It’s odd, the way that sharks can inspire a primal fear in us that prompts paranoia, terror, and fascination in equal amounts. In May of 2016, yet another sequel spawned as a result of those feelings–Hungry Shark World, the latest in a long-running series of mobile games that have you controlling a…you guessed it, a hungry shark whose primary purpose in life is to eat, swim, and survive. We’re here with a few Hungry Shark World hacks and 10 secrets and tips that will help you to stay alive longer in Hungry Shark World so that you can reach scores so high, people are going to think you’ve hacked the game.
At its core, the Hungry Shark games are fairly simple! You play as a shark, and you need to keep eating in order to stay alive. At the same time, you also need to keep moving, which means dodging hazards beneath the water that might otherwise kill you. Your score goes up both as you eat and as you stay alive, so the name of the game isn’t just hunting down food, but navigating the game’s treacherous environments as your shark continues to grow.
It’s mobile gaming at some of its finest; a title that you can pick up and play for a few minutes, without needing to worry about committing tons of time to it in order to actually succeed. On top of that, Hungry Shark World has pretty stellar graphics; definitely a step up from previous entries in the series (just look at some of the screenshots, below!)
Graphics aren’t the only thing that received a boost. In Hungry Shark World, you can play as up to 19 different sharks across 3 different worlds! For a free-to-play game on mobile app stores, that’s a hell of a lot of replay value that can give you new experiences every time. And until the next Hungry Shark game comes along, you can bet that Hungry Shark World is going to receive a fair number of updates and improvements.
Appamatix covers mobile gaming all of the time, and we’re eager to give you the hottest tips and secret tricks that will help you to improve your gameplay. We’re going to do the same for Hungry Shark World. Rest assured that you don’t need to be a pro to implement these techniques the next time you pick up the game; these tips are meant for newbies and veterans alike, even if you’ve never played a Hungry Shark game before.
Never Stop Eating
This might seem like a no-brainer, given the entire point of the Hungry Shark games. However, it can be tempting to slow down your eating, or spread out the amount of eating you’re doing when edible things seem plentiful on your screen. Few things will kill your shark as quickly as skimping on food!
In Hungry Shark World, food is always reappearing across the wide, dangerous maps, meaning that there’s never any reason to slow down your eating at all! As with many mobile games, Hungry Shark World is built upon frenetic energy. If you’re not constantly moving, searching for food, looking for enemies, and darting around as you look for the next, highest score, you’re probably playing wrong!
If you want to get a higher score, build up that bonus bar, keep eating, and keep your life bar capped! It can be remarkably easy to feel momentarily “safe” in Hungry Shark World, but there are always bombs and other dangers waiting to take you out.
Go for the Gold!
Do sharks enjoy shiny food, or what? The sharks of Hungry Shark World certainly do, and if you see any food (even people!) that happen to be glowing, gobble them up right away. This will give you bonuses, multipliers, and progress on your gold rush bar. If you’ve played Hungry Shark World for even a few minutes, then you’ve probably seen just what a Gold Rush can do for your score.
Yeah. Explosively good, so eat up that shiny food!
It’ll be extra important for when you want to upgrade your sharks and gain access to new fish, especially if you want to play Hungry Shark World without spending a dime of your own hard-earned cash.
Gem Smart
Speaking of spending less, here’s a lesson that you can translate right to real life: spend your rare commodities wisely! While Gold Rushes can net you boatloads of coins that can be spent on upgrades and unlocks, gems are much, much harder to find.
How do you find gems? The first step, unfortunately, is luck. However, if you keep your eyes peeled for purple mist in the water, you’ll be able to identify where schools of gem fish might be hiding. Do remember, though, that these little jerks can be difficult to get down, so only chase them with a full (or nearly full) boost bar. Didn’t we tell you to never stop eating? Keep that boost bar high for as long as you can!
Do Your Dailies…Daily
Along with many of the upgrades that the Hungry Shark games have seen over the years, so too has it taken on some of the most fruitful features of other mobile games. One of those that you’ll see most frequently are “daily challenges,” which are completable in short amounts of time, and encourage you to pick up the game and play every day.
Of course, daily challenges in Hungry Shark World aren’t just a gimmick. They’re a great way to keep on top of your upgrade currencies, and they’re one of the only ways to reliably unlock more sharks (and upgrades for them) without eventually shelling out some of your real-world money.
