I have tried a lot of pet sites in the past, and most of them were rather forgetable.
The first one was Neopets, and I still log in to collect interest, but it has changed so much, it is more the sunken cost that keeps me doing that. I haven't really checked out any other thing on the site.
I was playing sylestia, but for some reason my computer simply will not load it anymore, which is strange because my brother, who lives next door and uses the same internet, can access it. I found it fun, and it was a sort of unique take on petsites where you would explore using your pets and could find wild pets and capture them. It had a variety of pets from dragons to horses to cats and dogs as well as other types (not 1:1 but based upon those species) and the breeding system was more complicated than FRs with recessive and dominant genes and it was a lot more restrictive in that you can't (from what I remember) change the species of a pet and it was much harder to give genes to (and once you gave a gene to a pet, it locked that pet out of having other genes applied). It was more focused on breeding to get the pets you wanted rather than taking an existing pet and applying scrolls/potions to them. It also allows you to create custom pets, but I can't quite remember how it worked.
I play gryffs, which is a lot slower paced than FR and has a lot less to do, but I love the art style, and the community is very nice. It is all about griffins, as you might have guessed. There isn't a whole lot to do, and updates are really slow due to there only being two people working on it. The breeding system works off of a hex color system, like Sylestia, so it can be harder to predict what colors offspring will be, and it can be harder to produce good breeding pairs. The markings system allows for one single gryff to have every marking in the game (there is a player who I think goes out of their way to breed gryffs with every single marking) and it also has an opacity setting that allows you to create fades that can drastically change how a gryff looks. at 100%, markings will cover anything underneath them and and you will get that marking's color only. As it starts getting less and less, the markings beneath (or the gryff itself) will become more visible and the various colors of the markings will start mixing.
It has no gender and any gryff can breed with any other gryff, and gryffs are born as adults. Without using breeding tokens, gryffs can only produce one gryff a day, but breeding tokens cost site currency (not premium) and are relatively easy to come by.
I also play chicken smoothie, but as others have said, play is not really the right word, because it is more a pet collecting site than anything else.
Beastkeeper was another site I played, and it was interesting, but I found it after it was already pretty much abandoned I think, so as interesting as it was, it had too many issues for me to want to keep playing it.
I played Aywas for a while, but it had an issue with out of control inflation and felt like it was too artist oriented for me. IE, there would be art contests that would give out a lot of site currency and special items that couldn't be obtained elsewhere. It wasn't bad, just as a non-artist, it got discouraging to me, because most site items and site pets were worthless.
Khimeros is another site I played, and there are a lot of similiar sites (I believe they were started by the same people), though this one is owned by someone who has been talked about for wanting to pay artists with FR currency, and who sold KS items for Khimeros currency (and I would name them! I just can't remember their name right now. Onyx! maybe that was it? It was an O name and I think four letters at least :P)
Leayphs is run by the same people who do Gryffs, but it has more to do and has more species of pets. I tried it, and it just didn't 'stick' with me. It wasn't bad, but I preferred gryffs.
There are a lot of other sites, but I think one of the biggest issues is that most of them were started as 'passion projects' by individuals who didn't realize exactly what it would take running a site that thousands of users use every day. Nor that turning your passion project into a job is a fast way to make you lose any passion you might have had for it. There is also the issue that I believe a certain site owner would create sites, get what they could from them and then abandon or sell them and move on to create another pet site, leaving a trail of pet sites in their wake. (it was the owner of Aywas, I believe, but I don't know much more, just little tidbits that I heard here and there)
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Re: Other pet sites
(Anonymous) 2025-06-03 12:33 pm (UTC)(link)The first one was Neopets, and I still log in to collect interest, but it has changed so much, it is more the sunken cost that keeps me doing that. I haven't really checked out any other thing on the site.
I was playing sylestia, but for some reason my computer simply will not load it anymore, which is strange because my brother, who lives next door and uses the same internet, can access it. I found it fun, and it was a sort of unique take on petsites where you would explore using your pets and could find wild pets and capture them. It had a variety of pets from dragons to horses to cats and dogs as well as other types (not 1:1 but based upon those species) and the breeding system was more complicated than FRs with recessive and dominant genes and it was a lot more restrictive in that you can't (from what I remember) change the species of a pet and it was much harder to give genes to (and once you gave a gene to a pet, it locked that pet out of having other genes applied). It was more focused on breeding to get the pets you wanted rather than taking an existing pet and applying scrolls/potions to them. It also allows you to create custom pets, but I can't quite remember how it worked.
I play gryffs, which is a lot slower paced than FR and has a lot less to do, but I love the art style, and the community is very nice. It is all about griffins, as you might have guessed. There isn't a whole lot to do, and updates are really slow due to there only being two people working on it. The breeding system works off of a hex color system, like Sylestia, so it can be harder to predict what colors offspring will be, and it can be harder to produce good breeding pairs. The markings system allows for one single gryff to have every marking in the game (there is a player who I think goes out of their way to breed gryffs with every single marking) and it also has an opacity setting that allows you to create fades that can drastically change how a gryff looks. at 100%, markings will cover anything underneath them and and you will get that marking's color only. As it starts getting less and less, the markings beneath (or the gryff itself) will become more visible and the various colors of the markings will start mixing.
It has no gender and any gryff can breed with any other gryff, and gryffs are born as adults. Without using breeding tokens, gryffs can only produce one gryff a day, but breeding tokens cost site currency (not premium) and are relatively easy to come by.
I also play chicken smoothie, but as others have said, play is not really the right word, because it is more a pet collecting site than anything else.
Beastkeeper was another site I played, and it was interesting, but I found it after it was already pretty much abandoned I think, so as interesting as it was, it had too many issues for me to want to keep playing it.
I played Aywas for a while, but it had an issue with out of control inflation and felt like it was too artist oriented for me. IE, there would be art contests that would give out a lot of site currency and special items that couldn't be obtained elsewhere. It wasn't bad, just as a non-artist, it got discouraging to me, because most site items and site pets were worthless.
Khimeros is another site I played, and there are a lot of similiar sites (I believe they were started by the same people), though this one is owned by someone who has been talked about for wanting to pay artists with FR currency, and who sold KS items for Khimeros currency (and I would name them! I just can't remember their name right now. Onyx! maybe that was it? It was an O name and I think four letters at least :P)
Leayphs is run by the same people who do Gryffs, but it has more to do and has more species of pets. I tried it, and it just didn't 'stick' with me. It wasn't bad, but I preferred gryffs.
There are a lot of other sites, but I think one of the biggest issues is that most of them were started as 'passion projects' by individuals who didn't realize exactly what it would take running a site that thousands of users use every day. Nor that turning your passion project into a job is a fast way to make you lose any passion you might have had for it. There is also the issue that I believe a certain site owner would create sites, get what they could from them and then abandon or sell them and move on to create another pet site, leaving a trail of pet sites in their wake. (it was the owner of Aywas, I believe, but I don't know much more, just little tidbits that I heard here and there)