Do you like fishes? Well you’ll be cheering for a fish (or rather, you’ll be the fish!) when you play this game. As a wily red fish with white stripes called Marlin, you are gifted with exceptional speed, one which enables you to out swim sharks, especially Bruce the shark.
The main aim of the game, is to find Nemo, your partner in crime (not quite), but to do that, you will have to construct a map in each level preceding level five. The maps are randomly generated on the sea and come in three assorted colours to tickle your fancy. Normal map pieces will give you 1 point, silver map pieces will award you 5 points while the ever elusive gold map piece will bestow upon you a much wanted 10 points! Collect all the map pieces in the level and you’ll continue to the next level in your search for your best buddy Nemo.
Given a birds-eye-view, you use your left and right keys on your keyboard to control Marlin. Be wary however, as one touch of a key will rotate Marlin significantly, so steer with gentle taps of the keys and steer clear of holding the keys. If anything it will be more gentle on your keyboard and you’ll be grateful that Marlin doesn’t get gobbled up by the sharks in hot pursuit.
Marlin, as stated previously, is able to out swim the sharks, however this is only done when Marlin is swimming in a straight line. Because of this, it is advised that when playing each level, swim around the borders of the map. This is done for various reasons. Swimming alongside the border will 1) give you the most possible distance you can travel in a straight line, and 2) help you find all the map pieces. It is also essentially important that as soon as the game starts, you steer Marlin towards the border straight away from the sharks. Swimming following the border will eventually steer you to swimming in a large circle which will protect you from the approach of sharks. Be wary that because the map size is a square, there will be times that at the corner, the sharks will catch up to you somewhat. To counter this, instead of swimming to the edge of the corner and then turning 90 degrees, approach the corner on an angle so the distance in which the Shark catches up with you is minimized.
You have one powerful weapon against keeping the sharks at bay. Their greediness. On any given level will be a minimum of three sharks swimming around eyeing Marlin as lunch. This sentiment however often gets them into fights with each other when they both contact each other in their pursuit of you. This fight is only temporary however and delays them for approximately 10 seconds, ample time for you to swim away.
There are also other objects which you should aim to avoid. Jelly fishes (stationary on the map) will tangle you up and slow you down in their long legs, so if you have a shark in hot pursuit a few millimeters behind your tail, it is generally not recommended to throw a house warming party inside the legs of a jelly fish.
Other than that, this game doesn’t get very hard until about level 4. Good luck with the game and until next time, happy neopetting!