Animal Jam Classic

The Game

Animal Jam, or Animal Jam Classic as it is now known, is an edutainment MMO that used to be affiliated with National Geographic where you play a colorful animal of your choice in the fictitious land of Jamaa, which has a folkmagical theme of sorts running through it. While I played many games as a kid, Webkinz deleted my account after I stopped [BUY]ing new pets and I forgot my Moshi Monsters password, so AJC has been the most consistent presence in my life.

If you're not going to roleplay Warrior Cats or watch the educational videos sprinkled around various locations, AJC's main appeal is its games and customization. Gems can be earned from a variety of games, but also on Adventures and at certain Parties, then spent to buy cool clothes, pets, or den items, which can also be traded between players for more coveted objects. Unsurprisingly, paying players have a wider variety of customization options, but I've personally felt like AJC was more fair about it than other kids' MMOs at the time.

I like to indulge my inner child/wolfaboo and have collected a few rare/coveted items for my primary avatar, Victory Wingedstar, and my personal favorite game is Gem Breaker. Best Dressed has also been a solid way to get myself to start a task. I also used to love Adventures, even if they are glorified fetch quests. Now that they're all free to play and there's a variety of new ones, I intend to play them all from the beginning sometime.


Lore

There's a bit of lore in these Adventures. Jamaa was created by Zios and his lover, a heron "Sky Mother" named Mira, and each animal species, unlocked for all players by the discovery of "heart stones" during expeditions, also has its own "Alpha" that represents it. I actually even remember when these figures used to be called Shamans.

There are a few Alphas, however, that are most important and actually crop up with official art/cameos beyond a passing mention in the name a single object — Liza the Panda, an adventurer and guide; Cosmo the Koala, a plant-loving academic; Graham the Monkey, an inventor; Sir Gilbert the Tiger, a warrior general; Peck the Bunny, an artist; Greely the Wolf, a shady magician; and Tavie the Dolphin, a musician with a prosthetic fin. Another notable figure is Juno, an arctic wolf that turned themself to stone to defend the land. These originally were animals from Earth and were given power to fight off the Phantoms.


Phantom Propaganda

I love the Phantoms. They're the stock bad guys — if something's going wrong, it's the Phantoms' fault. Lore seems to suggest they're made of Mira's misery and material pollution. As a result, they are driven to destroy/pollute/conquer, and seem to have ties to nightmares, so the good guys are constantly trying to contain them in their own dimension. They're also electrified! They appeal to me on a design level though; I just like creatures made of darkness, and they're very cute. You can also get pet Phantoms if you're a paying member, because apparently, according to the lore in Animal Jam: Play Wild (a "modernized" mobile game), some just wanna be loved.


Fer.al

Fer.al was an MMO made originally by the same team as Animal Jam. It was more fantasy-themed and set on Planet Fera, where shapeshifting Sparks of concentrated imagination magic congregate and express themselves. The planet has three moons (red Astoria, tiny blue Visoria, and the largest shattered yellow moon, Attis) and made up of floating continents due to a past incident where a sacred beast was slain, cursing the land, forcing Feralians to sever it as a form of quarantine. The planet's two queens, Lich Queen Delilah and Fell Queen Aradia, then fell into a deep sleep in an effort to mend it, but seem to post to social media from their dreams in a way that suggests they may never wish to wake up. This mess is likely due to the influence of the Betwixt, a cursed sort of "in-between" dimension that twists those who traverse it.

The game unfortnately never left open beta due to the explosion of the crypto/NFT market. Rather than create something original, WildWorks CEO Clark Stacy had the team repurpose Fer.al assets to create Cinder, a to-be pay-to-earn game in which one had to buy a fae NFT avatar to play. This led to a huge uproar from the largely anti-NFT preteen-to-teen audience, and the Fer.al Discord server was abandoned by all mods for almost a month, only to return and announce the game servers were to be shut down the next day. Players pointed out this was against their own TOS, which required a 30 day notice, so the date was changed to a month from now - but servers would remain inaccessible until the last 48 hours. Less than a year later, the company split in two, selling the Animal Jam property away, only for WildWorks to quietly die and pull the plug on the NFT project.

