LET’S PLAY: CUTE PETS (2024)

Sometimes the title of a game makes it pretty obvious what you’re gonna get. Buy a game called ‘Minecraft’ and you’re probably gonna get an experience that contains ‘mining’ and ‘crafting’ (but we don’t have time to fact check if that’s true, sorry). So when we downloaded the Cute Pets by Blockception map from Minecraft Marketplace we were expecting to make a bunch of adorable animal friends.

So would it surprise you to learn that Cute Pets is actually a surreal odyssey into the human condition, explored through the medium of ancient Chekoslavakian poetry? Well, yes, it would surprise you, because that’s not true. Obviously. No, this is actually a Minecraft adventure all about adopting cute animals. Phew!

Meet Medium Dog! In a fun coincidence, our nickname in school was also Medium Dog! If you replace the word ‘Medium’ with ‘Go’ and ‘Dog’ with ‘Away’.

Anyway, you’ll meet Medium Dog within a few seconds of starting this adventure, as you’re given a brief tutorial on how to adopt a pet, feed a pet, play with a pet, make a pet sit, make a pet stand, and put a pet to bed.

Once you’ve mastered the basics of looking after a little animal chum, you’re yet loose on the streets of Pawbell. No offense to whatever rubbish place you live in but Pawbell has it all. There’s a reptile house, a cat cafe, and loads of people to talk to!

Saying that, some of the people do make some slightly outlandish claims…

But you’re not reading about something called ‘Cute Pets’ because you wanna talk to humans. Ewww, absolutely not–bring on the PETS ALREADY.

Luckily, adopting a pet is simple. You start off with one adoption certificate and can get more by collecting paw coins that have helpfully been left lying around everywhere, giving you a good incentive to explore every inch of the map (and hopefully not destroying the local economy).

Once we’d filled our greedy pockets with as many paw coins as we could carry, it was time to choose a pet! An agonizing choice indeed…

Like our old friend Arachnid-Fellow once told us “with great pet ownership comes great responsibility” (or something like that–we weren’t really listening to be honest). You can’t just dig a hole, pop the duck in it, then go to the movies. No, you have to take GOOD CARE of your pet, you monster!

Luckily, Pawbell is a town that doesn’t lack for shops where you can buy all sorts of wonderful necessities and accessories for your pet. Even if we quickly get jealous that they’re not for us:

After our fiftieth warning to stop playing in the cat play area, we purchased some food for our pet and bought them a bed. We were feeling so confident that we’d basically mastered being a pet owner at this point that we went ahead and adopted the teacup pig too!

But why stop there? Surely a third pet won’t be too much hassle? But which one to pick…

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that the message ‘Teacup pig is hungry!’ was being bellowed at us while we were admiring other pets. Don’t be a neglectful pet owner just because your Minecraft.net article is late again–prioritize feeding and nurturing the pets you already own before adopting fifty snakes. Learn from our mistakes.

Once you have met your pet’s needs, you’re free to explore Pawbell, while your animal companions adorably follow you. They’ll even keep up if you zoom around on one of the many bikes.

In fact, we’d recommend exploring properly before choosing the pet that’s right for you. You don’t wanna snap up the first animal you see, only to find your dream pet is waiting right around the corner!

For example, we thought our jaded eyes had had their fill of cuteness, and that we might as well spend the rest of our lives staring at a concrete wall. But that was before we found these: