Good lord this was wild. I fucking love FMV, especially when it's goofy like this. It could be because I don't have much experience with the genre, but I feel like it does its job of putting kid-friendly aesthetics over a dangerous and scary backdrop pretty well. The world isn't made out to be so dramatized and exaggerated, which typically ruins the kid-like balance. Way too many times, I feel like these kinds of media try too hard to be edgy or overbearing with its themes. My only issue then is that the world isn't explored nearly enough. This game is only an hour long and because of its style of gameplay (hidden pictures) it could've been so much longer. And again, I'm not saying I wanted it to get progressively darker or more grungey, but instead to explore the world more.
Gameplay side, as a hidden pictures game, it's very easy to go wrong when designing your pictures. One of my biggest issues was that sometimes the game would ask you to find one of something that there was multiple of in a scene, but only one would be the right one. Furthermore, the fifth or sixth level was a reverse hidden pictures where you had to hide things in the map. Sounds easy, and very interesting, but this mechanic was only used once, and worse, was used on one of two maps that were actually scrollable. This was the hardest level for me simply because I couldn't find where things were 'supposed' to go, especially when there was so much ground to cover.
Also, you can zoom in on pictures, but this is never introduced as a mechanic and you can beat the whole game without doing it. The pictures are detailed and incredible to look at, but they aren't insanely high quality, nor are they detailed enough to warrant zooming in.
Overall, amazing experience. I wish there was more of it.

Good fucking god this game is a roller coaster. The gameplay starts out at a moderate pace, then once you've recruited all the Moshlings that you can at the beginning/default level of building upgrades, you hit a brick wall. To my knowledge, there's nothing that tells you in-game that you need to buy upgrades in order to continue recruiting Moshlings.
Now, these upgrades are expensive, and some buildings need to be upgraded a total of three times. This means you need money. You can find between 1-10 gems across any given level every time you enter it. They respawn the second you leave. But that won't be enough, so you know what you need to do instead? Play minigames. Play any given minigame until you reach the 500-1250 gems required for a single upgrade for any given building. Each upgrade usually unlocks space for one extra Moshling.
So once you're in the mid game, it's speedy and great, a good balance of minigame playing and Moshling recruiting.
And then you ride over the hill. Something about the RNG this game uses to spawn things does NOT adapt to the lack of other spawns as you get into the late game. It's almost as if the locations in the late game spawn empty blocks instead of characters. During the hill of gameplay speed, it took me a single 2-3 hour session to find 20-30 Moshlings and/or eggs. During the late game, it took 2-3+ hours of doing NOTHING except entering and exiting levels looking for a SINGLE EGG. THE LAST ONE. TO SPAWN.
At the time of writing this, I still haven't found it. I'm missing one single egg. 103/104.
Ok, now time to list other things I didn't like:
- This game is soooo slow. Each level is a long picture you pan across to look for things. Cool. Shit moves wayy too goddamn slow. It's actually infuriating. But for some reason the 8th level moves twice as fast? So confusing.
- There are so many items in the shops that just go completely unused both because half of the items you can buy are available in the wild for FREE and for some reason, even the single use items can be used more than once? But also, the virtual pet/animal care aspect of this game is incredibly underutilized. It's like, beyond a backseat gameplay mode. It's underground. You could 'beat' the game without ever entering your zoo's cages and seeing your Moshlings.
- The reliance on minigames is just so annoying. I guess it's to be expected because it's a licensed property DS game for kids, but you mean to tell me there's literally no other way you could think of to make money? I mean, it's a goddamn zoo. Are people not paying admission?
- Like mentioned before, the spawn calculation/RNG is 7 levels of fucked up. Similarly, spawned and located Moshlings will sometimes just... randomly flee, which seems to be based on how long it takes you to help them, but it's incredibly quick, especially so for a children's game.
- Going off the prev. point, there's 0 way to experiment with ways to make the wild Moshlings like you. If it takes you too long, they run away. So you just do what the guy on the top screen tells you to do. That's it.
Yet... there's a reason I spent 1-3 hours a day playing this game for a fucking WEEK. Something about it is so addicting and alluring. It might just be me being a freak, but damn. It's such a bizarre game I couldn't stay away. IDK. Play it. But don't let it consume you... lest you end up insane...