Fer.al undoubtedly had a lot of promise, both in terms of storytelling and art design, and its character creation tool wass extremely through. In spite of this, the community tried to stick together. As a result, a couple new Fer.al-inspired projects are out there, such as the EmuFeral servers that replicate the original game, as well as Mytherial. I didn't play as much as I wish I had, but I really treasure the memories of the game I still have. It was fun and I wish I could've seen it grow.


Tunnel Town

Alright, look, I'm not going to make a section for every bit of the Animal Jam franchise, just the parts I care about!

Tunnel Town is a F2P mobile game set in the world of Animal Jam. It's a simple game in which one works to advance an underground city of their own design, populated entirely by bunnies with the worst genetic bottleneck since Eden. Don't worry about the dramatic opening scene with the Phantoms; they never come back up again. The general gameplay loop is growing veggies to energizing the bunnies you've bred so they can mine for gems you can spend on furniture, leveling up to unlock new options along the way. Now, this app has not been updated in years, roughly for as long than it's been active (2013 - 2019), to the point it's not even supported by some modern mobile OSs, but I personally want to feel like an epic GameFAQs contributor and write out some details I find relevant for my own easy reference, too (and in this house, we hate Fandom Inc). What I want to record here are cheatsheets for the best veggies and bunny acquisition/usage.

The most important thing to remember is to save your stars at all costs, even during the tutorial! You are not required to spend them to pass, so you'll have a significant amount to spare. It'll take you a few minutes for the carrots, and a couple hours for the dance floor, but you'll be grateful later. There are a handful of furniture items and a vegetable that cost stars and are required to meet certain goals. If you aren't frugal with them, you'll either need to spend IRL money to make more or grind ads/daily bonuses - and unfortunately, ads seem to be broken. If you're really getting impatient, because this game is made to be that way, you can fast-forward your phone time/date settings. When you change them back to normal later, the game will warn you this could wipe your save file, but I've done this plenty of times without being penalized, and I see nothing wrong with cheating in a casual, non-competitive, single-player experience, especially given how it is structured to pressure you to spend. I trust that if you found this page, you have the maturity to decide for yourself what feels best.

Now, for the actual cheatsheets. The "best" veggies depend on what you intend to do with them and your resources. When a bunny levels up, it regains all of its energy, which may be worth keeping in mind, though remember that the bunny levels cap at 10. Usually, if you have a lot of free time and patience for redundant work, your best bet is to plant tons of cheap vegetables! There is no inventory limit after all, or a hunger mechanic that prevents you from feeding hundreds of carrots to your bunnies at a time/requires immediate attention. You will get more energy and XP and save more money if you spend twenty-four hours planting and harvesting carrots than leaving pumpkins to grow for that long... but do you really wanna do that?

As for bunnies, note that a lower mining group means the bunny digs the least amount of gems per minute. That is to say, a bunny in Mining Group 1 mines less gems per minute than every other bunny, assuming the same level and dig type. Usually it's a matter of only a gem at a time, but it adds up, especially in higher groups. This info isn't readily available! Additionally, certain holiday/seasonal bunnies can only be bred during certain times of the year, but the Tunnel Town season system is not functioning perfectly. Cases that may be impacted are marked with an *asterisk. Note that order matters - make sure your pair is LEFT × RIGHT! This does mean I am ommitting most pairs that involve a Luck or Cupid Bunny, but if you have them, I recommend experimenting, as they seem to result in rarer offspring.

Click a header to sort.

