Yes, the animals die. But the person you’re really being cruel to is the friend you’ve tricked into thinking they killed it! That’s the point of this prank App. If you’re into mildly morbid practical jokes, you’ll love this.

There are a buttload of Virtual Pet Apps out there, and none really interest me. I had a Tamagotchi (or three) back in the hayday (like 1997), but it never went beyond that. I’m a grown-up now and so I have a real pet.

Here’s a quick rundown of the features of this App, before I go spilling my opinion all over everybody.
-Pick from 3 different pets (Cat, Dog, Raccoon?)
-Pick from 3 different locations (backgrounds)
-Choose style of and timing of pet’s demise, depending on pet.

Screenshots

There are also some features that are simply there to make the whole Virtual Pet thing more believable, Wash your animal or Feed your animal. I mean, you also get to name it, so that’s nice. Especially if you name it after the friend that you’re planning on tricking into thinking they’ve murdered your poor digital doggy/kitty.

OK so here’s my opinion: when it boils down to it, I’m not a prankster. I know there is an audience for this App, so I still tried it out. I think that even people who will get a hoot out of tricking their friends in this way, regardless of my opinion of them, deserve a slightly more feature-rich App if you’re going to ask them to pay for it (even if it’s only 99¢).

I think that Pet Tricks, as it is now, would be a fantastic version of Pet-Tricks Lite (for arguments sake, lets say that for the ‘Lite’ version you only got one death, the boring lay-down-and-die one, and the death-timer is always set at 30 seconds). I think that if the developer made a more robust and feature-rich game, they might actually swing this around from one-trick pony into something kind of awesome. Add more animals, many more ridiculous Deaths, and it could be worth the price. Besides, everyone loves watching digital things die.