Hey there! I have been playing the game for some time now and wanted to just dump my thoughts in a somewhat cohesive way. It's also somewhat of a diary to see whether my thoughts on the game have changed because every new virtual pet game deserves as much attention as possible. I have been in love with the concept for two years now and all of this world is fresh to me, so I love to just ramble about it.

Preface

I played the most prominent pet site games and dabble in breeding-based games on occasion. All my experiences are from the standpoint of a player who plays daily between 10 minutes up to an hour a day. I was a part of the beta, and have not backed any of the game and am not planning to in the near future (This is a mostly-positive review, though!). I approach these kinds of sites as creative block antidotes and love being immersed in my own characters. Not only that, but I don't engage with the market in any meaningful way, and usually leave any site that feels predatory and time-consuming (in a bad way). Despite my boasting about things I dislike, I have no suggestions for them, because they already exist in the respective Forum Topics. This is just my dump of thoughts.

Light and Dark of Modern Visuals

I believe it's safe to say that this site looks delightful. The background is amazing, all the custom components of the UI, the responsiveness, I could talk about it forever. I find it so reassuring that this genre is definitely capable to produce fun and creative user interfaces without going down bootstrap lane. The Activities are crystal clear, the things you want to click, are as clickable as can be. With the occasional art incorporated everywhere, I have high hopes for a steady improvement of visuals as time goes by. More NPCs, more cool icons, and hopefully even more visualization of our precious wolves. I really enjoy the style as it also is stylized to the point where other artists can adapt to it more easily! The Custom Apparel section is full of amazing items that could really be items on the site because it's so reproducible. That is definitely a strength emerging pet sites with such features have, so artists, please go at it. Make those wolves flourish - because they really need it.

I am very sorry to say how much the wolves let me down. I believe their poses and design are amazing. They are fresh and a great embodiment of wolves. Making my first two friends was wonderful and fast. I had no issues with it because I already knew what kind of wolf I would love to make, and the Demo is a great tool. They were nothing breathtaking, but cool enough to at least get one Pageant placement (before everyone got their hands of CA hahaha). Where it all falls short are the markings, and that is where I fear the modern visuals. After scrolling through my first puppies and others' wolves, I was greeted by clashing gradients everywhere. While the big color wheel is great, and it definitely works for a game like FR, it feels very hard to look at when gradient markings fill out a considerable amount of your coloring. I think that they can be amazing, and lead to many creative ways to interpret your wolves' identity, but I certainly hope that new additions to the gene pool will not be on the blurry side. It makes the buyable pattern changes rather unappealing to me because I can't find any use for them. I am sure that others love them, but I am cautious still. Finding fitting partners to produce intriguing offspring has been my main drive on these kinds of sites, and even my initial wolves were kind of a disappointment.

Now look at me sounding like a bad father killing their children's confidence. I do believe that there is a lot of potential in the art of the wolves, as the apparel looks wonderful. What I certainly would love would be further clothes fitting the different roles a wolf might take. Let's lean into the RP as hard as we can, because I feel like this world in itself can be very promising aside from being yet another OC generator. I love matching all the pretty critter friends to my wolves as well, and it is apparent to me that collecting all of them will be my main driving point on the site. Obtaining them is not so difficult for now, so I would love to elaborate on the main gameplay loop that I have been experiencing.

Live-Service Fear and Stacking Up Pebbles

Recent discourse on the Moonstone Expansions and Wild Wolf encounters have certainly left me uneasy. Others have voiced their opinions very well, and I do enjoy reading about the many great forum posts that love thinking about how to improve this place. Now, my confidence in the team has dwindled a little, but I remain positive that staff is discussing all the very valid points in through detail. As small as the team is, however, I will not sugarcoat the fact that there are systems in the game that will turn predatory when no actions are taken, and the community is left in the dark.

I got very suspicious when I saw the frequency of “events” that are cycling through every week. I like the concept, yet I quickly dropped the grind with the current Mining Frenzy. It's just not interesting to me anymore, yet I fear that the amount of currency currently present in the game, with Knucklebones knocking at our door, is a dangerous trend that will obfuscate real cost. Everything costing Moonstones is just unaffordable to me, unfortunately, so I never really used them for anything yet. Accordingly, my main gameplay loop is rather bland, slow and noticeably irrelevant. Mining is the biggest contender for feeling like a waste of time while the very concept of it seems delightful. Leaving unprocessed ore in the cart is just silly, and I don't see why it was left in this state of the game. It does make expanding the storage size very appealing, though.

