Why I stopped playing Neopets: Faerie Fragments and why it's pulled me back in
- I am stuck on Level 465
- Please send help
- I cannot unlock the avatar
I am a die-hard Neopets fan and have been for over 18 years now, meaning it is the game I have sunk the most time into in total. My current account (due to losing a few passwords over time) is 11 years old, and I log on and do my dailies every single day. So, when Neopets started releasing random mobile games, I dove into them. I have been a fan of match-3 for quite some time and started spending a lot of my evenings on Neopets: Faerie Fragments.
Since its release, the game has had more events, features, and updates than Neopets itself, in my opinion, with so many different features being added. I did stop playing around level 465 as the difficulty became unbearable. I think one of the things that makes Candy Crush Saga one of the best match-3s out there is that it's possible. Neopets: Faerie Fragments sometimes is not.
What I mean by this is that the tiles that are generated in each level of Faerie Fragments are actually random. Some levels, especially in the 400s, have one move at the start, which leads to 'no moves' and then it shuffles and gives me another move, leading to 'no moves' again. It's frustrating and feels less like a puzzle and more like random luck, hope, and needing to spend extra coins for more turns or power-ups as the only way to win. When it comes to other match-3 puzzlers that have kept players engaged, the levels themselves are a puzzle to be solved through the correct moves being made.
So, I put down and uninstalled Faerie Fragments, because it wasn't worth it. I feel that many others found the actual levels overly challenging, especially with events, which required players to finish challenges in whatever level they were on, were too difficult to actually complete on later levels. I do love getting the Neopets items in Neopets itself from completing these events, but they were just too difficult.
But Faerie Fragments now has an avatar that you can only obtain through playing tons and tons of levels in Faerie Fragments, so I have re-downloaded the game, as I very much want all of the avatars possible. I have been looking at the new features, as I cannot finish level 465 no matter how many times I try. There are a bunch of new achievements that offer items that are quite expensive in Neopets. The Tower Challenge is one of these new modes.
Tower Challenge gives players 24 hours to climb up three towers of puzzles, which feel pretty much the same day after day so far. However, I am using these levels (which are far easier) to get through a bunch of the achievements and unlock the items for Neopets.
Will I continue Faerie Fragments after I have unlocked all of the items? I think I will easily be able to. Likely not, unless they make the game less random so that it feels actually possible to complete some of these levels.
