Virtual Pet Games

[arcus]

I grew up with Digivices, Neopets, and Nintendogs.

I was a huge fan of Neopets, but I didn't understand the game well enough back in the day to make good progress. I lucked out and won the jackpot at one of the wheels, and proceeded to spend most of my winnings on useless Neohome upgrades. I don't remember my very first account well, but I had an Eyrie, a Chomby, a Grarrl, and I think a Shoyru. While my second account―which I had used up until the buyout―had an Eyrie, a Shoyru, a Pteri, and a Zafara. I got burnt out around the time of the Viacom buyout: I wasn't a fan of the direction they wanted to take the site in with all the advertisements, and at that point I thought I was too old to play it (I was thirteen), so I gave away my account. I tried making new accounts over the years, but I would never play for long. I never did unlock the Lab Ray.

Nintendogs was amazing to little me. The contests, CDs, and the voice controls were great. Alas, there was a point where it felt too demanding and repetitive, so I simply stopped playing it. Same with the Digivices, unfortunately.

While I was in high school, I played various clicker sites: Dragon Cave and a few Pokémon themed ones. I would get a fair amount of clicks thanks to having them in my forum banners. As much as I enjoyed them, I do not see myself getting back into them any time soon.

Other than that, Icepets is really sweet browser pet site, although not very well-known.

Finally, one of the most unique browser pet games is Pixel Cat's End. It's lore-heavy and the gameplay is based on TTRPGs!

I've signed up for both of these thanks to your post. I'm really enjoying them. I'm Arcus on both, if anyone wishes to add me.

Does Virtu.pet offer any languages besides English? I might sign up for it if it does.

[Tommie ΘΔ]

I'm surprised no one's brought up Lioden or Wolvden. I guess they're not necessarily pet games as much as they are animal sims, but they share a lot of the same mechanics. I actually enjoyed playing Lionden a lot more than any other game as a kid because I liked the idea of being an animal and dealing with survival much more than being a human who takes care of one.

Yeah, I was one of "those" animal kids.

I'd love to return to it or Flight Rising or Neopets someday, but I always end up forgetting about them eventually. Its sad tbh, because I really do think they're fun.

I adore lioden and wolvden- :D I still play it and Ive been looking for more games like that honestly. I love the idea of playing as the animal rather than taking care of em

[owlhari]

we love virtual pet sites so much!! our first memories of Being Online are of being on places like neopets and moshi monsters. and we still play petsites a lot, even if moshi monsters is dead and neopets is... different. we've been on flight rising for years, love that silly little dragon game.

but a more recent one that we don't think anyone's mentioned here yet is pokefarm q (link goes to our profile, click our eggs pls) which is another variant of the "click the pokemon!!" genre that we like. there's a ton of cool fakemon they've added, additional mega forms for pokemon that don't have any, and special variants in addition to shinies that you can hunt too.

like this mega, albino, electric type girafarig. beloved <3

[jadefyre]

I used to be on Pure Felinity sooo much when I was younger. Occasionally I'll return for a few weeks, but it doesn't have the same charm to me anymore since I've gotten older. What I do really like about it is that there are real-life genetic traits coded into the game, and the pictures are generated to show those traits!

[Memory]

I grew up on Neopets and Howrse (quite a strange name but it was an okay site lol)! Now I'm mostly into Flight Rising, Lioden, Wolvden, and Lorwolf, though I play quite sporadically. I also have accounts on Dragon Cave and Chicken Smoothie, but I never get very into games that don't give you as much to do with the pets/animals/creatures themselves, if that makes any sense? Like, I like exploring/battling in Lioden and Wolvden, levelling up dragons in Flight Rising, and doing activities in Lorwolf. I tend to be less interested in collecting creatures for the sake of collecting them.

[SleepyCalaban]

Growing up I was only on chicken smoothie because I couldn't find anything else I liked. Fairly recently (like the last few years) I got into more like flight rising, tamanotchi, pokefarm, the final outpost, and Xanje. I actually want to talk about Xanje real quick. I saw someone else mention it in this thread as well!

The reason I would like to speak about Xanje a smol bit is they made a post talking about how they need more players because of servers being quite empty. I'd definitely recommend the game because there's thousands of pets you can collect and a decent amount of extra stuff to do. The community is also lovely and very helpful to new and returning members. As of this comment as well they're doing their Halloween event!

This is Aden and they're known as a Sunflower Rakka they're probably my favorite species/pattern of any of the pets lol

If you're interested the Xanje button in my signature brings you to my referral sign up. :3
Otherwise though I've been mostly on the final outpost and Xanje and just checking in on everything else every now and again.

[myleszey]

My favorite of these had to be Pokeplushies. Later on it rebranded into ClickCritters and dropped all mention of fandoms/franchises, possibly due to their decision to monetize the site and allow people to buy virtual currency for their virtual pets in addition to real plushies of the original characters.

I miss being able to adopt Chao and Pokemon pets, but there's an amazing array of unique critters, and the site is still running since 2007. You can see what my profile looks like (it hasn't been updated since my last login was 2017, whoops!) here!

It's not nearly as in depth as Flight Rising or the other pet-evolution-thru-clicking games, but I spent hours with these little guys. The main goal is just to click on critters and level up. Here's one of mine if you wanna feed em:

Click here to feed me a whole pizza!

[thecreechur]

Growing up I was only on chicken smoothie because I couldn't find anything else I liked. Fairly recently (like the last few years) I got into more like flight rising, tamanotchi, pokefarm, the final outpost, and Xanje. I actually want to talk about Xanje real quick. I saw someone else mention it in this thread as well!

The reason I would like to speak about Xanje a smol bit is they made a post talking about how they need more players because of servers being quite empty. I'd definitely recommend the game because there's thousands of pets you can collect and a decent amount of extra stuff to do. The community is also lovely and very helpful to new and returning members. As of this comment as well they're doing their Halloween event!

This is Aden and they're known as a Sunflower Rakka they're probably my favorite species/pattern of any of the pets lol

If you're interested the Xanje button in my signature brings you to my referral sign up. :3
Otherwise though I've been mostly on the final outpost and Xanje and just checking in on everything else every now and again.

I just used your referral link to sign up for Xanje and I've been playing it all evening!    It's so cool, I like the fact it's pretty mobile friendly too so I can just add it to my home screen and play on the go/somewhere other than my computer

I've just signed up to Neopets again on the recommendation of my friends (one of them has been playing for 22 years :O !), and it's seems the nft nonsense from a while back is gone, and they've managed to restore a lot of the super old flash games!

But yeah I'm glad this thread came up because since joining the indie web community I've been looking for more things to do online that isn't just being on tumblr haha

[SleepyCalaban]

I just used your referral link to sign up for Xanje and I've been playing it all evening!    It's so cool, I like the fact it's pretty mobile friendly too so I can just add it to my home screen and play on the go/somewhere other than my computer

Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying it! When you get a chance I'd recommend exploring the Welcome Board forum if you haven't already! Some people have posts up for free harder to obtain/normally more expensive pets for new comers. :3

[myleszey]

I just remembered a fairly notable virtual pet site: Webkinz!
Notable in that you had to buy a real-life plushie to actually play the game, and your time in the game was limited to only a month or so.

It was also super buggy, which was frustrating when you lost items and progress you had paid for!

Most of the animals had real-life analogues, but I was a fan of the animal I believe was called a "googles" that was kind of a duck with its torso missing.