Adult Swim’s latest iPhone app pokes fun at the virtual pet genre — particularly the Tamagotchi craze of the mid-90s. My Lil’ Bastard ($2.99) challenges you to care for a malevolent little critter hell-bent on making your life miserable.
Like the Tamagotchi characters, the titular Bastard needs to be fed, cleaned, and…wiped. The Bastard also has an attitude problem, and will frequently break its toys, start fires, and poop all over the place if you don’t watch it closely.
Players must appropriately reward and punish their lil’ bastard in an effort to create the ultimate life form — one who is properly toilet trained and can chat on the internet. The game also includes a slot machine and a knife-throwing minigame, to add variety. A free version is available at Adult Swim’s website.
Tags: adult swim, my lil' bastard, simulation, virtual pet
ngmoco has released Touch Pets Dogs, the latest title to take advantage of the free-to-play, microtransaction-supported gameplay model introduced last week with Eliminate Pro.
Touch Pets Dogs is a pet simulation title with a strong social focus. Players will groom, train, and dress up their own dogs in the single-player mode, and can then go online to interact with other animals. Compatible dogs will form friendships and may even fall in love, resulting in gameplay bonuses for both players.
Similar to the power cell mechanic in Eliminate Pro, gameplay in Touch Pets Dogs continues for as long as your dog has energy remaining in its energy bar. Once the bar drains, your dog falls asleep, and gameplay will only resume once the bar fills again.
The game will give out small packages of energy-restoring dog food every day, but players can also buy dog food at any point via an in-app purchase. A 99-cent package of dog food will give your dog a short burst of energy, while a $29.99 package will allow him or her to stay energetic for a much longer period of time.
Touch Pets Dogs includes seven different dog breeds, including labradors, terriers, dachshunds and, yes, robot dogs.
Tags: Multiplayer, ngmoco, online, simulation, social, touch pets dogs, virtual pet
Offworld brings unfortunate news about one of the iPhone’s most promising upcoming titles. Yoot Saito’s previously announced iPhone virtual pet application Gabo has apparently been denied an App Store release by Apple for unspecified reasons. Unspecified, that is, other than Saito saying that the company “expressed displeasure” in his title.
Granted, there are more than a few things that Apple could have found objectionable in Gabo — the main character’s genetalia-looking umbilical cord is bound to raise some eyebrows, and one of the screenshots on the official website very clearly shows Gabo, uh, pooping — but the news is disappointing nonetheless.
As Saito’s team is now concentrating on developing a Seaman title for the Nintendo DS (or so says a rough Google translation), Gabo has since been put on the development backburner. Luckily, iPhone users may not have to go much longer without having a pooping caveman of their very own — Saito hopes to return to the title in the future and modify its content to suit Apple’s standards.
Tags: gabo, rejected, virtual pet, yoot saito
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