Neopets Keeps Trying To Pull Me Back In (And It May Finally Be Working)

I've often been tempted by the siren song of a return to. Every time there's some news about the once-great virtual pet game — the Switch rumors, the NC pet styles, the -inspired — I always toy with the idea, mention it to my friends and fellow former kids. We always seem to come to the same conclusion: it sounds like a fun idea, but our adult lives don't always have the space for the daily check-ins necessitated by raising a virtual pet. However you slice it, I'm just not ready for another Neopet right now.

But the latest news out of Neopia might just be the perfect thing to get me back on the grind. Not daily, of course — I'm too busy writing about Neopets to adequately take care of them. But the next release sounds like it's of a totally different nature, and could bring old players running back to the game in droves. It's already caught my interest, and apparently, I'm not alone.

After 15 years an avid Neopets player returns to the world of Neopia to see what has changed, what has stayed the same, and what was most surprising.

The newest project isn't an online virtual pet-raising game — it's a tabletop RPG. It's currently part of a Kickstarter campaign that's raised over $140,000 at the time of writing, more than tripling its initial $40,000 goal. The initial release will include a core rulebook, along with a campaign module entitled. In other words, it's a complete package, including everything you need to get started with the game — and for me, it's incredibly tempting.

Simply put, playing a TTRPG would take up a lot less of my time than playing the online version. Instead of having to check in on my pets every day, I could plan a session every couple of weeks (or even more irregularly), play as long as I or my group wanted, and then forget about it until our next scheduled time.

That's only helped by the TTRPG's flexibility, which is greater relative to both the browser game and to other tabletop systems. There probably won't be any such thing as