Mini Monsters
A downloadable game
Relive the days of the 1990s pet game craze with Mini Monsters for the Playdate Console! Built to mimic the games of old, you will have to take care of your pet through out the day as it continues to play in real time, even when your not!
Mini Monsters is designed to consume very little battery and is intended to be left open and idle just like a dedicated virtual pet would be. However this does not mean you always have to leave it open, feel free to play other games, but don't forget to check back because Mini Monster waits for no one!
Take care of your Mini Monster by feeding and playing games with it as well as making sure they stay nice and clean and get to bed on time! Keeping it happy is the key to success!
Features:
- 12 different monsters to evolve and take care of, all with their own traits
- 24 borders and 10 backgrounds to chose from
- Runs in real time, even when you're gone
- Designed to consume low battery and be a idle screen, as well as a active game
- 3 mini games to play with your pet. A love letter to the original mini game, as well as an additional memory/skill based gam and crank based game.
- Adjustable monster sleep times
- Crank to pet your monster!
- Pause/Freeze your monster if you can’t play for a long period of time
- Evolve into different monsters based on your level of care
- All the 'gameplay' you remember from when you were a kid!
How to Play
Baby
The baby phase is the first phase your mini monster will begin in after it hatches. This phase only last's 1 hour, but serves as a tutorial and will require a lot more attention than its later evolutions. It is recommended to keep the game open for the entirety of this phase (but not necessary). Afterwards the times between needing care become more infrequent as your monster grows and evolves.
Evolution
There are six total evolution stages. Egg->Baby->Child->Teen->Adult->Tombstone. The type of evolutions you get is directly tied to how well you take care of your monster. The better the care you give your monster, the less attention its evolution will need. Each evolution takes roughly 24 real time hours (excluding baby).
Petting
At any point on the main idle screen, you can use the crank to pet your monster. You can do this as many times as you like, but it will only increase happy hearts once per hour.
Stats
Check on how your monster is doing in the stats screen. Here you can see there age, weight, hunger, happiness, and discipline. Check this screen often to see if your monster needs any attention.
Feeding
The feeding screen lets you feed your monster either a meal or a snack. Meals(Cheese) will increase your monsters hunger meter, but they will refuse the food if they are full. Snacks(Popsicle's) will increase your monsters happiness but will also increase their weight. Be careful not to give your monster too many treats or they might become overweight and get sick!
Mini Games
Play games with your monster to help keep them happy and healthy! There are two games to chose from:
- Guess - A classic in the pet game sphere. Simply guess the direction your monster is going to face by pressing left or right. You have 5 chances to guess correctly, and must get at least 3 correct to win.
- Mimic - This time your monster will show you directions, and then you must remember them and repeat them back using the dpad. To win, repeat back the directions your monster gives you 5 times, each time with an extra direction to remember. You can make up to three mistakes before losing the game.
- Nomnom - Fruit is falling and you need to help you monster catch it by using the crank to move them left and right. To win you must catch at least 5 fruits.
Playing a game flawlessly will max out your monsters happy hearts.
Medicine
If a 
image appears on screen it means your monster has become ill. Use medicine to cure them of their sickness, but be careful not to give them medicine when they’re healthy or they may get upset.
Clean Up
Monsters need to use the bathroom just like everyone else, if droppings appear on screen be sure to clean them up right away. The longer droppings are left on screen, the more likely your monster will get sick. (Updated to use the crank!)
Lights
Monsters have a strict sleep schedule of 10pm-10am (Your playdate local time). Monsters get nightmares when they sleep with the lights on so be sure to turn them off when they fall sleep, the sooner the better! Your monster will automatic turn the lights on when it wakes up.
Discipline
Sometimes your monster will act out and require discipline. You will know if your monster needs to be disciplined if it beeps for attention with full hunger/happy meters, or refuses to eat or play games despite having empty hunger/happy meters. Be sure to discipline your monster when needed or it may evolve into an unruly monster, but also be careful not to discipline them when they are not misbehaving!
Settings
The settings menu lets you toggle between a bunch of different options. Here you can change/toggle your active border, background, ui color, clock, battery, and monster sleep times. Settings is also where you can clear/reset your game if your monster has passed, or just want to restart.
Alert
When your monster needs care attention, the icons representing the required care will start flashing, as well as play a audible beep. Icons that can start flashing for care include Feeding, Games, Medicine, Clean Up, Lights, and Discipline.
Pause
Using pause will freeze your monster in its current state. You can use pause as long and as often as you like, but your monster will not grow, and you will not be able to play with it. This is useful for those who need to step away from there monster for long periods of time.
Tombstone
Mini Monsters are designed to live for around 2 weeks, but with proper attention and care, can live to be much older. As long as you keep your monster happy and healthy, and respond to it's needs in a timely fashion, it will stick around for a long time. If/when your monster passes, you can view its final stats in the stats menu, and restart the game in the settings menu.
Evolution Chart
Update 1.3
- Updated the launch and title cards graphics
Update 1.21
- Fixed various visual bugs
Update 1.2
- Added the long awaited crank mini game 'Nomnom'
- Restarting your game will now maintain your previous settings
- Other minor fixes and improvements
Update 1.1
- Specific icons will now flash when your monster needs that specific care now, instead of just one icon to represent everything.
