surprised to find out that some combinations were for countries.  The "Kama Sutra" combination also surprised me.

Items with a tiny red dot on the picture are "final products" and can't be combined in other ways.

The first fifty or so are easy... for the rest, there's hints and cheat sheets. 

It's a real classic time-waster!

Special food the key to getting pearls?

I had my carnivore tank set up yesterday and was feeding them chicken nuggets.  They returned 110 coins plus one pearl.  Most of them were rare or uncommon (Isosceles Squid, Ribbon Seal, Baby Harp Seal, Caribbean Reef Squid, European Squid, Excited Golden Lionfish, Red Lionfish, and a Piranha) and they all flashed happily when fed -- and then hid offscreen.  I'd like some smaller carnivores but am not sure the common ones will drop pearls as often as the uncommons and rares do.

I haven't counted to see if they all drop the same number of coins.

Today's tank is the (Legendary) Night Sky Angler, Baby Harp Seal, Candy Angler (apparently all Anglers eat chicken nuggets), Isosceles Squid, Caribbean Reef Squid, European Squid, Golden Lionfish, Ribbon Seal, and a Piranha.  We'll see what they drop.

Many of the fish don't seem to want a specific food.   They'll be happy with basic foods -- I haven't compared gold drop rates yet.

I tried fishing with the Rainbow Pellets, but am not sure they were any better than the Glowing Red Pellets.

Fish Food For Fish

 Sometimes I think it'd be simpler and more exciting if they just ATE each other.  You know; toss a couple of those I-can't-believe-I-caught-another-one Chalk Basselets in with a few of the Seals and Sharks and let them have at it.  In any case, I'm experimenting with the fish food bits to see what's the best bang for the buck.

I did get my very first pearl from feeding fish yesterday, but it was on a tank of miscellaneous fish that I was feeding "Organic Pellets" to... and I have no clue which fish it was, either.  None of them flashed with excitement about the "Organic Pellets."  As I recall, the tank was one of those miscellaneous "I'm just fishing it up, what the heck" tanks.


Meanwhile, a partial list of Aqua Pets fish that adore "Chicken Nuggets"

The Aquapets Fish Foods List

So after the last screeches and howls of outrage about the game (I think they're valid ones), I uninstalled it and then reinstalled it to start from level zero.  This time I'm figuring out some of the "extra things" that would make it even better as a beginner.  One of them is figuring out what in the heck to feed which fish.  They will accept the basic food, but the goal is to find out what food they really like.  When you feed them, they "blink" to a shadowy gray color for a moment.

You can spend a lot of coins trying to figure out what to feed your Aqua Pets fish so that they'll give you a present of coins the next morning.  Sadly, the number of coins they give you doesn't seem to be related to how common or uncommon the fish is.  Bigger fish give more coins than little ones... but the downside is that three size 1 fish give about the same amount as one size 3 fish.

Best strategy is to go with one category of fish (carnivores, freshwater, etc) per tank and use slightly larger fish.  It's fun to watch the little ones scooch up into a feeding frenzy, but the advantage of going with larger fish is that it's easy to make sure you've fed everything in your tank.  And they won't give you coins unless they've been fed.

Hands down, the easiest thing to focus on when you're at levels 1-6 is to keep all the freshwater fish you get (caught with the original fishing rod.)  I've made a list of the ones I caught with "black bugs" and "orange bugs" and as long as you keep fishing with the wooden rod, you'll fish up enough of these to make a tank.

A list of fish for your first "money tank": 

Aqua Pets for Android -- tips and tricks

There's not a lot of games that I'm tempted to play these days -- I'm an avid World of Warcraft player and I do enjoy playing the Sudoko puzzles, so I'm not really sure why I picked up Bionic Panda's "Aqua Pets" game for my Android tablet, other than it was free and the little logo was cute.  I loved it and played it in the bath tub or whenever there was "down time."  It was just perfect for that -- you could stop it at any time and come back to the same spot.

Then I dropped my Android tablet (AIEE!) and had to go buy a new one (because, of course, nobody fixes screens) and by the time I got back to the Android Marketplace, Aqua Pets was gone.  So you can imagine my delight when I found Aqua Pets back on the Android Marketplace last week.

The in-game currency had changed and other things were added.  When I went looking for tips, I found there were none.  So here's a list of some of the tips that I picked up from the Facebook page and other pages.  Right now my character is level 13, and I'll be posting results from various experiments like testing fish food and bait and rods.

SOME BASIC TIPS -- fish tanks

•  Feeding the fish does result in happy fish that will reward you 24 hours later.  Different fish, however, like different food.  Although you supposedly can get pearls when you feed the fish, so far, all I've gotten are coins (3 to 12 gold coins.  So the coins DO make up for the cost of the fish food plus a little... but not much.)
• You can feed your aquarium fish all day on the food you purchase.  Some of them swim faster than others and will eat the food before the others do.
• If you feed the fish food that they DON'T like, they won't eat it.  No happy fish the next day, so no coins from them.
• Don't be afraid to sell the Aqua Pets you catch (including rare and legendary pets) unless you're saving them to create a special tank.
• Feed your fish when you're connected to the Internet (because the rewards will be calculated on their servers.  No internet access = no record of feeding.)

SOME BASIC TIPS -- fishing

• Some items can only be caught with certain poles and baits
• The ice cube fish can be caught by using a snowflake rod and pellets.  More about that when I reach that level.
• Orange bugs and spotted worms (according to the Bionic Panda team) are probably the best "bang for the buck" NON-free bait.
• You need pellets to catch most of the legendary creatures.
• Fresh water fish can be caught with the wooden rod.
• You can catch common, uncommon and rare fish with regular bait.
• You can catch the panda with bamboo
•  mechanical fish like the Metal Bits

PEARLS (a bone of contention)
According to the Bionic Panda Facebook staff, there are three ways to get free pearls in Aqua Pets:

1) a random fish may give you a pearl as a reward for feeding them the prior day
2) reaching an achievement - like sharing your tank (total over 100 pearls available)
3) trying the free offers - located by clicking on the pearl
 
SHARING TANKS
I'm a little reluctant to share games on Facebook (mainly because I don't want to see game updates from friends.)
Bionic Panda's tips for posting your tank on Facebook:

1) Try to post your fish tank on Facebook while you are connected over a wireless connection.
2) Be sure you are logged in to Facebook before you post