Calling all nostalgic millennials: Neopets is reviving fantastical pet game
School's out, and you're patiently waiting for Internet Explorer to buffer on your family computer. The year? Some time in the mid-aughts. Your destination? Neopets.com, obviously.
Since it first launched in 1999, Neopets has been home to millions of internet users taking care of virtual pets, playing games and spending virtual currency, providing many nineties and 2000s kids with their first foray into online gaming.
While its heyday was nearly two decades ago - it had a reported 25 million users worldwide in 2005 - active user numbers have dwindled, and unrepaired glitches have plagued its remaining fan base.
The discontinuation of Flash in 2020, on which many of the site's features depended, didn't help. A brief foray into cryptocurrency didn't prove able to salvage the site, either.
Neopets on Tuesday unveiled bold plans for the game's relaunch, centred around a new homepage that goes live on Thursday, and new games and new plots starting on Tuesday.
"We want to bring Neopets back to its glory days," the company said in a blog post. The relaunch follows a change in ownership and an influx of US$4 million (NZ$6.3m) raised from investors earlier this year, it said.
Here's how it worked: Choose between an array of dewy-eyed, mythic Neopets to adopt as your own. Explore the kaleidoscopic 2-D world of Neopia through the eyes of your pets, playing mini puzzles along the way.
Furnish your 2000s-aesthetic Neohome. Nourish your pets by grabbing slices from an infinite omelet. Adopt pets for your Neopets, known as Petpets. You get the idea.
The site has changed hands multiple times, with community numbers dwindling to 100,000 daily active users in 2020, the year Flash was discontinued, which caused key features of the site to
Read more on stuff.co.nz
