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I played Santae for a handful of months and while the updates are daily, there really hasn't been much of any substance added. Mostly just more items and cash shop stuff. Even the newer features are just reskins of the old features. What there is to do is locked behind hours long timers that you have to lower with items, but they have so many events that you're expected to use these items en masse to get anywhere with little time to breath or save up. They stated early on to be anti-FOMO, but in practice they seem to be more annoyed by that statement than anything. When users expressed burnout, the threads were deleted and the owner said the game wasn't about people's feelings. They were caught using AI art and retaliated against the whistleblowers before finally admitting it was true. As soon as the outrage started to die down and new users were coming in the post about the AI was unpinned in spite of people asking for it to stay up and the art still being used. When things start to get tough the owner goes on gift bombing sprees with emotional quotes and complaining that he can't have fun anymore without upsetting people and that just feels very manipulative.

Maybe Santae can give what they've promised eventually, but as it stands right now I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I think the owner should step back and let someone else do the PR and that rather than constantly berating users with events, just release small and consistent updates to build up the game's base as the rpg it was promised to be. In spite of thousands of users signing up for beta only a couple hundred are on at any given time.

I've been a player of GC for over a year now, and sadly it is not the same experience as it was back then - so I can't imagine how an even older player must feel.

Suggestions in the channel for it on their Discord server go largely ignored by staff, when it comes to improving things like the slowed economy, game and class rewards, or further adjusting the rarity rates in shops onsite. If not ignored, it isn't always a productive conversation and nothing is said besides it's being worked on which can be frustrating. Those already existing issues were worsened when they made referral codes renew much faster, without fixing the reported problems prior. Site lag/slowness has always been an issue, which was also worse after this. Despite people saying they'd love to donate for a better server to help with this, it's refused in favor of coding to try and help.

It is much harder for a new player to make NP now compared to when I joined, even. Those lucky enough to have gotten in early are wealthy onsite, yet will try to nickle and dime you on trades (speaking from experience). Game and class rewards were great for the longest time, and then they nerfed them; some favorite classes no longer worth taking. For games, even featured ones, you'll more often than not end up with mostly codestones - despite many pleas from users to adjust this.

Their token warehouse feature is nice, and lets you do things that you can't on regular Neopets; such as paint alternate colors, get more inventory space, and name pets with special characters. It is easiest to get these tokens in the beginning, and cost scales as you buy them. The most popular one gets you a pet slot, with the current cap being 300. People are mostly trading for names these days, as opposed to colors.

The community has lost a good bit of its charm, again because of needed changes not being made. Problematic users are not always dealt with appropriately, and continue to cause issues for others, making it feel like Site Team vs Users at times. Again, many suggestions and escalations have been made by users about this (and wrongful freezings) to no avail.

While there is a lot to do in terms of dailies, collecting, restocking, etc I would have a hard time recommending this site to others at this point in time. You need NP for a lot onsite, and it is just not that easy to make it now. GC is a few years old, so up and down cycles are expected, but it's not being alleviated in any way and it doesn't make me feel hopeful.

Feel free to check out the available pet species and colors here, no account needed! Click me!

If you'd like to experience Santae for yourself, you're more than welcome to sign up with my referral link. You get access during this beta, and I'll send you some goodies to help get started!

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I've been a member of Santae for about 2 weeks now, and absolutely love it despite the listed cons. I've been a member of sites like Neopets, Gaia Online, Grundo's Cafe, and Subeta before this, but those all felt a bit dated after a while and I was glad to find something new. Just sad I missed the Kickstarter.

Santae has a lot of appeal with the art, the pets, and the community. It being pretty new and still in beta (at the time of writing), it makes it a lovely time to jump in. Not much has been missed joining now, and if you are into collecting like myself - they have a strong stance against retiring items permanently, which is a big relief.

Pets do not starve or get sad, so no need to worry about feeding them or them becoming depressed or sick. It really is a game you can play casually if you'd like, and there's no penalty for skipping days. The economy is in a decent state even with regular and premium currency, though trading and auctions have yet to implemented and could sway this later on. Questing is usually very fast and you can mindlessly do it with Youtube on if you'd like. Users can sell from their own shops, but you'll make decent currency just from quests even if you don't.

All of that being said, as stated in my cons it certainly is not perfect. There have been bad eggs in the community from time to time that have resulted in changes needing to be made, and the site can sometimes feel a little cluttered with the way the menu's are done - something that is actively being adjusted. Community events can go by a bit quickly, but they aren't impossible to finish or buy the rewards for by any means if missed. If Discord isn't your thing, it may feel a little isolating because the forums aren't as active as the server.

All of this being said, I'm having a ton of fun with Santae so far and don't see that stopping anytime soon.

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.