It looks like Big Sea Games went down for maintenance overnight, but when it came back up people started reporting problems in various games. So far we’ve received reports from other fans that Mahjong Towers Eternity, Team Bingo, Big Fish Slots, and Riddle O’Day are all causing problems in loading and playing. The problems may not be limited to just these games. We tested the games we had received reports about and this is what we found:

The problem seems to be that the games and chat load just fine, but the gameplay never begins properly. In Mahjong Towers Eternity, the start button is missing so you can’t start play at all. In Team Bingo and Big Fish Slots, the game loads but gameplay never starts. The kicker is that chat still works, and we can tell you there are a ton of disgruntled players.

The good news is that Riddle O’Day seems fine, so if you need a fix, go ahead and play that.

So far there’s been no word from customer service (well, after all, it’s the crack of dawn for them) but the forums are starting to light up with complaints. We expect we’ll hear something from the official channels soon. We hope.

Update: they say the problems have been fixed, but we still don’t know exactly what went wrong. “You should be able to play now. If you had the game open while the server was down, you will need to close it and restart the game.”

What has your experience been this morning? What do you do when things at Big Sea Games just don’t work?

The news around these parts has been slow slow slow lately — I sure hope this means that Big Sea Games is working frantically behind the scenes to bring us lots of new games and features!

Over the past few weeks, I have been getting reports that in Riddle O’Day, the northern lights no longer signify the impending arrival of the unicorn. If in fact Big Sea did change the timing of the unicorn, it might have happened on October 14, when they updated a lot of games. Unfortunately, there was no mention of the unicorn in their list of updates from that maintenance period, so we may never know.

In addition, I’ve heard some rumors that the Fairy Queen shows up during thunderstorms. I haven’t been able to confirm this since she’s so very rare, but it’s worth noting that more than a few people wrote in to let us know about this.

Don’t forget, we’ve got a list of all of the Riddle critters and their token payouts — with pictures! — on our Riddle O’Day creatures page. At the bottom of that page is a few shots of the gorgeous northern lights too.

What do you think of these unicorn and fairy queen rumors? Have you noticed lights but then no unicorn? Have you seen a unicorn with no lights anytime near? What about the Fairy Queen? Let us know in a comment below!

Without further ado (and with so many heartfelt thanks to Pidgeot for his scripting handiwork), here is a Big Sea Games rank calculator! With this nifty little tool, you can find out exactly how many tokens you need to achieve certain ranks (and in some games, awards) in your favorite Big Sea Games.

*It’ll open in a pop-up window, so you may need to disable your pop-up blocker for this web site. We promise, we won’t spam you with pop-up ads, so you’re safe.

The form will ask you to choose a game, then enter the amount of tokens you’ve earned in the game so far. You can find this information in the Token Tracker of the main Game Info panel at the bottom of your game screen. You’ll want to enter the amount of tokens listed under “This Game” It looks like this:

Then, choose the rank you’re interested in earning and the calculator will show you how many tokens you need to earn that rank. Voila!

Sure, the most fun parts of Riddle O’Day are answering the riddles, then spending hours waiting for magical creatures to appear. You can, however, have some fun during the slow times by looking to see what other things you may find in the game’s artwork. It’s not an exact science, but you can think of it kind of like finding shapes in clouds.

For example, there’s an image of a person in the tree. To find it easily, press pause. The “D” in “paused” will be right on the body. Here’s Honeybear07’s screenshot:

Other people have reported that there’s a monkey near the pause button, a face in a mushroom, and a ..ahem.. derriere in the tree. What have you noticed?

It’s time to take the Big Sea Games survey and let the Big Sea Games folks know how you really feel!

The survey will run until Monday, October 26, 2009. Responses are completely anonymous. We can only accept one response from each computer – if you have more than one person playing on Big Sea Games in your household, please take the survey from separate computers.

In addition, if you were to click to take the survey and then decide you’d rather do it later and click away from the survey, you won’t be able to from the same web browser. (Trust me, I know this from experience.)

The survey only takes a few minutes to complete and it’ll ask you questions about yourself, your game play time, the forums, the games, et cetera. (My favorite was question #15. In the interest of full disclosure, “A fan site” wasn’t my answer.) Some of the more hot-button issues are tokens and what we want to do with them (spend them, save them, et cetera), our Sea-Mes, and possible for-cash features. There’s also a whole page about the freezing jackpot spin, probably in an attempt to narrow down its cause since it’s been publicly mentioned they can’t reproduce the problem (yet us players seemed to be reproducing it ourselves every weekend). And at the end there’s a tiny little box where you can leave additional comments, so choose your words wisely!

