From the description in the Store:
Dive in and join Nemo on his latest adventure. Build a beautiful reef, and make a home for your favorite Finding Nemo characters!
Nemo and his dad, Marlin, set out to build the coolest reef in his class. Help Nemo create a best-in-class underwater retreat, and discover the secrets to building a permanent home for his friends!
★ Continue Nemo's story and adventures beneath the sea!
★ Create and personalize your very own underwater paradise.
★ Make a home for your favorite characters from Finding Nemo including Dory, Gill, Bloat, Bubbles, and more!
★ Find the different combinations of plants and decorations to delight Nemo's friends and other exotic fish.
★ Discover and plant rare seeds to attract extremely rare and mysterious fish.
★ Collect over 50 kinds of fish to enhance your world!
★ Visit your friends' reefs, and compare their collection of fish to your own!
No doubt the social features are innovative and well done, but after an hour's playing, my verdict is that Nemo's Reef is neither fun for a child nor 'paradise' for an adult. This is squarely aimed at 'Farmville' personalities who have nothing interesting to do in their real lives and an inexhaustible budget with which to prop up a trivial online virtual habit.
Strong words, I know. Let's take a closer look:
Uh-oh, a bad start. What's a user supposed to pick here? No explanation. Can't the game be on your device AND linked to Facebook?
At the start and often between levels, sizeable downloads are needed to grab yet more resources - could be frustrating if on a slow cell connection.
At least the characters are getting excited about watching a new coral reef grow in real time....
The main interface - all the types of in-game currency on top, reef types growing in the middle (slowly), menus and controls along the bottom.
One buy one Nemo 'buys' plants, sponges, animals, and so on. Where DO fish keep their cash, I wonder? And where's the store he pays at? Don't tell me Nemo has online banking!....
Algae time? Here starts the beginning of a lot of waiting around for things to happen - or a lot of paying....
As you'll have gathered by now, coral growth can be selectively sped up by paying using in-game currency....
One by one, you advance levels, opening up new types of plant and animal...
One huge frustration is that, when placing a new item, there's little guidance on where you can and can't place it - just a barrage of "You can't..." errors....
There's some social linking in Nemo's Reef, with the idea that you can make online friends within the Nemo world and then go swimming by their virtual reef. Which looks, unsurprisingly, almost identical to your own. Seen one coral reef on a 4.5" screen, you've seen them all etc....
Sitting around while timers count down on my evolving reef.... [FX: taps fingers]
Or you can pay to speed things up. The dialog is misleading though, in that you can't lock IAPs under Windows Phone (e.g. to stop kids buying without your permission) - though you can set a PIN, we'll do a short tutorial/demo soon on the site.
And so to the in-app-purchases of in-game currency. Do people really spend £50 on virtual coins/pearls that can only be used in a trivial waiting-and-growing game on their smartphone? Really? The mind boggles. And, as ranted earlier, I'd like to see severe restrictions on IAPs.
Production values and coding are fabulous, as you'd expect from Disney, from graphics to sound to overall design. However...
You can download Nemo's Reef for free here in the Store. But I'd advise against it. Your kids will be bored with it and, assuming that you're of the target mindset, you'll end up poorer. In time and money.