Glorious Time-wasters --"Fly, Dragon!" Android Game

(Review of free game, "Fly, Dragon" found in Android Marketplace)

Initial review:  Five stars!  Fun!

Game category:  Angry Birds type game
Game type: Arcade
Recommended device size:  any device
Who'd enjoy it?  Anyone.  Good for distracting kids, whiling away time in the dentist office, de-stressing after a nasty morning, etc.

This one's got a really cute premise -- you're a baby dragon who can't fly yet but CAN glide... and you're hopping out of the nest to have an adventure, gliding through the sky.  You have a ten second head start before Mom notices you're gone and comes to take you home.  Along the way you can pick up speed boosting potions, invisibility potions (to sneak past her) and so forth.  Game levels add complexity to the setup.

You start out by sliding downhill -- the trick is to let your finger represent gravity -- so you touch the screen when dragonlet is headed downward, but lift the finger off just before dragonlet gets to the ground.  Don't touch the screen when dragonlet is headed upwards -- unless there's a line of potions over the hilltop that you can collect on the way down.  If you get the right kind of glide (a 'swoosh') three times in a row, the dragonlet will breathe fire.  But Mom's right behind you (there's a distance indicator on the lower left that shows how far back she is) and if you slow down too much, Mom's gonna get you and take you back to the nest.

It's an easy game to learn (so it's good to share with the kids) -- and the scenery changes to different "lands" as you get farther away from Mom.  Different levels have different challenges that you can accept... or you can just have silly fun letting your dragonlet fly all over the place.  The screen is colorful and uncluttered (so it's easy to handle, even on a small screen)

It's ad-supported, so expect ads on the bottom of the screen -- but it's free!

A partial Aqua Pets Fish and food list

I'm still trying to work out the algorithm on what fish are being fed and how much they drop.  I've had two pearls drop, but not on a reliable basis where you could say "feed this fish this particular food and 20% of the time you get a pearl."  There's a lot of fish in Aqua Pets to work through, and I'm trying several foods each day, which means it's kind of slow to get a real list.  I'm not keeping everything (I generally get rid of shrimp and crabs) -- tonight I'm trying out an "organic morsels" tank.

I'm not sure if Bionic Panda's actually figuring a weighted "rareness" factor on the food because it seems as if rare fish and common fish drop similar amounts of coinage. 

Here's the list so far of what food the Aqua Pets animals that I've fished up prefer:

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": 

Grumpy customers!

Although the comments about the latest incarnation of Aqua Pets are really nice and chirpy on Facebook, the comments in the Android Marketplace (where Bionic Panda can NOT have them removed) are scathing.  After playing for awhile, I've decided that although I'm keeping the game, I do agree with some key points:

* they should have gone with both free and paid versions
* they should have done like Angry Birds and gone into merchandising
* the "bonus" feature for catches isn't working well (ten catches in a row and you get a 'secret bonus.'  Most of the time, my catches with ANY bait and a 'secret bonus' are a common fish that I've caught a dozen times or more.
* the "energy" feature is a real pain.

The October 18th (version 1.2.03)update was nothing to write home about.  In the words of the Aqua Pets Facebook support staff, they:

1) Added a new notification icon to the main screen for messages
2) Updated the Aqua Pets icon on the app and start screen
3) Minor bug fixes

Uhm... yay?

BUT... I've tried some of the other fishing games (Tap Fish, which bored me to death) and they weren't as much fun.  So I'm running the game up to level 25 or so (or until I run out of pearls) and am tinkering with the strategy on "how to make it more fun without actually spending anything."

Problematic Pearls

Supposedly some of those happy fish you feed in your fish tank will drop pearls -- and posts from people who had versions of Aqua Pets BEFORE June 2011 showed that they were getting pearl rewards from happy fish in their tanks.  This changed recently and now legendary fish can only be caught with bait that you spend pearls on.  I blew most of my pearls on "glowing red pellets" and it seemed as though the number of fish that got away was higher than usual. 

Bionic Panda's list of achievements for which you can earn pearls in Aqua Pets is short, and many of them cost far more pearls than you get in return.  I'm about 100 fish short of the 'sell a thousand fish' -- which will get you five pearls -- but the newly installed 'energy meter' keeps me from blowing all my coins and doing it in one afternoon.  While part of me thinks it's a good idea, part of me is frustrated.  I want those pearls to buy bait.

And no, I'm not into directly buying them.  That really leaves me with only two other options.

There's a Fine Manual! And I read it!

Geeks tend to leap into things without actually reading the manual because... well... it takes longer to read about the thing than it does to figure it out, if you're a "hands on" kind of geek.  With Aqua Pets on Facebook rather coyly hinting about pellets and poles, an option that I only skimmed in the "help" section suddenly caught my eye.

The store actually gives you the approximate percentages of catches on your bait purchases. (d'oh!)


Spotted worms catch rare creatures 5% of the time (and uncommon creatures at least 20% of the time.
Orange worms catch them 3% of the time
Green bugs catch them 1.5% of the time
Yellow bugs catch uncommon creatures more than black bugs do (no surprise)

On the high end, blue glowing pellets catch rare creatures 20% of the time and legendary creatures 10% of the time.
Red glowing pellets catch rares 25% of the time and legendary creatures 20% of the time -- at a cost of 3 pearls per ten.
Rainbow pellets, which cost 4 pearls, catch rares 30% of the time and legendary creatures 30% of the time.


Helpful hints are also found in the fish food area

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

Aqua Pets -- fishing for rares and uncommons

For any game out there, there's always some geek who just has to try out all the options and figure out what's the best strategy.  That'd be me.  I'm one of those.  Since I've just restarted Aqua Pets, I'm working through the early levels (now at level 18) to see which combos are best.

Catching Fish -- some strategies

By the way, although there are rumors of "cheats" for the game, the pages I get directed to seem to be full of ads.  There's no list of hints or cheats for Aqua Pets running around in the wild.  On the other hand, it's a pretty straight-forward game for the Android, based on a random calculator -- it can be difficult to beat random number generators.

The new "luck meter" and pole/bait combos have caused a bit of confusion, particularly since some of the baits are VERY expensive (4 pearls, for instance, for rainbow pellets.)  Pearls are hard to come by unless you buy them directly from Bionic Panda or start sharing your tank.  I did buy a packet of glowing blue pellets and tested it out.  The catch rate of rare/legendary/uncommon fish was high -- about 70%.  However, unless those fishes in my tank start dropping pearls, I don't foresee a lot of buying bait with pearls.
 .  
 Currently, I have one legendary fish (the Loose Triggerfish), which was NOT caught on the expensive bait and 19 rare fish (I caught more than that, but I've sold duplicates.)