All the standard tips about Kinect play apply here – make sure you have a large, well lit, play space. Kinect tracking is quite good in this game – possibly because it is greatly simplified compared with other games that track movement. For many activities, it only measures movement (like when asked to run) so any sort of motion is good enough.
To complete the game requires getting lots of gems to purchase unlocks and upgrades. Gems are acquired through the mini-games. In general, you only get the full gem payout from mini-games the first time you play it that day. If you play the game a second time, you get greatly reduced gem payouts.
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Participating in the daily talent show seems to reset what games you’ve played so if when you’re gathering gems, it is best to play all the activities once, then do the talent show, then play the activities a second time.
Here are tips for all the activities. When you play an activity in a talent show, the goal is to get the highest score. When you play an activity in free play, score doesn’t matter and your goal should be to collect the most gems.
Ball Fetch: Score is based on distance. A long, underhand toss was most successful for me, but it was still hard to reliably get more than 800 points per toss. This was the hardest talent show event for me to gold since sometimes you need a score over 5000 points for gold. In Free Play, just aim for the gems on the ground. Tosses that go along the ground are more useful than long throws in the air. The payout is random, but there are usually around 100 gems scattered around.
Pet Wash: You get 125 points for filling the up bar, plus bonus points for time remaining. Gems are randomly awarded for reaching the bonus so you play this the same way in Free Time or in a Show. I found a circular motion worked better than a back-and-forth motion for filling up the bar faster. Not a good activity for grinding gems out since it takes a lot of time and effort.
Brush Time: Move your hand back and forth to keep the pointer near the gem. The pointer goes up based on how fast you stroke your pet from back to front. (Front to back doesn’t do anything.) The pointer slowly goes down over time. Note that your pet will change directions from time to time. You get gems (10 at a time until you get 150) for each full stoke that is entirely in the green. This is a very quick way to grind gems out.
Power Pounce: The best running form was to run in place, lifting my knees up and having my arms flap about at my side (like a chicken wing). This seemed to generate the most movement for the Kinect with the least effort. When you reach the red ‘sit’ zone, crouch down and just before you reach the green zone, hop into the air. If you’re at top speed, you’ll get a 30x multiplier and it isn’t hard to get more than 300 distance on each jump. Gems are awarded for being at top speed during the run (10 at a time until you reach 150) so this is a fairly good way to grind gems.
Sit!: Running form is the same. To make your dog sit, crouch straight down to your knees. Sometimes, the sensor just refused to recognize me, but it usually works okay. The closer you are to the end of the sit zone, the higher the score. A perfect score is 300, but is quite challenging; however, if you are at top speed, it isn’t hard to get a 250 for sitting safely in the middle of the zone. Gems are awarded 50 at a time (until you reach 150) for being a top speed making this the fastest way to grind gems.
Take Aim: Throwing the ball along the ground through the targets for points. Aiming can be hit or miss so the most reliable thing is to aim down the center. In free play, ignore the targets and aim for the gems (just like in Ball Fetch).
Pet Rampage: Aim for the towers of blocks to knock them over. Aiming your first toss to the side works well since the ball will bounce back towards the middle and you’ll get destruction points along the path the ball takes and more as the pet runs straight towards the ball. In free play, ignore the blocks and aim for the gems.
Bubble Dodge: Avoid the bubbles. Sometimes bubbles pop for no reason and sometimes all the columns will have bubbles at the same time. I found this easiest to play while kneeling down as it puts be below the level of the horizontal bubbler. You can usually get gold despite hitting quite a few bubbles. In free play, ignore the bubbles completely and just watch for gems falling from the sky. Swipe them (even when they’re on the ground) to collect them. Not a great gem grinding activity though.
Piñatas: I had great luck just swinging both arms (held apart from each other) back and forth through the area where the piñatas appear. You get bonus gems at random for clearing each round of piñatas. Not a great way to grind gems due to the amount of activity required.
Bubble Bubbler: Swat at the bubbles that pop out of the machines. The key to scoring high is to not have any lag when you don’t break a bubble. As you pop each bubble, your multiplier increases. If you never break your chain, you can score 30,000 to 40,000 points easily, but if your multiplier resets, you might have trouble reaching 15,000. Gems are inside some of the bubbles and the faster you pop bubbles, the more bubbles you get. This is another activity that is a lot of work for the number of gems you earn.
Acrobatics: This activity is only in free play, but is like the Strike a Pose bonus in the talent shows. You can try to match the figures, but score doesn’t matter. Instead, just watch for the gems that appear on the screen and swipe them. Easy, but usually a low payout.
Feeding Time: Another free-play only activity. You have to pick food appropriate to your pet. You get a gem award every time you feed your pet a unique food that he likes. Easy, but very time consuming to scroll through the menu. No need to play this once you’ve gotten the feeding awards.
If you don’t care about unlocking achievements online, you can go offline and manipulate the date of your console to advance the day.
3. Story walkthrough1. Walkthrough overview
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