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Santae is a pet site that seems wholesome from the outside, but a lot of the inspiration for the art such as the NPCs comes from AI and the artists have been paid very little. The owner also previously owned Lurapets, a pet site that used art without permission from many artists.

Tattered World stands out from other pet sites by being more story-driven where you're required to collect items to complete quests and unlock more areas. There's also a crafting system where you can cook, make items for quests, or create and dye clothing.

NPC Social Aspect

I found myself getting attached to the NPC characters, which was nice because they're required to progress in the game. Most of them have their own shops as well.

Every time you complete a quest from an NPC, you gain a reputation point. After reaching a certain number of reputation points with an NPC (I believe it was 75), you'll unlock a quest where you'll gain a Secret from them. These Secrets can then be used to unlock new areas, and thus new shops and NPCs. It's also a bit similar to Animal Crossing where you get to see more unique dialogue the more you bond with NPCs.

In particular, I really liked how NPCs could post in the forums alongside the community. Outside of quests, a lot of the storytelling and lore is done through NPCs making forum posts, which I thought was pretty interesting.

I enjoyed completing quests for the NPCs, but some of their Unique quests asked for rarer items that can take a while to show up for in shops. However, you can speed this up a bit by putting items on your wishlist and then getting lucky by having another player gift them to you This happened to me a lot of times since generosity is encouraged in this game with its wish granting system.

Feedback

My main gripes with the game are its low playerbase and slow progression. It takes a while to grind out quests and increase reputation points. Granted, it's not supposed to be fast but I was eager to unlock the newer areas. If you're even more impatient than me, you can use real life money to buy gems to unlock new areas. You can also buy more cosmetics with these gems.

I'm a little bummed that Tattered World didn't gain the same traction that Flight Rising and Santae did, since I believe it's a solid virtual pet site overall. And I feel like a lot of its issues could be solved with a larger playerbase. More players means more people to help out with quests and more people to engage with in general.

Despite its smaller community, the players who are active are very friendly and eager to help new players. It's fun to learn about the NPCs and it is pretty satisfying to find the items you need to complete quests. All of this is without even mentioning the battle system and mini games, which are also decent. Overall, I've been having fun with Tattered World. I think I'll continue playing it since I appreciate the community and all the interesting lore the game has.

I've been playing PSP for a year now (with some breaks in between) and I've really enjoyed my time with the game so far. I almost have everything unlocked, until more are added of course. I adore the fact that Ben (the dev) is constantly updating the game and making it better. It really just feels like a passion project and a true labor of love, and honestly that's extremely refreshing to see. The art is adorable and charming, the flavor text is fun and witty, and the whole game is just very close to my heart. I can't recommend it enough.

If you do happen to check PSP out, you'll find me as Mischa (#3256) on the game.

Santae has absorbed my free time between work and chores. There's questing, herding, First Edition name gossiping, and fishing to do. A lot of the meta gameplay is on the beta Discord channels instead of on the site servers, but the potential is so palpable. Everyone is really positive and hoping for greatness out of this pet site. The ability to morph your pets at will with dusts (color palettes) or figurines (species AND color) grants a lot of flexibility without commitment FOMO. The collections on site do leave a bit of FOMO for figurines: need more sources for the non-magical toys that every player wants to have to 100% their profile. Beta updates are nightly, which shows the staff is determined to meet their roadmap that was laid out in the Kickstarter demands.

