That became Nidus Pets, which comes out on 9 November. Before launch, I wanted to write down a few decisions that came from making it for one particular kid first.
Looking after it should feel like looking after something
The old virtual pets got one thing right: the pet lives in real time. It gets hungry while you’re out and sleeps when you sleep. If you forget about it for a day, it notices.
The part I didn’t like was how harsh they could be. Kids can’t always get to a phone, and plenty of adults can’t either. So there’s a pause button for holidays and busy weeks, and the pet waits exactly as you left it.
Tapping a button isn’t caring
Early on, feeding was a single button. You tapped it, a bar went up, and that was it. It felt like clearing a notification.
So each kind of care turned into a small game. To feed it, you work out what it’s craving. Playing means actually playing something. The games only take a few seconds, but you end up watching the pet instead of a bar, and it can tell when you just tap through.
It should be there when the phone isn’t
Phones get put away. A watch stays on. I wanted the pet to be reachable in the moments when taking a phone out isn’t an option, so Nidus has a full Apple Watch app that stays in sync with the phone. You can check in, feed it or play a quick game from your wrist.
Widgets do the same job on the Home Screen, and you can give your pet a pat without opening the app. Walks count too: your real steps from Health earn it experience, which turned out to be a decent excuse to go outside. The step data never leaves your devices.
Finding out who it is
Every egg is a mystery. You don’t pick a species from a list; how you raise the pet decides what it becomes. I wanted the first few days to be about finding out who this little thing is going to be.
The postcards came from the same idea. If your pet is happy, it may wander off on a trip and send you a postcard from somewhere in the world. You can’t make it happen. One day there’s just a card waiting.
A gentler ending
Pets grow old, and I spent a while deciding what should happen then, because this was for a kid.
In Nidus, an old pet retires to Haven, a small town built from every pet you’ve raised. Your first one is still there when you’re raising your fourth. I like that much better than the endings most virtual pets have.
Free, without nagging
Nidus is free. There are no ads and no accounts. There are a few optional purchases, special eggs and a couple of boosts, but every species can also be earned by playing. A game made for a kid shouldn’t keep asking him to buy things.
What he made of it
He likes it. For now his penguin lives on my phone, which means he looks after it whenever he can get his hands on it. He can’t wait for it to be on the App Store, so he can raise it on his own phone instead of mine.
Nidus Pets is out on 9 November for iPhone and Apple Watch. If you raise one, I’d love to hear what yours turned into. More about Nidus Pets.