Conveniently, these daily challenges aren’t even particularly hard! If you’re willing to commit five to ten minutes of your day to playing Hungry Shark World, then you can reliably get the currencies needed to keep unlocking new things.
Know Your Food
All foodstuffs are not created equal, which is a constant truth for the Hungry Shark games. In Hungry Shark World, it becomes even more important, especially considering that you’ll be able to eat different things depending on the size of shark that you’re playing as.
The sharks range in size from XS to !!, and that means that what constitutes a “good meal” for your shark is going to be determined by the fish’s size. If you’re playing as a black-tip reef shark, attacking and eating a human is going to take a couple of passes, and certain other sea creatures and objects are going to be downright hazardous. Because it’s a small shark, though, it’s easier for those small meals to keep your shark’s health and boost high.
If you’re playing as the megalodon, then pretty much everything in the ocean is on the dinner menu. To balance that out, though, you’re going to have to eat a hell of a lot more to keep your shark’s health bar higher, and it’s going to require more consistent feeding to gain boosts.
As you unlock more sharks, get a feeling for how they each handle, and what they can eat! It’s the best way to determine which is your favorite to play as.
HUNGRY
One of my favorite things about mobile gaming is how utterly old school it can seem. The HUNGRY letters in Hungry Shark World are deliciously old school; finding and eating those letters within the level that you’re traversing is only ever a good thing.
If you do manage to hunt down all of the HUNGRY letters, your shark will grow, and you will be able to eat everything. Sea mines? No problem. Submarines? Just chew harder.
Of course, these aren’t always going to be easy to find. You can check your map to see where the letters are hiding, but they’ll often be tucked away behind obstacles and in hard-to-reach places. They add a level of challenge to your gameplay since you’ll need to keep eating (oftentimes strategically) in order to even get to the HUNGRY letters, but it’s the ultimate reward if you can manage it.
Balance Your Progress
When it comes time to purchase upgrades, there are two paths you can take: unlock more sharks, and unlock items for your sharks. Both of these carry benefits for your gameplay, but investing too heavily in one can roadblock your gameplay later.
There might come a point where you need a bigger shark in order to progress through a mission or challenge. Alternatively, you might find yourself in need of item bonuses that have been skipped due to spending all of your gems and coins on sharks!
I like to upgrade and unlock things one after the other, back and forth. Your gameplay will be rewarded by doing the same!
Use Your Items
Of course, once you’ve purchased some upgrades for your sharks, be sure to use them! They’re designed to help you navigate environments in new and interesting ways, and that’s not just because the 3D world of this game is so pretty to look at.
For example, you can use the jetpack to leap high out of the sea, coasting across land areas and eating the people there. See? Everything that SyFy original movies taught you about flying sharks is true!
Comedic appeal aside, the items all carry some form of bonus for your gameplay, and even if they look silly, they’re each worth your consideration!
Learn to Use Your Map
Hungry Shark World is a game designed to keep you constantly moving, always active, and endlessly searching for more powerups, more food, and for ways to avoid the many hazards in each of the game’s areas.
However, there’s one feature that you should add to your gameplay as often as you can, purely for how much it can help you in the long run. Get your fingers used to popping up your map of any given level. It will help you to navigate out of tricky areas with only a glance, and also show you where to find the HUNGRY letters!
Embrace Losing
One of the ways that free-to-play games manage to convince gamers to spend a whole ton of money is to take advantage of their frustration. Since the only reliable way to earn purple gems is to spend real-world currency (gem fish are too rare!), then it only makes sense that they’d gate certain things behind the use of purple gems.
The most noteworthy is when you die. If your shark runs out of life, you’ll be given the option of either starting over or spending gems in order to keep going! Unless you’re one of the top Hungry Shark World players on the planet, there is no reason to waste your money on buying extra lives for your shark. Embrace your loss, and start over from the beginning of the level with a clear head, and try not to make the same mistakes that lead to your demise!
Next time you play Hungry Shark World, try some of these tips and tricks, and watch as they allow you to improve your gameplay! These “hacks” can lead to hugely higher scores, more fun, less money spent, and a faster path to unlocking all of the new sharks and items that the game has to offer.