Name Type Price Time (Hours) Mining Group Best Obtained
Albino Grassland ★2500 48 01 Arctic/Luck × Arctic/Luck
Angler Ocean ★2500 36 01 Ocean × Ocean
Autumn Autumn (Seasonal) 05000G 07 06 [BUY]*
Bee Garden ★0650 20 05 Garden × Grassland
Beetle Tropical ★0750 26 03 Desert × Tropical
Bunny of Paradise Tropical 04000G 05 03 [BUY]
Butterfly Tropical ★0400 19 06 Mountain/Tropical × Tropical
Cactus Desert ★0200 03 04 Desert × Grassland
Candy Stripe Midwinter (Seasonal) 07000G 07.5 06 [BUY]*
Chameleon Tropical ★1400 27 14 Tropical × Grassland
Chinchilly Arctic 02000G 02.5 03 [BUY]
Chinese Dragon Arctic ★1500 34 17 Grassland × Arctic*
Cupid Love (Seasonal) ★1200 34 ?? Arctic × Desert*
Dinosaur Mountain ★0025 20 05 Ocean × Mountain
Dust Desert 00250G 0.03 01 [AUTO]
Elf Midwinter (Seasonal) ★0025 12 12 Midwinter × Midwinter*
Fjord Arctic ★0450 21 12 Desert × Arctic
Founder Mountain ★3000 ?? 10 [UNAVAILABLE]
Fox Arctic ★0850 21 03 Mountain × Arctic
Franken Halloween (Seasonal) ★0100 22 09 Halloween × Halloween*
Freedom Desert ★0425 27.5 01 Ocean × Desert*
Frog Tropical ★0150 11 08 Tropical × Arctic
Frosty Midwinter (Seasonal) ★0375 15 10 Midwinter × Midwinter*
Gnome Garden ★0900 28 01 Garden × Mountain
Goat Mountain ★0525 20 05 Mountain × Mountain
Gobbler Autumn (Seasonal) ★0275 18.5 07 Autumn × Autumn*
Jackalope Desert ★1200 24 06 Arctic × Desert
Ladybug Garden ★0375 17 08 Garden × Garden
Leopard Grassland ★0030 08 03 Grassland × Garden
Lion Grassland ★0300 18 10 Grassland × Garden
Luck Luck (Seasonal) ★1200 24.5 16 Ocean × Grassland*
Miner '49er Mountain ★1500 30 15 Mountain × Mountain
Moon Ocean ★0125 10 03 Ocean × Ocean
Mountain Mountain 01000G 24.5 02 [BUY]
Mouse Mountain ★0225 20 08 Desert × Mountain
Narwhal Arctic ★2250 28 03 Arctic × Arctic
Plymouth Coney Autumn (Seasonal) ★0700 21 13 Autumn × Autumn*
Prairie Grassland 00500G 01 01 [BUY]
Pumpkin Halloween (Seasonal) 10000G 4.5 01 [BUY]*
Roadrunner Desert ★0425 24.5 06 Desert × Tropical
Rooster Grassland ★0050 16 03 Garden × Grassland
Rosebud Garden ★0200 15 03 Garden × Grassland
Santa Midwinter (Seasonal) ★0375 25 14 Midwinter × Midwinter*
Seafoam Ocean 03000G 04 01 [BUY]
Seahorse Ocean ★0600 19 05 Ocean × Ocean
Shark Ocean ★0350 14 06 Ocean × Tropical
Skunk Grassland ★0050 16 03 Grassland × Desert
Snail Mountain ★0025 08.5 05 Mountain × Mountain
Snowflake Arctic ★0050 12 04 Mountain × Arctic
Sprout Garden 05000G 02 01 [BUY]
Squid Ocean ★0500 22 12 Ocean × Ocean
Sun Desert ★0010 0.08 02 [AUTO]
Toucan Tropical ★1750 27.5 14 Tropical × Tropical
Turtle Desert ★0650 20 11 Desert × Mountain
Unicorn Halloween (Seasonal) 00500G 26.5 11 [BUY]*
Vampire Halloween (Seasonal) ★0400 16 09 Halloween × Halloween*
Walrus Arctic ★1350 25 06 Arctic × Arctic
Wildebeest Grassland ★0550 20.5 10 Grassland × Grassland
Wildflower Grassland ★0425 17 09 Mountain × Desert
Witch Halloween (Seasonal) 00500G 19.5 06 [BUY]
Zebra Grassland ★0050 12.5 04 Grassland × Mountain

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