Travel back to the 90s where virtual pet keychains were the big thing.  But in Wildagotchi on Switch, you’re not just limited to taking care of just cats and dogs.  In this one, you can care for all sorts of wild animals, like a wolf, panda, giraffe, gorilla, hippo, and even a dinosaur!

The first thing you’ll do is pick an animal you want to take care of, then choose its gender and name.  You can raise multiple animals at the same time, and when you raise more than two to adulthood, you’ll unlock even more!  Similar to other key chain virtual pet games, you’ll select what you can do with icons on the bottom screen.  You can feed your animal and if you see a poop icon next to your pet, press the water drop icon to clean it up.  If your pet has a skull beside it, it’s sick so you must give it a shot.  Turn off the light to let it sleep to refill energy.  You can even decorate the areas to the left and right of your animals with buildings and plants and other things.

To refill the ‘fun’ meter on your pet, you’ll play some mini-games.  Each animal has different ones, and you’ll unlock one at each stage of their life: baby, teen, and adult.  One improvement in this game is that while they are still simple, the mini-games aren’t as boring as in past titles.  You’ll do things like cross the road to avoid cars, jump over obstacles, and play ping pong.

And that’s pretty much it.  I guess the game does what it sets out to do.  There’s not much to it and this kind of game works better on a keychain you can pull out at any time.  Even though the Switch is portable, it’s a bit harder to do that with it.  Of all the games I’ve reviewed in this series (Catgotchi and Dogotchi), this one is the best.

Kid Factor:

Nothing violent or objectionable here.  I’m not sure if you can die in this game.  I didn’t have my pet die in the cat one, but in the dog one I did, so if that happens here, that may bother very sensitive kids.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, but not necessary just to play.  Wildagotchi is rated E for Everyone.

Tags: Game Reviews