BLIPZ is what I'm going to term a "browser pet". Basically,
it's an online virtual pet that you can access and care for using a browser. The good news is
that you can access your pet almost anywhere... at home, at the school computer labs, or at an
internet cafe. The bad news is that "browser pets" may not be accessible depending on your
browser, and they tend to be either extremely high maintenance, or mind-numbingly easy to care
for.
BLIPZ requires Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher, or Netscape 3.0 or higher.
As far as I can tell, it relies on cgi-bin scripts rather than Java or Flash. You may need to
have Cookies enabled on your browser.
(Translation: It should work smoothly on most browsers, although I occasionally have problems
in which it times out on me.)
With BLIPZ, you are given a certain amount of "money", which you can use to buy one of a
multitude of cute pets. The pets must be fed and cleaned every day, and you can select
one of five different levels of care. These range in cost from 1 "dollar" to 100 "dollars".
By taking care of your pet, and playing with it, you can earn varying amounts of "money"
as well as points. The points don't actually do anything, as such, other than determine
your position in the list of Top 10 Players.
The more pets you have, and the better you take care of them, the more "money" you get. However,
taking care of a great number of pets (up to a maximum of five) takes a lot of money... and so on.
It can become a bit of a vicious cycle if you're not careful. If pets are not cared for, they
may become sick... or they may even be taken away to the pound!
While healing your pet only costs 100 "dollars" or so, releasing your pet from the pound can get
very costly.
Gameplay is done by clicking on buttons, which take you to fresh new pages with a menu. You then
choose an option from the menu by clicking on a button... and so forth. The game is rather low-
key, in terms of graphics; there are about 5 different pictures of each type of pet, depending
on how healthy and happy it is. These pictures change only when you feed them, clean them, or
take care of them somehow. In other words, it's like Tamagotchi without animations.
Other things you can do: When going on vacation, you can put your pet in cryogenic deep-freeze. Unfortunately, you get charged a heap of money when you get back from your "vacation". You can also sell your pets when you get tired of them or can't afford to care for them... the amount of money you make will determine on how old the pet is, and how well you took care of them.
The good news is that BLIPZ is an accessible game, with very
few fancy bells and whistles that slow the download time. Most browsers should be able to access
it, and it's not choosy about it's OS... BLIPZ is Mac and
Windows-friendly.
The bad news is that the game can be, for lack of a better term, dull. You can only interact
with your pet once a day or so... more often if you don't mind logging into the site and patiently
clicking the "Play With Your Pet!" button. The lack of graphics can be a negative point, if you
prefer your pet to have more than 5 static facial expressions.
If you're looking for a moderately cute low-maintenance Virtual Pet, this one's for you. I give
BLIPZ a generous rating of C+ for Slightly Above Average,
or 7 stars out of 10.
Virtual Pet Fans have been by Since September 1999!
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