Overall the survey is going to give Big Sea a lot of really important information about what WE THE FANS want, so please make sure you fill it out before October 26th!

Charlie wrote in with a question for all of us:

Part of the recent updates included:

“Token Payouts – We have increased the token payouts for Shape Shifter to bring it inline with our other games.”

Have you any idea how they have increased them? I have been in and can see no difference to the payouts from when the “new site” first opened. Asking in the room has produced no response and there is nothing in forums about it. It seems to me that the payouts are still those they reduced them to when opening the new site making this a very low scoring instead of an exceptionally high scoring game.

What do you guys think? Any Shape Shifter fans out there know exactly how the payouts have changed with this week’s update?

Big Fish Slots is a multiplayer team game with team bonuses, three completely different rounds, and even trivia. Each of its three rounds is played a little differently. With a little practice and our game tips, you’ll be scoring in the top ten in no time!

Round One – Go Fish

In this round you are looking for four creatures per game board: the starfish, a school of little fish, a seahorse, and an eel.

Since you’ll get bonus points for finding all four (and a new set of bubbles and fish to find), it makes sense to focus on finding fish as efficiently as possible. Memorize the four fish you’ll need to find (school, starfish, seahorse, and eel) so that if you’ve only got a certain type left, you can strategize your pops, multipops, and blowfish to find it. For example, if you only have an eel left to find, you only need to remove one bubble out of every three horizontal bubbles in a row to find a part of his body.

Each creature has a different shape and is hidden underneath a different number/shape of bubbles. While you’re popping bubbles take a close look at the left, right, and top edges of the bubbles that remain.

Sometimes (but not always) part of the school of fish can be seen on the left side:

or the right side:

or the top:

The starfish can be seen on the left:

The seahorse can be seen on the left, top and bottom:

The eel pokes out from the top of its middle bubble and on the right side:

If you get a yellow pufferfish, you might try placing him near the middle of the game board. He’ll deflate and pop bubbles on his way off the screen. This will maximize the bubbles he pops before he deflates completely.

Our friend b3achy has pointed out that there is a ‘glitch’ with the shark in this round:

When you get the shark in Round 1, in the old game, he would reset the board completely. In other words, you’d get a completely new board and have to start over to find the four critters (and they’d be in different locations).

Currently, in this new version of the game, if you get the shark in Round 1, he just replaces the missing bubbles of the board you are currently playing. To clear this board, you only have to find the remaining critters, and they seem to stay in the same location as prior to getting the shark. So, if you saw some of the critters poking out from behind the bubbles, they are still in that same location. If you only needed to find one critter prior to getting the shark, then that is all you will need to find to ‘clear’ the board after he fills in the missing bubbles.

When she wrote to Big Sea about this, they responded that it was working as intended. This will be something you’ll want to pay attention to as it makes recovering from a shark round that much easier.

Round Two – Fishfood

This round is most like a match-3 game (like Unwell Mel). Your goal is to match (at least) three of the same type of fish to remove them from the game board, but when you do more fish will fall into their places. Pay attention to which way the fish are facing — wherever you place them, they will eat any smaller fish in the direction they are pointed. Red fish are obviously your best chompers as they can eat up both green and blue fish.

Look for patterns of fish in the shape of an L, a T or a +. It takes a little practice but if you start looking for patterns of three or more you can also start seeing where, if you get a larger fish to chomp away other fish below, a pattern will form from the remaining falling fish.

To maximize your points in this round, you’ll want to focus on getting chains. If you can remove a set of three or more of a specific type of fish so that it sets off a chain reaction of other types of fish falling into place and matching up with other like fish. Tokens add up quickly if you can get a long chain reaction.

Round Three – Fishinko

Watch the launch lane — you can launch a pearl (or pearls) as soon as it is loaded. It’s easy to get caught up in watching pearls fall, but you need to stay on top of the launch lane, because time runs out quickly (especially if you get five launches in your spin).

The golden pearls seem to be ‘heavier’ than the regular, single ones. You will have to launch them harder to make it to the farthest oysters.

The multi-pearls seem to be ‘lighter’ than the regular, single ones. If you launch them too hard, you’ll lose all of them along the left side of the tank (and that’s no good)!

If you have a closed clam next to an open one, aim for the slope of the closed clam nearest to the open one. A pearl can easily get a good bounce off the slope and land right in the open clam next door!

The right wall’s bump-out (from the plunger button) can be used to ‘bounce’ pearls into the rightmost clam shell. This seems to work best with either the golden pearl or a set of multiples falling close together.

Pliers can be used to remove pegs from the game board. When you remove certain pegs, they may fall into an open clam shell. In addition, if you have a peg that is constantly knocking pearls away from an open clam shell, you can use the pliers to remove the peg to make future rounds easier.