I am an alpha and beta tester of Santae, and wanted to share my thoughts

Flight Rising is a web-based pet game, similar to Neopets, originally funded by a kickstarter, and released in June 2013 by Stormlight Workshop upon reaching their donation goals. It is about raising, breeding, and dressing up dragons with thousands of players playing at almost any given moment. It has games, trading and auctioning, forums, among many other mechanics to reach these goals of customizing and breeding. I have been playing this game for about a couple of weeks now, and I quite enjoy it because of the high amounts of customization it allows for. It lets me relive the web games I used to play growing up and I enjoy the games mechanics – I find it super interesting for a game to have forums still built into it and it’s incredibly cool that this game still so heavily relies on social interactions such as trading and auctions.
While this game is very entertaining to me, through further digging I found multiple instances of the game’s administration using their position to be transphobic or racist with little repercussions – instances where trans and BIPOC players are banned for “misconduct”, even when these players have not interacted on forums before or have had little interaction with other players. The game has many canonically queer and BIPOC characters, however criticisms of this diversity say it feels more like “corporate queer profiteering” – making queer characters as a means to capitalize off of them rather than to show genuine diversity in their game. The game takes a lot of influence in character lore from mythology and cultural histories, which allows for players to review what they’ve released and to critique what was done. Through looking through these forum threads, developers take criticisms from players in the threads, especially from people of the community they’re taking influence from, and adjust the work that was being done to listen to accurately and sensitively create lore for the dragons and their world.
These claims have almost all had a response from the game and its developers. Complaints regarding an ablest and transphobic programmer, Thrage, arose in 2014. He was removed from the production team in 2017, after making more comments besides trans women and disabled players. His account can still be viewed, but it is blank and cannot be interacted with. In response to a member of administration making a post about “all lives matter” in response to the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement, the site came out with a public announcement denouncing what he said, removing him as administrator, and turned their 7th year anniversary into less of a celebration of the game’s longevity and more into awareness on anti black racism, providing the players with resources on places to donate and to educate others on racism.
This game relies on social interactions, thus leading to a lot of sociocultural influences in the game. Critiques and general comments made in suggestion forums influence the future development of the game. These comments allow for people to give critique on the accessibility or inaccessibility of the game, and to raise concerns about any of the game’s lore or certain biases that the developers may unconsciously or consciously have. This creates a space where feedback is responded to and acted upon instead of ignored or hidden. However, developers and admin are historically seemingly given more leeway, as seen with the site’s response to controversy around different developers. While the critiques of the game don’t inherently affect every player’s gameplay, certain players are unfairly targeted for termination under “misconduct”. This can lead to players in marginalized communities feeling uneasy that they could randomly lose access to the game due to hateful biases.
Other aspects of the game include customization – through account customization and character customization. Account customizations include badges for your account – badges that show off different aspects of your identity and different interests, allowing for diversity to be represented in not only the characters through their design / lore, but also through customization of how you present yourself in the game. This can aid in creating a sense of community among marginalized communities, especially when these communities struggle with representation overall, and when these communities have been targeted by developers of the game before. “Customization” also refers to the social influence that players have on the game’s development. Players can directly give feedback to developers and the updates being released, which influences the lore of the game as well as the games literal mechanics, getting feedback on the accessibility of the game itself.
Based upon this, I would recommend this game, but not without going in blind – I’d recommend players who are interested in this game to do some background research in the history of the game’s development. Some people are comfortable with the idea that a lot of people who helped found the game had ideologies aligning with white supremacy, however those who may be affected by the biases that come from that are usually not. While these biases and influences are not obvious and may not noticeably affect gameplay to some, as Flight Rising has denounced certain hateful acts made by their developers / administrators and has created canonically diverse characters, they are still a part of the game’s history.

If you love MLP, breeding games, or community-run adoptable/art games through the forums then ponyisland is absolutely worth a try in my opinion. It's a sleek and responsive site with adorable art thats been around since 2010! With an active community still buzzing around on their forums to this day, it's a great pickup if you haven't given it a go yet.

Do note that upon signing up you will be given a Trial Account. This trial account has limitations and cannot access all features that paid accounts can, but they do still have enough access to the site to get a good idea of what its about. To gain access to the site, you must upgrade to their subscription of 6 or 12 months. Failure to subscribe will result in you no longer being able to play on your trial account, although you can still login and click around.

There is a good sense of progression; being able to slowly earn currency to upgrade your facilities, lower vetting and food costs for you ponies, unlocking genes for generated ponies and more you play through the game. There is an active community on the forums for idle chitchat and many adoptable shops if you enjoy collecting art/characters. You can also join an association which is similar to a guild on Neopets, they get their own private forum and its a great way to look for additional help, tips, and meet new people.

Along with being able to customize your pony with the many wearable items the game has to offer, they also have a unique tattoo system which allows you to make custom markings on the pony as well! Sort of similar to how Flightrising allows you to make custom skins. There are some cute examples of this the pony Scribbles, a mascot of one of the larger associations called PI Resources. You can see they have added a pencil mark on the flank of the pony and a part around the ankles that makes their hooves look like pencils.