Walking For Animals

Exercising has never been so enticing. From Platonic Games, Stepets: Walking Pet Simulator has you collect cute animals by walking. There are over 100 kinds of pets to unlock, including a ladybug, a squirrel and a cow. They all live on a lush green island that you can decorate however you wish. While the animals are adorable, and the location is colorful, it’s the walking that leave much to be desired. You have to be willing to do a lot of it to do basically anything.

Cute Gains

All the animals start out in eggs that you will need to grow in an incubator. Walking a specific number of steps helps them grow. For example, 100 steps will hatch an egg. Once an animal has hatched, you need to take care of them. There are three different ways to do that after tapping on them. First, there’s giving them love, shown by a hand surrounded by hearts. Drag the hand in circles around the pet to receive a heart. Second, give them food, represented by a pear with spots. Third, play games with them by tapping the beach call icon. You can play five minigames to earn hearts for your pets. There’s Match 3, 2048, Memory, Happy Hop, and Flappy Pets (similar to the infamous Flappy Bird). I enjoy Match 3 and Happy Hop. Collecting enough hearts lets your pets grow into the next stage of their lives.

They need to be put in an incubator again, and you will need to walk quite a few steps again. In the meantime, you can decorate the island. Not only do you earn hearts, but you also earn coins to spend on furniture. From picnic tables to food stands, Stepets: Walking Pet Simulator allows you to decorate your island without much restriction. You’ll notice some items cost gems, which are earned by watching ads and completing quests. These quests include watching five ads and playing with five pets. Gems are needed to buy eggs and incubators, along with extra land for the island. They’re harder to earn than coins, so it’s best to have at least some on standby. Despite how sweet this game is, it can be a little frustrating.

Growing Pains

I’m not saying walking is a hard thing to do. It’s just that you need to a lot of it to get anything done with your pets. The more mature the pets get, the more steps you’ll need to take to keep them growing. Like, you eventually need to walk for 400 to over 1000. That seems a little extreme. It would’ve been better if there was a gradual buildup of needed steps instead of just jumping right into needing hundreds. On top of that, it’s not guaranteed that the game will pick up on all your steps. You have to keep double-checking if the step count is going up. It’s honestly kind of annoying. Plus, one incubator costs 10 gems, and gems are hard to earn and keep. A little fairness with gems would be nice. Considering how long it takes to grow your pets, the game gets boring.

Stepets: Walking Pet Simulator is an adorable game of raising cute animals of all kinds. To help them grow, you need to walk. Unfortunately, you need to walk quite a bit to get anywhere with your pets. And the step tracker isn’t always reliable. This slows things down to a rather boring level. You have to be really active to make any headway in this game.