If all else fails and you have a hard time getting your pearls into the clam shells, try aiming just for the other items in the tank. They’ll net you 50 points a piece and will help you learn to launch and aim more accurately. The golden pearls also have a point bonus with them — 150 points for hitting a critter/object (up from 50 for regular pearls) and 75 for landing in a clam (up from 25).

Should I take the Chance?

It’s up to you! If you enjoy the team aspect, everyone in the room will be thrilled at a few extra points if you win the team bonus. However, be aware that you may lose points (and if you have received more than one ? in your spin, the number of tokens you lose will be multiplied). The chance of getting at least 200 points is higher than the chance of losing tokens, so we always choose the Chance. And don’t forget, earning team bonuses, answering trivial questions correctly all earn you progress towards the new awards, so go for it! If you need help answering the trivia questions, we’ve compiled a list here.

Earning Awards

If you’re into earning awards, the ones for this game can be earned just by playing normally (and sometimes getting very lucky). To get Teamed Clams and Straight A Sturgeon faster, you’ll want to always take the chance. You might find it easier to earn a place in the top ten or win (Goin’ Topside and The Big Fish) if you play in a lesser-populated hall.

Related Posts:
- Big Fish Slots Trivia
- Big Fish Slots Ranks & Awards

Earlier today, @rpederse tweeted “@bigseafans At some point, in your blog, could you explain “phases” in #bigseagames ? Tx!” I couldn’t have thought up a better topic for a post today than this!! Thanks @rpederse, and this one’s for you!

Phases appear in all of the Suits Me solitaire games and Thunderbolt 21 on Big Sea Games.

At the most basic level, a phase in the Suits Me games is a counter of how many cards you’ve added to the foundation. You can view your phase counter along the right hand side of the game window (see reduced-size image to the right, an example of someone in the hearts part of phase 2). A phase is made up of four parts — one for each suit in the deck: clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades. While you’re in the clubs (for example) stage of a phase, every club card you play onto to the foundation will light up a club symbol. When your phase counter is full of 20 lit clubs, you’ll advance to the next suit in that phase and the process begins again. When you’ve completed all four suits in a phase you advance to the next phase.

Once you reach the end of the 10th phase, it will announce in chat that you’ve completed phase 10 and it’ll “brag” in the chat window how many games and wins it took you to get there. Everyone in the room will be awarded a token bonus. At that point, your phases and games/wins will be reset and the process will start over.

In Thunderbolt 21, the phases are pretty much the same, except instead of lighting up when you place cards on the foundation, it will light up the difference in the numbers of busts and 21s you made in each round. (For example, if you made 9 21s and 5 busts, you’d receive 4 lights toward your phase.) The phases in this game go past 10 though, up to 21 before the game brags in chat and then resets your stats.

Why are there phases in these games, and what are they used for? Besides awards and chat brags, we’re not really sure. Chime in with your thoughts in the comments below.

(And for those of you wondering, the Phases of the Sun award in Suits Me Pyramid isn’t counting completed phases correctly as far as we know.)

Instead of making full new posts to cover certain issues this week, I’ve been stashing updates in the comments of various pre-existing posts. I don’t do this very often, so I figured I’d give you a round-up of sorts that will cover the important points. I call it, “It Came From the Comments!” (Kind of fun for a spooky October, right?)

So here are a few tidbits of information you may want to know about, but may have missed this week:

• There is no Lucky Leprechaun or Midget Grasshopper in Riddle O’Day…but boy, that would sure be fun!
• Unlike other games on Big Sea, SnowGlobe Slots doesn’t have a traditional Jackpot Spin, but you can still earn a ton of tokens if you get the right combo on the reels.
• SnowGlobe Slots starts defaulted with the sound muted. To turn it on, use the speaker icon in the upper right-hand corner. (That’s where you can find a button for the pay tables, too.)
• Big Fish Slots got an update this week that fixed a bunch of problems.
• And last, but not least, I just want to say that the Owl Country Club course in Fairway Solitaire is really, really tough and apparently it’s got a mean streak, too. (Sorry, Charlie! I just had to mention it.)

Stay tuned for an upgraded hints and tips guide to Big Fish Slots (the old one is a little outdated now that Big Sea has tweaked the gameplay with the re-release) and as usual, more news, rumors, and information about Big Sea Games. :)

SnowGlobe Slots has been released. As you play, don’t forget you can keep tabs on the ranks and awards for Snowglobe Slots at our site.

Do you like the updated graphics? Are the payouts too low? How long do you think it’ll take most players to earn all of the awards?

Feel free to leave your comments on the game in a comment below.