By Linnie W. Phillips 
I grew up playing virtual pet games. Before the Petz brand was bought by Ubisoft and slapped on countless Scoopware titles, it represented simple virtual desktop animals with which you could customize and play. They were simple games (you just played with virtual dogs and cats), but they had a lot of Charm. Virtual pet games kind of died out after the Wii era, but that’s why I was so excited to try out the Weyrdlets demo. Developed and published by Weyrdworks, Weyrdlets immediately took me back to those old classics.
The aesthetics and the proposed creatures may be unique, but the basic game here is as classic as possible. The players start by adopting their first Weyrdlet from a number of species, and they are all very cute. While your pets are exploring your base or other areas (the demo includes a playground), you are responsible for feeding and maintaining them. There are typical items like food, water, soap and balls to play with, but you can also get new coins for your pet’s cottage. At least at first there is not much to do, but this is just a demo. If you take good care of your little creatures, they can dig up money that you can use to buy new supplies and decorations..
However, playing with your pets in the game world is only part of the story, and this is where the relative lack of things to do (at least at first) becomes less problematic. Similar to the old virtual pet games, you can leave your Weyrdlets lying around on your desktop while you are busy in other windows. As I type this, my boyfriend Bunbun seems to be having fun reading my preview (or at least browsing it.) That’s the real appeal of Weyrdlets, I think. You can also feed your pets on the desktop and with them spielen.Es so it’s a good thing when you’re on the go while you’re working or browsing the web.
Especially since this is a demo, I can forgive the slightly clumsy user interface and the occasional animation errors. This is a first demo of an indie game, and I’m sure these things will be fixed. What really worries me about Weyrdlets is the free-to-play model. From the start, even in the demo, it hits you with daily tasks and several currencies. It’s not necessarily blatant; it doesn’t hit me over the head with microtransactions or anything. But especially in a cute game that will appeal to children, something like this always seems unnecessary and a little insidious to me. I know it’s not the worst thing in the world, and as I said, it’s not even such a blatant example of this tactic, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I am very happy That there are Weyrdlets and I am curious to see how the final product turns out. I love the idea of having a little buddy on my desk, and as long as it’s easy enough to unlock new things without overpaying, I’m sure my relationship with Little Bunbun will continue to grow. If you want to try it out for yourself, the Weyrdlets demo is now available on Steam, and the full game will be released in a few days, on July 23rd.