This is the latest pet from TopSecret Toys, which lets you raise 3 bunnies simultaneously! If you’ve played the Cryptid pet, this works pretty similarly–you’ll start off with one bunny, and slowly unlock the others as you play along, though you will have to wait longer for the second and third on this one, and won’t have all of them until over a week has passed. This is great if you prefer to play these for longer instead of just a few days. One of the things I particularly like about the three different pets is that they do all have different lifespans, meaning if you lose one, you don’t loose all of them. I went through a period with this toy where I wasn’t able to take care of all of the bunnies at once, and I lost the second and third one. I was able to restart them without any issues, but my main bunny continued on without resetting! I love this, since if raising three pets is too much for you, you can always just ignore the others and focus on the one you like (go ahead, I won’t judge you).
Each of the three bunnies as has two growth stages: child and adult, and they have slightly different personalities, which means they have different animations for the various interactions. They’ll get two games as a child, and two different games as an adult, except for the third rabbit which just has one. That’s a total of nine games! And these aren’t clones of previous devices, either–I’m always impressed with how many different types of games they can come up with that utilize the small two-color screen, and four buttons (one of them is a snake clone!). When you switch between your game choices, you’ll be choosing between lovely icons that illustrate which game you’re going to play, and several of them have short intro animations as well.
Just as with the others, you can feed, clean, discipline, train, play games with them, and put them to bed. There’s a medicine function as well, and it always has really cute animations, but my bunnies never get sick for some reason. I suspect it’s because I’m prodigious about cleaning up poop, which would probably make them sick if it stayed on screen. This pet does use require discipline as a meter, which means you will sometimes have to discipline your pets for no reason other than to raise that number. I’ve talked before about how this isn’t really my favorite mechanic, but I suppose it’s a trade-off for not having to miss care events like you would with a Tamagotchi. In the Tamagotchi pets, if your pet misbehaves and you don’t notice in time to discipline the pet, it counts as a “care mistake,” and you’re then penalized (usually by affecting the outcome of your pet’s growth chart). These pets don’t really penalize you for missing things, but that also makes them much easier to care for over time, so I guess it’s a wash.
These bunnies are pretty hard to kill, and thus fairly easy to care for. I did manage to lose two of mine with some extensive neglect, as noted above, but you can just press a button to restart them, so it’s not a huge deal. I have to say that although I loved the Cryptid model they released around Halloween of last year, I’m glad they didn’t repeat the requirement of having to play a game in order to win them back, because I was really bad at those and they often took me several tries. Also, the games will give you happiness points even if you don’t win them, which is a great touch.
To be honest I don’t really have anything bad to say about this pet. It’s a nice culmination of all the features that have been used in previous pets, and it’s cute and fun to play with. I like the way it features previous pets as little Easter eggs in some of the animations, and how each of the bunnies has a different personality. The black and white screen is clear and beautiful as always, and I’m always impressed by how many sounds they manage to squeeze out of the cheap little speakers on the back. If you like bunnies, this is an excellent pet to pick up!
