Hungry Shark: Evolution
is a Future Games Of London (acquired by Ubisoft in 2013) game for Android and iOS, released on October 18th, 2012. A sequel to a trilogy of mobile games released between 2009 and 2011, the game enables the player to control various sharks (as opposed to the single playable shark of its prequel), starting with a reef shark, which you must level up to reach the next shark by eating everything you can. The game likewise expands on its predecessors through featuring two in-game currencies (gold coins and more sporadically-obtained gems), which can be used to upgrade the abilities of the player's sharks and purchase items (including clothing, machinery and "baby" sharks) with special bonuses and abilities in the shop. You can also buy special sharks any time after you score 350,000 points in one game. These sharks cannot be upgraded and don't retain their levels (though they level much faster to compensate), and have special abilities that set them apart from normal sharks. Most sharks (save for the mako and tiger sharks) also appear in-game as enemy sharks, although they are much less powerful than your own shark of the same type. Every time you earn a specific amount of points, variable for each shark in-game, you will enter a Gold Rush for a brief time, which makes you Nigh-Invulnerable, turns all creatures to gold, and prevents your health and boost from draining. A sequel titled Hungry Shark World was released in Oceania on December 14, 2015 and in the rest of the world on May 4, 2016.
Hungry Shark Evolution contains examples of:
- Always a Bigger Fish: There's always a shark in the sea that's bigger than you are, and thus can't be eaten outside of a Gold Rush, until you unlock the final shark. This is on top of the mines and other hazards.
- An Ice Person: The Ice Shark, which exhales frost that can freeze almost anything solid.
- Animal Mecha: The special shark, Robo Shark. Special abilities include jet thrusters for fins, a propeller tail, and the ability to eat and store small mines and automatically launch them at enemies. Destroying creatures with mines is mechanically the same as if you ate them, restoring your health the appropriate amount.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The special sharks are fun, but have several drawbacks. Their special abilities often negate their boost speed, they're more vulnerable to certain enemies like the submarines because of their slow boost, they can't equip any items, and they don't retain their levels over multiple games (though they level up much faster to compensate).
- Badass Adorable: The baby sharks are around about a third the size of your shark, but they give nice bonuses and can eat anything your shark can.
- Bad Santa: The Santas in the world in the Christmas 2013 update, and the Santas in the winter world on Christmas 2014. They drink, bomb you, and have a Hook Hand.
- Big Eater: Even the smallest sharks can easily eat many times their own weight in a single game. Up to eleven during a goldrush, allowing even a tiny reef shark to eat any size of creature or object.
- Breath Weapon:
- The Robo Shark can shoot mines from his mouth.
- The Pyro Shark and Ice Shark breathe fire and ice, respectively.
- Sharkjira, being a homage to a certain kaiju, has atomic breath.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: You can buy coins and gems to unlock new equipment and access sharks without earning them the normal way.
- Cartoon Whale: Depicts Moby Dick as a toothy, square-headed whale.
- Cool Crown: The crown gives a 20% gold bonus, more than any other item. It also costs 300 gems to buy in the first place.
- Deflector Shield: The force field, which takes damage from explosives and projectiles for you. Once it's destroyed however, you can not use it again for that round.
- Detonation Moon: You can eat the moon if you fly high enough and are big enough.
- Difficulty by Acceleration: Your health drains faster as you play, forcing you to eat faster to survive.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Abysshark is a monstrous creature from the deep with mind control powers and the ability to create a vortex to pull prey into its mouth. As of this writing, it's the most powerful shark in the game.
- Energy Weapon: Mounted to your shark's head in a Shout-Out to Austin Powers. The laser is only set to stun, though.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
- Almost every special shark, including the Ghost Shark, Pyro Shark, Ice Shark, Electric Shark, and Robo Shark. The only exception is Natasha the Narwhal.
- The Gemfish is a small green fish which, when eaten, rewards the player with a single gem.
- Extreme Omnivore: Not only can any shark eat any type of sea life, humans, and birds as long as they're large enough, they can even eat inorganic objects, including mines.
- Fake Difficulty:
- The sharks from the Megalodon on up have a massive health drain compared to the ones that came before. This is to encourage you to earn their baby shark companions, which provide a stamina boost to counteract this. Naturally, these baby sharks cost quite a few gems. It certainly doesn't help that the drain can suddenly increase without warning, pretty much forcing you to forfeit that run.
- The giant crab isn't hard to beat, but it forces you to wait while your health drains away, and its cave is sparse on things to eat. It's not impossible, but the difficulty isn't in the crab itself. The crab fork is very helpful in this regard.
- Flower Mouth: The Abysshark has this.
- Flying Seafood Special:
- Any player shark with the jetpack equipped.
- The Pyro Shark has the ability to fly.
- The enemy version of the Robo Shark flies around in space and is several times larger.
- Finally, there's a smaller, jetpack-wearing shark in space.
