Ovipets is pretty fun. So far, the only aspects of gameplay I've gotten into is adopting from the Adoption Center and breeding them together without any particularly ambitious goals other than just getting pets that I find appealing. I mean, I did research a species and generate a pet once, but overall it's not worth it to me to spend credits since I know they're difficult to get apart from spending real money or the "turning other people's eggs" thing, and that latter option I'm also reluctant to get into because I'm not good at getting into the social aspects of games.
I have my quibbles with the game, it's definitely one of those games where you have to do a lot of mindless non-entertaining clicking (to turn eggs and feed pets), but overall it's still a very fun game because of all the different breeding possibilities, and the fact that breeding is essentially its only mechanic has its perks. Like Anoua mentioned, it is nice to not have to worry about other things and just focus on that.
I can definitely see the frustration of keeping all the pets fed or risk losing them. It's not the worst for me because I don't have an enormous number of pets, but I have been frustrated by this in the past. But now I devote slightly more time to virtual pet sites, so it's not as bad. However, I too would never want a game to control my life - if I had so many pets that it took an enormous expenditure of time and effort to feed them, I doubt I would be able to maintain interest in the game. So I think I will try to not accumulate an unmanagable number of animals.
I'm not sure if I will ever play this game "seriously" the way some people do, making projects and doing ambitious goals. Also, it seems to me the "go-to" goal is breeding pure pets, i.e. pets using pure fully-saturated colors such as #FF0000, but I honestly think most pure pets look kinda ugly most of the time except for white and black, especially if they use more than one pure color. It's a pretty universally agreed on principle of graphic design that you don't want to use hyper-saturated colors very heavily in most contexts. It's not really a big deal because obviously I don't have to try to breed pure pets if I don't want to, but it just sort of bothers me on a mental level. I feel like there should usually (though not necessarily always) be some correlation between a pet's "value" and how nice they look. Imagine if on Neopets, Maraquan and Darigan pets were a dime a dozen, but Split pets or basic colors were super valuable. Wouldn't that be a little weird?
There are some okay-looking pure colors (the gem colors look nicer for example) and pure pets can look good. But I guess it just creates some dissonance because so far, my experience with the game has been that one of my favorite things to do is breed pets with interesting and harmonious color schemes, whereas the "objectively" valuable pets are usually kinda garish. I know this sounds overly negative and it's not that big a deal, but it's just a complaint I have. Unlike on Neopets, I don't really have a "de facto goal" (which on Neopets would be a cool painted pet) because I already know I don't like pures.
It's not a completely bad thing though. For the most part, I like to be just focused on breeding pets that I personally like regardless of their "value". It just makes me feel a little more discouraged from pursuing this game more heavily I guess.
(I didn't see anything in the rules against replying to an old topic, so hopefully this is OK!)
