I recently joined a new virtual pet site called Eliyo. The site seems to be less geared towards breeding, and more geared towards battling and leveling your pets in an almost Pokemon-like way. As you battle you gain experience and level up. Upon leveling up you can distribute stat points. Occasionally you may learn new skills and if necessary be asked if you’d like to overwrite existing skills to make room for the new ones. You and your opponents have various elemental strengths and weaknesses, and you can capture wild pets by using prisms similar to how you can capture Pokemon using Poke Balls. There are different types of Prisms with varying degrees of success, and just like Pokemon, sometimes the monsters will break out of the balls (or prisms in this case) or flee before you can catch them.

When you first join the site you’ll be introduced to a few NPCs and told to run a few basic errands. After introductions, you’ll return to the NPC to be presented with 1 of 3 different pets to choose to take with you (once again much like Pokemon and selecting a starter pokemon). I am not sure if these are randomly generated, or if the same 3 pets are always presented at first.

Obviously, looks must be taken into consideration, as that’s the main draw of these types of games, and the genes you have now, will be the foundation for your breeding program and determine your offspring’s colors, patterns, markings, etc. But that’s not all – You also need to look at various personality traits (which thus far I am unsure if they’re having much impact in the game or not as the game is still in Beta.) And lastly at the combat stats, abilities, elemental strengths, weaknesses, etc. It’s a lot to take in — But you’ll get more pets in the future, so just pick whichever one you like best to start with.

Here’s my girl – I named her Kaylee, after a cat I used to have, because her color and markings reminded me of that cat.

As you can see, it provides a lot of information about my “Elon” – it tells me her recent activity and a personality profile, both of which can be useful if you wish to roleplay over on the forums.

There’s a relationship level with my Elon – I will admit I have not read the guides yet so I’m unsure what a lot of these stats effect in-game.

Then there’s the basic stuff like her stats and elemental strengths and weaknesses – It’s a pretty detailed and complex overview about my pet.

After acquiring that first pet, there’s not much else to do except take it out for a test drive. Head out to explore and in the battle arena there will be numerous different locations suitable for your level each with different breeds of pets to battle or catch and each giving varrying rewards.

You won’t be able to catch pets right away. You need to earn at least 100 coins for the most basic prism – the only way initially to earn these coins is by battling.

People also seem to like to hoarde and then markup the price of prisms so you have to get lucky that the shop will have a few in stock by time you save up enough.

I’ve purchased 3, and even when I have the opponent severely weakened, he still escapes my prism…

Elon come in all different colors and patterns. From natural looking to purely fantasy looking creatures.

I really wanted this one too – he looked like me, but he was a different breed, – I’m not even sure if you can cross breed your pets? I’m also not sure if it’s frowned upon, as it used to be in older pet games such as Pony Island. But none-the-less his markings and colors matched mine. I had him down to about 10-15% health and he escaped the only prism I had at the time.

But you just gotta keep fighting and earning money and trying to buy and save up your Prisms. And it gets easier as you get stronger. You no longer die and need to go to the apothecary to heal (and lose your coins in doing so).

As you can see from these shots – the game is extremely similar to Pokemon. – Once you capture another pet, you can breed, and sell or show off your offspring. When breeding the two parents’ colors and genetics and battle stats etc all get passed down to their children.

The images are dynamically generated, and each pet is unique – Over the years this has become the norm – but I remember when that was NOT the case. Pony Island was one of, if not the, first virtual pet games to use dynamic images to actually SHOW you the effects of your genetics and breeding program.

The site seems to load fast – there are some ads on it, but nothing too crazy.

It could do with a more interesting/exciting tutorial.

I like the simple clean and calm green color palette used across the site.

The pet art is very petty too.

Edit: I just captured my 2nd pet – but now I need an herb to breed them and not sure what shop or where to find said herbs at lol 🙂 The new pet is very cute! Has less visible markings than my first pet, but I like the floppy ears and happy expression.

Based on the information I provided above in this review, I would score it as such:

Geeky:  5/5 – Unlike a lot of other Virtual Pet Sites, this one puts emphasis on battling your pets. Breeding is still an option. High production values with art and sounds – Site loads quickly and everything works as it should

Sweetie:   3/5 – Unlike other virtual pet sites, acquiring pets is harder – I do agree this makes it more fun/appealing/rewarding – but there is a downside too in that when you first start out and only have 1 pet you can’t do much of anything. I think this could be remedied by adding some minigames, dressup, scavenger/hunting, and other features.

Concept: 8/10 – It basically is like a browser based pokemon 🙂 It distinguishes itself from other virtual pet sites with the battle system and customization of stats, resistances, strengths, weaknesses, etc – It is in beta and still lacking in a few areas, but it feels like a fun and addicting game already.

Gameplay: 7/10 – The same concerns come up – that it may get repetitive due to lack of features at time of this review. The battling bit is cool. Also they just recently added the ability to buy and sell pets bred by other players. Pets learn moves and level up quickly, making it a rewarding, fun, and highly customizable experience. But it needs some more features to give you a break from battling, such as other features mentioned above that are common to these types of games like dressup, decorating, scavenger, hunting, crafting, minigames, etc. I understand though that the game is in beta at this time – so it is likely some new features will be added shortly.

Story: 1/10 – At this time there doesn’t appear to be much story written for the virtual pet game, which makes it kinda hard to roleplay when not much is known about the world or the pets themselves etc. – In fact, at this time, there are no current threads in the roleplay forum – and I suspect there won’t be for awhile until the creators of Eliyo give us some more info to go off of. – NOTE: I OMITTED THIS SCORE FROM THE OVERALL SCORE BECAUSE IT SKEWED MY REVIEW TOO SHARPLY. But it’s something to keep in mind, if your main attraction to pet sites is the RP – it’s just not in place yet given that it’s still in beta. So you may want to hold off before signing up for this one.

Characters: 5/10 – The monsters themselves are adorable and / or beautiful — but the NPCs, and other characters (or honestly, lack there of), make the game seem a bit empty. The ability to customize our pets, especially in terms of battling makes the character customization high on this one, and the dynamic images and genetics, make it a game where our characters’ genes are carried across multiple generations.

Graphics: 8/10 – The dynamic image technique is a big draw for me to pet games, it might be common now, but as a veteran of these games, I still remember when that was not the case. Dyanmic images ensure every single pet is unique, not just one of a few dozen different “recolors” – It makes the pets feel more personal and allows greater attachment. However, at time of writing there’s only a handful of markings and mutations. Once more markings or mutations or species get added, this would easily score a 10/10 as far as the graphics go 🙂

Music: The game has music and sound effects but I usually play it on mute, so I have not been able to review it yet. I just wanted to leave a note here about that, because I think this is uncommon in these games, so definitely a nice touch! 🙂

Overall: 37 / 50 74% “C – Good Game for Girls”