Neopets has come a long way from its neon-yellow glory days in the late 90s and early 00s.
Many still pop onto the site for the nostalgia, or because the simple pleasures of taking care of a virtual pet and maintaining your life in a colorful world of magic paintbrushes and vengeful fairies hasn’t lost its appeal.
But what’s the best way to enjoy Neopets in 2021? After all, it’s now available on the classic desktop site, as a mobile site in beta, and even as an app. Let’s find out…
The Classic Neopets Site (Desktop)
The classic Neopets website now matches the mobile beta in its look and navigation. The new look is cleaner, easier on the eyes, and the updated maps look fantastic. The website as a whole has refocused on the site’s native features, rather than assaulting you with a barrage of offsite advertisements. The HTML5-converted pages also load faster than their Flash-based predecessors.
While the classic site is still serving unconverted static pages such as The Trading Post, it stopped offering old pages via a dropdown menu on December 28, 2020, cutting 153 of the site’s 160 games off, putting them off-limits to Chrome, Edge, and Firefox users. Those running older versions or alternate, Flash-enabled browsers can still access Flash content however.
The Neopets Beta Site (Mobile-Friendly)
Neopets began construction on the mobile-friendly site in earnest when the end of Flash Player was announced in 2017, but the site still isn’t fully converted to HTML5. However, the site’s core features and a handful of games have made the switch, and the parts that have been switched over look fantastic.
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for (var i = 0; i The site’s core features have been bundled into an attractive homepage with side-menus that easily let you manage all parts of your Neopian life from the same place. You can even tap a pet to pull up a quick menu for feeding, grooming, play, and book-reading, as well as healing, equipment, and other features. Additionally, advertisements has been relegated to banner ads that never overlap menus or content.
Where the beta starts to lag behind the desktop version is the actual games. At the time of writing, only seven of the site’s 160 games can be selected from the beta site (Turmac Roll, Fashion Fever, Hasee Bounce, Ice Cream Machine, Rink Runner, Igloo Garage Sale, and Kass Basher).
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for (var i = 0; i The success of conversion varies among these. Some of the games suffer issues with the new mobile controls. Having to place your thumb over so much of the game makes Turmac Roll needlessly difficult, even in Easy mode (arrows or a simple tap-to-jump button positioned below the game screen would have been better).
In Igloo Garage Sale, the arrow keys could have been changed to a simple tap-and-drag mechanic, which worked well in Ice Cream Machine. Instead, the user swipes left or right. Unlike the old arrow-button controls, you can’t change direction once you’ve started a slide, and the slightest upward tilt will cause your character to slow-motion jump.
Scaling is also an issue across all games. The text on the instruction screens doesn’t seem to have been updated to indicate new controls, nor have the games or their included text been scaled for mobile screens. No full-screen option is available, and viewing in landscape mode on a phone will still crop part of the game, even on wide-screen or waterfall displays.
According to the release notes, the staff are currently working on converting the site’s prize wheels from Flash to HTML5, as well as converting the remaining static pages and games. The mobile-friendly beta site still has a long way to go, though: only 11 of the 33 links from the mobile site’s homepage currently lead to mobile-friendly pages.
Neopets: Island Builders (Mobile App)
While iOS users need an invite to access this app in closed beta, Android users can download Neopets: Island Builders as an early release. However, if you’re considering trying it out, you should know that Island Builders is not an extension of the beta.
If you want to focus on taking care of a Neopet, you might be better off playing one of the many virtual pet games available on mobile.
Island Builders is an idle game that simply takes place in Neopia. But you can still experience taking care of Neopets, designing your own space, and exploring the island of Dacardia.
In terms of play experience, it’s a standard idle game. To construct buildings or harvest resources, you drag and drop a pet onto the relevant building and wait until the timer runs out. IAPs offer exclusive items and speed-up bonuses for those who don’t want to wait around. So far, the game is free from in-game advertisements.
Taking care of your pets is done by dragging them onto a building that restores their happiness, or tapping them to change their color, add clothes, or feed them omelet pieces if they’re too hungry to work. Unlike with the mobile and desktop sites, hunger actually has consequences here.
Like many idlers, Island Builders has a few loose stories woven around the construction projects, and to its credit, Neopets retains its charm in the island’s design, as well as the finished construction projects.
Rather than equipping Neopets with hard hats and hammers, you gain an army of adorable crab-robots. The main downside of the game’s limited zoom is that you can’t zero in on these little guys at work and spend your whole day just watching them skitter around.
Once the official release drops, Island Builders could be a great way to enjoy Neopets fully from your phone. It takes a while to unlock enough features to keep you busy, but it is satisfying to watch your little island coming together.
Download: Neopets: Island Builders (Free, with in-app purchases available)
What’s the Best Way to Play Neopets?
Of the three, the mobile beta looks the most promising way to play Neopets. At least from your Android device. New sections of the site are being converted from Flash every day, and the updated areas are simplified and attractive. Once the conversion is complete, you may even like it more than the desktop version!