AniMate v0.1 Released

After its initial announcement back in May, Insomniac197 has finally released v0.1 of his homebrew game, Animal Mate or AniMate for short. Using the familiar blue Kacheek, one of the creatures from the online game Neopets (I played that game for years…), as the main sprite for his game, Insomniac197 has been polishing his tamagotchi-like creation.

The goal of the game is basically to take care of your pet, but instead of the usual old way of feeding it, taking it to the vet, bathing it and putting it to sleep, this time around, you will have to play mini-games in order to get those tasks done.

For example, when your pet suddenly generates a thought bubble which implies that it wants/needs a bath, in order to do this, you will have to play the mini-game “Turtle Dodge”. To feed it, you’ll have to complete “Leaf Feast”, and to play with it, you’ll be having a go with “Dance Off”. Completing (or failing) these games will affect your pet’s attributes.

At the moment, there are only three available mini-games, one for each action (eat, play and wash). However, there are extra spaces that have been included which we are assuming will be taken up by future mini-games that the game’s maker comes up with.

After playing the game for a few minutes, I have personally found the clean lines of the graphics very pleasant. The mini-games themselves have also loaded and ended very smoothly with proper transition screens in between each. You also don’t have to worry about getting lost in this game as instructions and controls can be easily found, thus making this game very easy to get into. It has also not frozen up our resident PSP so far.

The general controls of the game are very basic, with the D-Pad used for navigation, the X button to select an option, the circle button to cancel or go back a screen, the Start button to pause the game and the Select button to take screenshots. Mini-games have their own controls which will be shown to you at the beginning of each game.

In the meantime, some of the things that Insomniac197 has added to this ‘brew to includes the following:

• TrueType font support added (see my fontloader library)
• ‘Leaf Feast’, ‘Dance Off’ & ‘Turtle Dodge’ mini games completed!
• Sounds/Music added
• ‘Dance Off’ now allows custom music tracks to be added (in .ogg format)
• SND0.AT3 added to the EBOOT
• Stat table added to the game menu
• Screen for WiFi functions added (nothing implemented yet)
• New screenshots added to the Screenshots page
• Various polishing all round
• Thought bubbles added to the game menu to help you decide what your pet wants you to do

But then don’t just take our word for it, but download it right here and tell us what you think.

Download: [AniMate v0.1]
Discuss: [Forum Release Thread]

After its initial announcement back in May, Insomniac197 has finally released v0.1 of his homebrew game, Animal Mate or AniMate for short. Using the familiar blue Kacheek, one of the creatures from the online game Neopets (I played that game for years…), as the main sprite for his game, Insomniac197 has been polishing his tamagotchi-like creation.

The goal of the game is basically to take care of your pet, but instead of the usual old way of feeding it, taking it to the vet, bathing it and putting it to sleep, this time around, you will have to play mini-games in order to get those tasks done.

For example, when your pet suddenly generates a thought bubble which implies that it wants/needs a bath, in order to do this, you will have to play the mini-game “Turtle Dodge”. To feed it, you’ll have to complete “Leaf Feast”, and to play with it, you’ll be having a go with “Dance Off”. Completing (or failing) these games will affect your pet’s attributes.

At the moment, there are only three available mini-games, one for each action (eat, play and wash). However, there are extra spaces that have been included which we are assuming will be taken up by future mini-games that the game’s maker comes up with.

After playing the game for a few minutes, I have personally found the clean lines of the graphics very pleasant. The mini-games themselves have also loaded and ended very smoothly with proper transition screens in between each. You also don’t have to worry about getting lost in this game as instructions and controls can be easily found, thus making this game very easy to get into. It has also not frozen up our resident PSP so far.

The general controls of the game are very basic, with the D-Pad used for navigation, the X button to select an option, the circle button to cancel or go back a screen, the Start button to pause the game and the Select button to take screenshots. Mini-games have their own controls which will be shown to you at the beginning of each game.

In the meantime, some of the things that Insomniac197 has added to this ‘brew to includes the following:

• TrueType font support added (see my fontloader library)
• ‘Leaf Feast’, ‘Dance Off’ & ‘Turtle Dodge’ mini games completed!
• Sounds/Music added
• ‘Dance Off’ now allows custom music tracks to be added (in .ogg format)
• SND0.AT3 added to the EBOOT
• Stat table added to the game menu
• Screen for WiFi functions added (nothing implemented yet)
• New screenshots added to the Screenshots page
• Various polishing all round
• Thought bubbles added to the game menu to help you decide what your pet wants you to do

But then don’t just take our word for it, but download it right here and tell us what you think.

Download: [AniMate v0.1]
Discuss: [Forum Release Thread]