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Hello, HibiTomo: a pet that lives in your hand

· 3 min read
Raúl (netraular)
Creator of HibiTomo

Hi, and welcome to the very first HibiTomo devlog. I'm a solo creator building a tiny handheld gadget with a little color screen and a few buttons, and inside it lives a virtual pet in a cozy little world you can visit anytime. Think of it as a modern, warm take on the Tamagotchi — a creature you raise that grows to be uniquely yours.

Concept art of the HibiTomo room

The dream is simple to say and lovely to chase: a pocket-sized companion you care for a little each day, who grows into a creature shaped entirely by how you looked after it. Feed it, let it rest, play with it — and watch it become something you'll want to remember.

What's working so far​

It's early days, so this post is really about foundations. But there's already something you can wander around in, and that feels like a big first step.

  • A cozy room. The heart of the whole thing is here: a warm top-down home for your pet. You can drop furniture into it and arrange the space how you like. Seeing that first little room come together — pet in the middle, a few pieces of furniture around it — was the moment this stopped being a sketch and started being a place.
  • More than one room. You can switch between rooms, which opens the door to keeping a few different homes and giving each its own feel.
  • First weather experiments. I've started playing with weather so the world feels alive rather than static. Very rough for now, but the little world is beginning to breathe.
  • A store and inventory. There's an early in-game shop for buying decorations, plus an inventory to hold what you've collected. Items already carry rarities, so some finds feel a bit more special than others.
  • Rough minigame prototypes. A few bite-sized activities exist in prototype form. They're scrappy and held together with tape right now, but they prove the loop of "go do a little thing, come back to your pet" can work.

Honestly? Still foundations​

None of this is finished. Edges are rough, art is placeholder in places, and lots of the big ideas I'm most excited about — like the care-driven evolution that decides who your pet becomes — are still ahead of me. But the bones are here: a room, a pet, a world starting to fill in around them.

Follow along​

This is post #1 of many. I'll be sharing progress as it happens — the wins, the messy bits, and the features slowly coming to life. If a cozy pet that lives in your hand sounds like your kind of thing, stick around. There's a lot more to come, and I'd love to have you here for it.