There are two different colored shells for this pet, one with pink highlights, and the other with purple highlights, but I have no idea if the programming is any different between them. They let you chose between a variety of female and male dogs at start (there are like 8 total, which seems a lot), and then you can raise them. Apparently they will also talk to each other and play/have puppies, but I unfortunately only own one, so I have not been able to test this.

After picking up one myself, the most immediate thing I can say about them is that they’re really hefty and feel lovely. There’s a good amount of weight to them (but not too much!), and the screen is nice and large. The buttons are almost clicky with how much feedback you get when pressing them, and I just really like the case design overall; there’s even a dedicated sound button! This one is super fun to carry around! As is usual with Nanos, my pet can walk across multiple screens, and chases butterflies and runs next to her doghouse. There’s also a fence in the background of one of the screens. Each time I exit a menu function, the game shows me the face of the dog I chose, and then zooms out to show what she looks like now. This is a nice feature, and helps to remind you which dog you chose.

One of the major drawbacks, though, is that as far as I can tell, there’s no way to raise a second generation without connecting to a second device, and the prices for these aren’t great right now. Because of that, although I did enjoy playing with this one, it eventually got a little boring and I turned it off. There isn’t a whole lot of growth, it lacks different age stages, and without the ability to have a pup, it seemed kind of pointless after a while. I would like to pick another one up in the future and play it again, but until I find another good deal, it’ll have to wait.

Video of Nano Puppy family gameplay

Functions Some of these don’t go across the top and bottom of the screen like in other pets, but have you scroll through a menu on a different screen. They also have an alarm function on the clock screen.

• Stats – There are two branching stats options: the first shows you the sort of info you’d expect to pop up by pressing the “mode” button on an empty screen (name and age of your pet and the personality you chose), while the other one contains the more immediate ones (hunger, happiness, sickness, and education)
• Feed – Contains dry food and drink options. These aren’t the usual food/snack options, because in fact they have two separate meters and must both be filled for the pet to be happy. I suppose one is representing thirst, otherwise it wouldn’t make much sense to have a snack option.
• Wash – This is only for cleaning poop, and the pet will refuse it if is not needed
• Medicine
• Family connect – I don’t have another one so I won’t be able to test this, unfortunately. At least not yet
• Read book – This is for the education meter
• Play game (kick the ball into goal) – There’s only one game here and it’s pretty simple. I press the square button repeatedly when playing, otherwise the ball flys off into the distance. Not sure why I need to press the middle button, but it works and makes the pet happy. The game will repeat each time you win or lose and you can stop it at any time by pressing the circle button.
• Baby – shows an animation of a baby getting licked by puppy. Not sure what that does. It’s represented by a stroller icon in the menu, so my working theory is that either this tells me what stage of growth the puppy is on, or it lets me switch between the pets I’m raising (if there are multiple allowed).