If you know what GoPets is, chances are you grew up on the internet in the early 2000s. For those unfamiliar, this virtual pet website (which unfortunately shut down in 2009) let you adopt a virtual pet, and have them roam around your desktop as you completed other tasks. Weyrdlets is a game that adopts much from the world of GoPets, evolving its core concepts for the modern era.
On entering Weyrdlets, you’ll adopt a virtual pet companion. They’re at home on a digital island, which can be decorated with various accessories, but you can also minimise this landscape and have your pet Weyrdlet roaming around your desktop while you work.
In this mode, you can still look after your pet, but the focus is on multitasking. Go through your workday, and your Weyrdlet will always be by your side, occasionally getting in the way of your tasks, but mostly being a cutesy little companion to gaze at.
Your Weyrdlet will blob around your screen in loops, staring at your work, wandering around, and eventually demanding food, a wash, or a play. In idle fashion, you can tend their needs, letting them run free without too much interruption.
And in this mode, Weyrdlets is absolutely delightful.
I was thrown back several years by the design of this game, as it adopts so much from its virtual pet predecessors. Weyrdlets is a lot like a lighter, slower version of GoPets, with a more refined reward system. It encourages you to take your time raising your pets, checking in every day for new rewards and opportunities, but it isn’t pressing in approach.
You don’t need to play every day to get the most of out of Weyrdlets. You can take comfort in popping in every so often, checking on your little guy, completing some tasks, decorating your space, and then you can leave them be. That’s an important point to make when approaching this game, because it isn’t supremely dense.
You can’t spend hours and hours with Weyrdlets. That’s not the point of the game. It’s all about having a tiny companion to watch over, and having patience for its growth. It’s the sort of game you might boot up at the start of your day, to unleash your little companion on your desktop, and then you’d leave them to wander. There’s even little productivity tools built into Weyrdlets, so you can also use the game to keep track of your to do list, or start a timer for Pomodoro focus.
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As mentioned, Weyrdlets isn’t an extremely dense game. Its systems are quite pared back, and actual gameplay largely consists of light decoration, idle exploration, and giving your Werdlet an object to interact with (you can also send them on mini-adventures, or to a nearby park).
But in its novel approach to desktop gameplay, Weyrdlets maintains a real sense of charm. For those looking for a daily distraction, each Weyrdlet is a wonderful companion. And with a silly, cartoonish art style, it’s easy to form a connection with your new virtual pet. It isn’t long before you’ll be watching on with pride as they dig for hidden secrets, or wander aimlessly around your screen.
Weyrdlets really is a joyful little game, and one that feels perfect for those who long for the days when GoPets and Tamagotchi were the franchises of the day.
A PC code for Weyrdlets was provided and played for the purposes of this review.