- Giant Enemy Crab: A giant crab, bigger than any shark, is a boss sequestered in a chamber on the far left of the map. You have to wait for it to tire itself out attacking you, and if it hits you you have to wait it out again. Once it collapses, you Attack Its Weak Point. Once you've beaten it, you have to wait four minutes before you can fight it again. It changes color and gets bigger with each defeat, culminating in the giant black crab. You can buy a crab fork to cause more damage with each strike.
- Giant Squid: In addition to realistically sized giant squid, there is also the Kraken, among the largest playable creatures in the game.
- Helicopter Blender: The helicopter enemies can damage you with their rotors, though it's not so much intentional as it is a method of stopping you from attacking from above.
- Hurricane of Puns: Messages display onscreen whenever you eat certain types of creatures and objects: said messages are almost always awful puns.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Everything your shark eats regenerates some of your health.
- Invincibility Power-Up: When you max out the Gold Rush bar, your shark becomes invulnerable and doesn't lose health, gains infinite boost, all enemies turn gold and give coins, and all living enemies are considered valid prey regardless of what your shark can normally prey on. This makes it useful for killing very large sharks you can't normally eat.
- Jet Pack:
- The Fireworks item doubles your boost power by strapping fireworks to your back.
- The Jet Pack item is unlocked for free after beating 50 missions or with a large gem payment. It allows you to fly when outside the water, potentially quite high depending on how much boost you have. It's also great for preying on those land-dwelling humans or just crossing large distances.
- Kaiju: Sharkjira is specifically called this, and lives up to the description.
- Level Grinding: In order to unlock the next shark, you first need to level up the current shark to max (level 10 plus a full experience bar). This is fairly easy for the beginning sharks — you're likely to spend more time finding the necessary gold for the next one, in fact — but the later sharks require much more, though as a tradeoff earning gold is a lot easier.
- Monstrous Seal: The Navy Seals are some of the more dangerous common enemies in the game, dealing significant damage even to higher tier sharks and latching onto you while attacking, preventing you from eating them.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: It is a game about sharks, after all.
- Necessary Drawback: Virtually nothing can kill the giant sharks, especially once you unlock Big Daddy, so they lose health much faster as a tradeoff.
- Nested Mouths: Big Daddy uses a mouth in its tongue to grab prey from a farther distance.
- Non-Human Undead: The Ghost Shark, which can swim through walls while boosting and is immune to damage except in Ghoul Rush. Its health also drains much more slowly.
- Playing with Fire: The Pyro Shark can both breathe fire and use it to fly.
- Prehistoric Monster: The Megalodon, Big Daddy (based on a dunkleosteus), and Mr Snappy (based on a mosasaurus).
- Premium Currency: Gems. They can be obtained through eating certain creatures, but only one at a time when many items cost hundreds of gems.
- Not Zilla: Sharkjira is a clear reference to Godzilla, right down to the atomic breath.
- Shark Man: Rarely spawns on beaches. Although he appears to be a man in a shark suit, it is left ambiguous.
- Shock and Awe: The electric shark, which stuns small enough nearby prey while boosting.
- Shout-Out:
- One of the items sharks can equip is a head-mounted laser.
- Jumping into the air will cause the roar from Jaws to play.
- Moby Dick as a whole is a shout-out to, well, Moby-Dick.
- Most of the missions are either these or puns:
- The Great White Shark has a mission titled Sub Zero.
- Alan has Star Destroyer.
- Moby Dick has The Whale of Wall Street.
- Leo has Jurassic Shark (he's also said to have escaped from Nublar Island in his description)
- The Electric Shark has Resistance Is Futile.
- The Ice Shark has Ice, Ice, Baby.
- The Ghost Shark has Dead Shark Tell No Tales.
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Spiritual Successor: To Feeding Frenzy, another fish-based game that has a similar theme of fishes eating other fishes until growing large enough to eat sharks. - Stock Ness Monster: Nessie is portrayed in a typical way, being a plesiosaur.
- Tail Slap: Alan, Destroyer of Worlds can stun things with its tail, which are worth double points when eaten.
- Threatening Shark: The player, as well as enemy sharks, especially larger enemy sharks that can easily kill you in a few hits, and are Nigh-Invulnerable to you, only being edible during a Gold Rush.
- Vacuum Mouth: The Shark Vortex collar item creates a vortex which draws most smaller prey into your mouth, the range dependent on the size of the shark. It doesn't work on things like boats and planes.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Your purpose is to eat everything you come across. Even swimming people. Especially swimming people. They level you up faster than most edible things.
- Weaponized Animal:
- The laser you can buy and mount on your shark's head. Stuns prey for you, which earns double points when eaten.
- There's also a rocket launcher that you can either buy or unlock for free by completing 75 missions. It has much the same effect, but the rockets are more powerful and can kill prey.
- The crab fork allows you to deal double damage to the Giant Enemy Crab.
- Weird Moon: It's small enough for a shark to eat.
