Do you ever get bored with the repetitive gameplay of virtual pet games? Do you just wish that you can do so much more with your virtual pet, such as using it to explore the in-game world, unlocking various mysteries, and building your own village? With Pakka Pets, you can do all of that!
We gave Pakka Pets Village a go, and here’s what we have to say about this adventure-themed virtual pet game.
First Impressions
Pakka Pets combines the best aspects of two well-known games: Tamagotchi, with its virtual pet caring system and 8-bit characters, and Stardew Valley, a farming simulator cum adventure game with an interactive storyline. Although this adventure virtual pet game has been around since 2016, it’s still a breath of fresh air for most mobile virtual pet lovers who are over-accustomed to bland and repetitive gameplay.
Caring For Your Pakka
When you first log in to Pakka Pets Village, you’ll be greeted by Nelson, and you’ll pick your favourite colour which correlates to the egg you’ll get. After settling in, your Pakka Pet is born! The life stage starts as a newborn, and it grows rather quickly into a kid, teen, and then adult. When your pet evolves, it’s solely dependent on its satisfaction levels – whether you give it adequate food and attention.
There’s an entire encyclopaedia’s worth of food items that you can feed your Pakka Pet which is ranked accordingly from 0 to 3 stars, with the latter being able to fill your pet’s hunger and happiness bars to the max. It’s fairly tough for beginners to get a hold of food items at the start, but you’ll be able to receive free basic to rare ingredients almost every other minute by tapping on the gift icon. Otherwise, you can shop for treats at the store, where Hearts (currency in Pakka Pets) is required.
Tip: Be careful to not overfeed your pet, it may become chubby and get sick!
Training your Pakka Pet is another aspect of caring for it. When you feed your pet healthy food (veggies, salad, fruits) your pet may reject its meal by running away. You’ll need to drag it back to the food item, and it’ll eventually get used to eating healthy food. It’s a rather neat feature with cute animation of your grumpy pet.
Also, If you leave your Pakka Pet alone for too long, its happiness bar will drop and eventually get mad at you by refusing to look at you, no matter how many times you pick it up or pet it. Feed it some happy treats (candy, ice cream), and it’ll be back to its usual self. Then, you can touch it, let it chase you around, and pick it up to earn Hearts.
Cooking For Your Pet
Of course, eating only basic cooking ingredients wouldn’t fill your Pakka Pets’ tummy. By tapping on the second button from the bottom of your screen, you can cook with Mitz, a cute fox who is a chef. With his help, you can drag and drop various combinations of ingredients to cook higher-valued food. It’s not only food that you can cook here, but you can also craft handy items for your Pakka Pet to use for quests. One catch is that there’s no recipe list provided, which can be fun to discover new dishes on your own, but not when you are in dire need of a specific item for quests.
Decorating Your House & Village
To give your pet’s home a revamp, just tap on the second button from the top on the right side of the screen to access the shop. All items you see refresh every two hours, so if you see an item you like, be sure to act quickly! You can buy wallpaper, flooring and decorative items with Hearts.
Without a doubt, Pakka Pets’ defining feature is that your pet can roam freely outside from the comfort of its home. Tap on the Tamagotchi-looking mailbox to level up your village – you can also opt to send your current pet to live in your town, which will decrease the price to level up your village. Each level unlocks various decor and utilities: a Level 2 village gets access to visit Pakka Town, and a Level 3 village gets its own movie theatre, which doubles as a minigame to earn Hearts and other useful items.
Visiting Pakka Town
After you’ve unlocked a Level 2 village, you can place the bus stop in your Pakka Pet’s village and visit Pakka Town.
First, you’ll have access to the town plaza which is dotted with various townsfolk, who you can chat with (each NPC has their unique dialogue – how fun!) and obtain quests from. As you help them complete their quests, you’ll gain Quest Coin, which can be used to unlock more parts of the town such as the sewers, park, foreman’s office and more.
Tip: each type of Pakka Pet has its special set of quests, so remember to visit the town at least once per growth stage to obtain as many Quest Coins as you can!
Our Verdict
Pakka Pets provides a fresh experience for virtual pet owners to do more than just care for your virtual pet. Getting started is a fairly high hurdle for first-time players to progress, but as long as you check in on your pet and plant Turnips, it’s not that impossible to progress.
One small ick with the quests is that there is totally no guidance on crafting or cooking the items required and we really wished that there was a built-in recipe book available, especially if you forget the recipe for food items that you’ve already unlocked. Well, the Pakka Pet community has created this online recipe list, but we still think it’s a big flaw in the game design. If they can have an item list in-game, why not a recipe book?
Pakka Pets is also heavily reliant on microtransactions. To discover all of the Pakka Pets available, you’ll need to pay for new egg types, which cost USD4.20 or 20,000 Hearts per egg. There used to be ads embedded in the game especially when your pet visits the movie theatre, but with its recent update in March 2023, there hasn’t been any ads.
For first-timers, this game is something you’ll get excited about as you get to play as your very own virtual pet and build your virtual pet village. Pakka Pets has plenty of potential to expand on its storyline to become a full-fledged farming simulator cum virtual pet game, and there is still hope that the developers may revive it by adding more features and updating it. With that being said, we would recommend playing Pakka Pets at least once to experience the joy of seeing your pet go about its very own village!
Where To Download?
Pakka Pets is available to download for free on the Google Play Store and App Store.
