Go! Go! Go!

Written by: Matt

Perhaps the most important part of Neopets is the games. Admittedly, the novel pet section, the idea of this wide fan base and the supreme coding of the Battledome add to its popularity; but the early days, they started small with simple Javascript games such as Cheat, Tyrannu Evavu, and Go! Go! Go! (a game better known in my university by a slightly ruder name). Perhaps this is why there is such a great finish on these games. Whether or not the game works well, it is pretty, and you don't mind finding all these little problems in the game.

Rules

Bear with me as I try to explain the rules to you. At the start of the round, each of four players (one of them you, three of them AIs) gets dealt 9 cards. These consist of three in your hand, three face-up and three face-down. Naturally, you cannot play from one level until the level above it is empty. So, if you have one card in your hand, you can't play from your face-up or face-downs. The rest of the deck are placed beside the pile, which is empty at the start.

One player starts the game by playing any of his cards down. If you have two or more cards of the same rank, you can play them at the same time. You pick up cards if you have less than three, then play passes to the next player round, who must play a card equal to or higher than the card on the pile. If he or she cannot, they may play 'special cards' (which I’ll explain later) or if they have none, they must pick the pile up.

Play continues this way until the stock is empty. Then, as soon as a player has no cards in his hand, they may play a card from the face-ups in the same way. This time, if they cannot make a play they put down their lowest face-up, and pick up the pile; in essence they gain the lowest face-up and the pile as their new hand, which they must empty before continuing. As soon as both the hand and the face-ups are cleared, they may start on the face-down, trying each card at random. If the card is a valid play, play continues normally, else you must pick up the face down-card you played and the pile as your new hand. The first person to empty all their cards from all piles wins.

The Special Cards are as follows:

Twos may be played any time, and anything may be played on them. They may be considered a form of 'reset' to the pile.

Threes may only be played when they normally could (i.e. on top of a two or to start the round) and only an 'odd' card may follow them. This means you may not put a two on a three.

Fours are similar to threes; they force an even card to played on top of them.

Tens 'burn' the pile, removing all cards that had been played on the pile be removed from the game. Doing this, you gain another turn. You may also 'burn' the pile by completing a set of four-of-a-kind on top of the pile.

Now, wasn't that simple?

Graphics

In terms of looks, Go! Go! Go! works. The cards look pretty and the characters have been updated. Instead of the stiff, older-looking drawings; we have these new, more modern-looking cartoony creatures. Many people may complain, but they do look good; especially since the target age of the website is a lot lower than people are often prepared to admit. (I put this down to trying to delude themselves that they're 'still cool' if they're playing Neopets.)

I said it works, and everything reaches the state that it needs to be...but I think there's something lacking. That is the extra mile. It looks fine, and it works, but it falls by the wayside, and this is why: In terms of the internet today, it's a lot more advanced than it was back when Neopets began. Nowadays, an HTML game just won't cut it. You something more, like a Flash interface. Whatever it is, it's got to put back the glitz and the glamour of the Neopets game.

Just how 'good' is it?

I wrote this in my 'Cheat' article in the last issue of the Pink Ink, but my paraphrasing myself here, I can up my word count and look godly and wise.

Card games are not about the game themself. They bring with them a sense of skill, excitement and achievement. Besides Solitaire, they all have a sense of socialising as well—a trait lost in many online games. Card games are fun because they introduce you to people; you get to know them and it's enjoyable. By removing this sense of companionship from the game, which the very nature of the internet does, it removes the point of this game: having fun with friends. I don't enjoy playing (and usually winning) this game in real life because of my over-heightened sense of competition, but because I get to spend time with people I like.

To quote a popular philosopher (aka Me): "Of course, this could be said of any online games, removing interactivity, but at least these other games have merits on their own; this is what the game lacks - a bit of 'zing.'"