Is it worth the three bucks? Not for me, at least. When designing these games, I urge everyone to think about as many people of your audience as you can when you are making it for a profit. No quick buck is worth the exploitation of people with gamble addiction and neurodivergent folx. Besprinklers are lootboxes, and they cost $4. I respect that mouths need to be fed, but that's how I feel about this. The Moonstone market just doesn't feel stable enough, but I believe it is certain to change. 1MS:~10000P is not 1D:1000T, and this market has a lot of adjusting to do to feel welcoming.

LORE LORE LORE (the good one not the mining one) and the grind™

I. Love. The quests. I was so sad to reach their end, I genuinely believe that this is something that will keep me logged in. I enjoyed the little encounters and dialogue despite the rather cliché framework. For me, it works, however, so I can only hope of a time when I can call one of my wolves thoroughly equipped to fit the Darkspine aesthetic. I would love to build teams fulfilling certain synergies, and I admire the way the team is going with their system, but I hope it's not where it all ends. Please keep thinking. It will be all worth it.

The grinding I dislike, it's bad, it's not fun, it makes me lose all the immersion the quests built up, I was really sad about it. I said it. Click click click click is just not it, and it's what keeps me from the only thing that will let me get more wolf friends. A daily system could fit right into it, but it currently isn't enough. How fun would it be to talk to NPCs again and ask for some work? It's all work, and it all needs time, but I dream of an immersive daily experience that is not mindless. Me clicking Explore will remain a rarity for now. Me talking about Lorwolf lore, however, will not.

Conclusion

Rather critical now, was it? I am sure some of you must be sick of it, haha. But I felt like I had to get it out, despite feeling a little distant from the community. I would love to discuss it all again and again and again, because I have the highest of hopes for every emerging virtual pet site. Dappervolk let me down, so I will be as critical as I can to keep me from removing yet another game from my bookmarks. Thanks! Keep up the good work!

Thank you for sharing your opinion on the game! I just want to add a few things about my perspective.

I personally don’t mind the patterns and the large color wheel. I look at the difficulty of getting “pretty” wolves as a challenge. But this is my personal play style, so other people understandably feel different! However, I would also love to see some more pattens in general, especially some with less gradients to add to the options.

I agree with the current moonstones issue, but like you said, there are already several threads about this. I’m very hopeful based on how responsive the devs have been so far that we’ll hear a proper response soon.

I also don’t really mind the grinding. Compared to FR, the grind seems so much better! (I haven’t played DV, but I’ve heard from its players, and Lorwolf is definitely not as bad as that). I actually really enjoy grinding for WWs in the Campaign, especially while listening to YouTube. I manage the events by doing my dailies like normal, and eventually making enough tickets without doing extra grinding. Because Lorwolf events don’t retire items, there’s no deadline to get enough tickets to get what you want. But again, this is my personal play style, and many players do things differently.

I hope Lorwolf becomes enjoyable for you soon! I apologize if anything I said was offensive or rude.

Very good points, I'm glad to see people aren't afraid to voice their concerns about the current state of affairs, and I do think it bears repeating until some action in taken to make the whole thing less reminiscent of a mobile freemium economy. Three bucks to expand the mining cart is ridiculous given that it's solving a problem the game created itself by forcing you to combine 5 of the same ore into a bar. A more organic approach to this would have given players a box (of very generous size) to store these “extra” ore in, which would have allowed them to continue to stymie the pace at which ore was collected without taking up the very limited space in the ore cart itself. The way it is now, especially with the unannounced and until now unacknowledged switch from pebbles to moonstones to upgrade things (removing any semblance of pebble sink as well), it feels like it is pressuring players to spend just a little money, just here and there… which is a very familiar and often scorned methodology today, for good reason.

I'd like to believe it's just inexperience of the Devs! But seeing as it was a problem that was raised and ignored since (at least) the Beta, it looks more and more like intentional negligence at best. :\

I'm not against the site making money, it needs to keep the lights on, but there are much healthier avenues for a site to go about doing it, especially since we already have a budding monthly subscription feature waiting to be padded out.