Nimmos Pond is a pretty simple game, and easy to master. All it consists of is shooting at various-sized lily pads, making sure not to lose health points or paddle power, and maybe power up a little along the way.
First, your health and paddle power. Simply enough, you lose health points when you hit a lily pad, depending on its size. You lose paddle power when you move around (pressing any arrow key except down). To gain back health, just eat the red bugs (press ‘V’ to get a bug). To gain back paddle power, eat the blue bugs or just stop moving (stop pressing the keys; you can be flying across the screen and still gain paddle power).
Your position
Never move too far from the center of the screen. If you’re too close to the side, a lily pad might sneak up on you and cause you to lose major health points. Only move (press the up key) when you have to, because it is very difficult to stop (although, still possible). If you need to move, just move gently back in the opposite direction, so that you only move a pixel or two at a time. I suggest doing this in the later levels (level 20 or so) when you’ve almost defeated a level and only a small lily pad remains. Gain back all of your paddle power before moving on.
Bombs
Bombs are extremely helpful. When some big lily pads are starting to box you in, or you just don’t feel like hitting all the little ones around you individually, you can use a bomb. Press ‘B’ to use a bomb. They hit (but maybe not completely get rid of) any lily pads relatively close to you. You have three bombs, but once you use one you can gain one back for each bomb bug you eat (the black bugs).
About as far as a bomb can go:
Weapons
There are three different types of weapons. Level them up by eating their respective colored bugs.
Rapid – your starting weapon. If you eat a green bug, it’ll level it up to level two instead of starting it at level one. Pros: you can hit the spacebar as fast as you can to get a bullet out Cons: the green bugs are a little rarer than the others. As you level up, it just gets stronger and a teeny bit wider, nothing special. This one is my personal favorite, since I can crank out tons of bullets without stopping.
Spread – the yellow one. Obviously, eat the yellow bugs to level it up. Pros: as you can tell from the name, its bullets are spread out, and you shoot three at a time. Cons: can’t shoot very many of these, maybe two shots a second. Also, when you get spread-4 or -5, they start to REALLY spread out, so you basically hit only one lily pad at a time.
Personally, my least favorite. It’s just so slow =/
Launch – the orange one, and eat the orange bugs to level up. Pros: more powerful than the other two, and not too slow either. You can shoot about five bullets quickly at a time before it pauses. Also, it hits anything within a small radius of the bullet Cons: it apparently shoots up in the air and lands in the water to hit lily pads, so you have to be a certain distance from the lily pad to hit it. Early on, you have to be too close to it, and at launch-5, you have to be too far for it to land on the lily pad. Rather annoying, although this is many people’s favorite.
You can level them up to level 5. After that, if you eat another bug, it’ll go to level 6 but for about 3 seconds or so. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be super powerful in those 3 seconds (I’ve never noticed any difference), or if you eat another right away it’ll go to level 7, but I think it’s safe to say that level 5 is the strongest.
Other tidbits:
I usually hit the lily pads in this order:
1) the fastest
2) the closest/the ones coming toward you
3) the largest
4) the rest
Although, you don’t have to commit this to memory or anything. When you start playing, you’ll know what to shoot first.
If you’re playing for the 1000 np/day, you should stop between level 6 and 7. You can even stop at level 5, since “end game” is just going crazy and crashing into all the lily pads you can, which will be added to your score. It’s a rather slow game, though, so I wouldn’t suggest playing it everyday.
If you’re playing for the high scores, you’ll have to play until level 40 or so. I’ve never gotten past level 30 or 31, so this is a guess. My score was 4,330.
Well, good luck, and happy playing! – Idiocon