- The old alert icon has been changed to a settings menu
- Borders moved to settings
- Backgrounds moved to settings
- Restart Moved to settings
- A Banner for top and bottom have been added (can be toggled in settings)
- Battery power display (can be toggled in settings)
- Clock over any background (can be toggled in settings)
- UI Color toggle for battery and clock (in settings)
- Custom sleep hours (can be changed in settings)
- Full in-game instructions/help
- Evolution chart
- Pause function for those who need to step away for large periods of time
- Playing a mini game flawlessly will now max out happy hearts
- Idle animation is now more interesting
- Minor graphical changes
- Crank to pet your monster on the idle screen
- Clean up now makes use of the crank
- More backgrounds have been added
- Title card is now more interesting, and displays the name of the game
- Default background / border / banner has changed
- Fixed simulation bug rolling over from a month with more days to a month with less days
- Other various minor updates and changes
- Fixed various minor bugs and issues
Extra Credits
- Monsters by Curtis Alderson
- Borders by Lettercore - https://lettercore.itch.io/
- Icons by PiiXL - https://piiixl.itch.io/
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $4 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- We've launched on the Playdate Catalog!Jul 16, 2024
- Catalog build updateJul 06, 2024
- Very Minor Update 1.21Jun 28, 2024
- Update 1.1 is LiveJun 03, 2024
- Potential Month Roller Over BugJun 01, 2024
- Crank Action PreviewMay 30, 2024
Comments
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looks super cute! is the game finished or do you plan to add more monsters and stuff over time?
Hey sorry for the late reply. Currently this is the finished game, theres always a chance for more monsters but atm there are no plans for such. Unfortunetly im not the person who makes the monster's so its not as easy for me to add in more. You would not want to see the terrible looking monsters my coder self would make haha
Hi! Love the concept and have a few quick questions. Your page says "feel free to play other games, but don't forget to check back because Mini Monster waits for no one!" Does this mean that the game keeps track of time passing when its closed? Id be interested in knowing.
Also, you say that the sleep schedule is 10pm to 10am. Would you consider adding a setting to change this? My work schedule has me waking up at noon, so I would like to be able to change it to be something I can check on when I wake up without being penalized.
Lastly, You say the game is optimized to use very little power when its running, so that you can basically use it as a replacement for the lock screen. What type of battery life can you expect when leaving the game running?
Thanks!
Hey there! Sorry for the late reply. You are correct, the game keeps track of time even when the game is closed.
I am actually looking to add that exact feature in my 1.1 update, for that exact reason :D
So in my testing it was anywhere from 14-20 hours. It'll never give you the battery life of just having the playdate suspended, but I run at a very low limited frame rate, and do updates very infrequently. I tried a good amount of other methods but they ended up adding little to no extra battery life for what was being given up, and in some cases used more battery.
Ever since the PlayDate was introduced, I had high hopes that someone could make a Tamagochi-inspired game, and this is pretty much what I had on my mind. Great job, I'm sure that it took a lot of clever planning.
That said, as someone who is heavily invested in v-pets in general (and who has a drawer full of them), I'm aiming to provide some feedback, which I find to be crucial in order for anyone to properly enjoy Mini Monsters:
Thats about it from me for now, but I've only played about a day or so. I love the concept and I hope that there are many updates planned, because this is certainly one of the most impressive PlayDate games I've played.
Great job and thanks for your efforts! I can't wait to see what more you've got in store for Mini Monsters. And I'd defo support a sequel.
Hello, and thanks for the feedback! :)
- I was considering a pause function like in the digimon X v-pets. I will add it to the list of possible updates. As someone who had to test like 20 different 90's vpets to make this game. I feel ya lol.
- I think your just dealing with the baby phase. The baby phase lasts one hour and is intended to trigger things very frequeuntly as a teaching moment. After you evolve to child, you instantly go up to 45min+ between times aheart drops, and longer for poops. After that evolutions from child should generally just get better and better up to 90min(if you do best care), and then much lower if you neglect your pet. I studied tamagachi very hard to see how they did it.
TLDR: After baby phase it should become the idle game you expect.
- I will consider a faster way to increase hearts, but this is pretty intentional as even losing a mini game is still beneficial to hidden health.
- I love the digimon battles, but I would probably make a seperate vpet game if I were to add that. I know theres alot of people who wouldnt want the battles aswell, and I wouldnt want to force it on people who don't want it. I had to make this decision a bunch as I kept wanting to put in chao and monster rancher stuff aswell lol.
I'm currently working on a first update, so stay tuned. As well as added instructions on itch (and prolly a pdf) that explain baby/evolution/death and the evolution chart.
Thanks so much :D
This is adorable!!! It's exactly what I wanted 😭
Do you plan to add new content in the future?
Thank you!! 😊
I am compiling a list of suggestions and feedback and am hoping to do some sort of updates in the future. As to exactly what the updates will be I can't say just yet.
And thank you! Hope you enjoy it!
Could you please add sound for the alerts??That would be awesome insted of looking and checking visuals for alerts.Thank
Mini Monster should triple beep at you when it reaches 0 hunger, 0 happy, when it poops, when it needs discipline and when it falls asleep. I tried to avoid having it beep every hunger/happy heart as it got a bit excessive, and in my studies the original virtual pets worked the same way. I will add beeps per heart loss as a possible update addition.
Really cool game, can't wait for it to be published!
Btw. since this game is intended to be kept open, would it be possible to add option to have time diplayed in some of the free space? After all, Playdate is a kinda Game&Watch and many people keep it on their desk to display time. Would be neat if it could still serve this purpose while this game is left running idle. For me, that would make the difference between actually running this game all the time and intending to play it but always forgeting I should visit my pet and provide care.
I love this idea. I'll have to mull over how I can fit it on screen nicely. I can't promise this will be in at launch but I would like to add this in. Maybe even as a border option.
Neat idea. I'm down to try it. I hope you can expand on the idea further, in the future, on another game perhaps, to keep people's interest past the 1 or two weeks people tend to spend on virtual pets.
I just so happen to have a list of ideas for a more expanded pet game that takes more advantage of the playdates inputs, but it would be another game using the groundwork from this game. This was alot more work than anticipated lol :D