Okay, so - I don't know how many other people here donated to the Kickstarter for Tattered Weave and it's not yet in open beta, so I...kinda can't exactly throw a link at y'all and screech with excitement. But oh my gosh, it is so cool. It's a browser-based pet game - the concept (probably a bit more thoroughly fleshed out here: https://beta.tatteredweave.com/ ) is, you're a student at Hope University. The town of Hope is...one of the few places still stable and existing properly, after the Cataclysm (which happened a thousand years ago). Go too far outside town, and you end up in the Tatters, where things become increasingly less stable and unreal. It's believed that nothing can actually keep existing for too long if you go too far into the Tatters! Which is why it's such a big deal that a whole new race - the Kith - just up and wandered out of the Tatters one day. The Kith are the 'pets' of the game: at eight distinct types (so far), you can pick from Ferrecs, Bumblebunnees, Bleppers, Pluffs, Flipperfins, Lumence, Scalyx and - with a premium item to help catch their attention - Gemwings. The Kith and the university have come to an agreement of sorts - Kith who're interested in learning more about human society go to a specific spot in the Tatters to ally with students who're up for the challenge of teaching a Kith (or two, or ten) about what's left of human culture. And as you teach your allied Kith, it grows - each Kith has three basic stages (and one newly-introduced premium stage) that you can toggle between as they're unlocked; your Kith buddy starts out looking very neotenous (the Gemwings start as fluffy gryphonic birb babies), and can end up looking pretty dang majestic. There's quests and crafting is, currently, being slowly implemented. There's ways of earning premium currency that don't require you to plonk down RL money, and nothing that's locked behind the premium currency is something that you need in order to progress the game - it might make certain quests easier, or make your Kith look really dang cool (or, in the case of Gemwings, give you a novel Kith), or give you more room for stuff. But you don't have to have it. The developers are really good about interacting with the community - they want things to be good, and they're often asking for responses (and they flat-out say "hey, if you find a bug, please tell us so we can fix it and also see if you can replicate it"). There's a minor incentive to post in the forums (in the form of a bit of regular currency) but no requirements to do so and there's a whole thread for "okay, I got that quest that asks me to go post in the forums, here, I did the thing and I now return to lurking forever". The community is very friendly and interested in helping each other out - there's a whole subforum dedicated to "hey, do you need a thing? I might have that thing! Drop me a note if you want to trade", because of how much of a time-sink it can be to get things for quests or for cooking (the one crafting thing that's been implemented so far) and the understanding that not everyone's up to sitting on a shop for however long it takes for That One Thing to show up. I am just really, really thrilled about this game, and I hope it goes into open beta soon so I can drag friends into fluffy monster hell with me.
Dragging this back from the depths, because Tattered Weave is in open beta these days and it has gotten so much better since then! I...actually forgot the site existed for a couple years, so I'm not nearly as far into fluffy monster hell as you'd expect. But! The devs have continued to be really good about interacting with the community and trying to be open and support diversity and accessibility - when someone went "hey, it'd be nice if those of us who need mobility aids and hearing aids IRL could have a clothing item for the doll-maker that reflects those things", the response was "you know what? that would be nice, and here you go: wheelchairs, hearing aids, two types of canes (one for mobility and one for visual impairment), and prosthetics, in the full range of colours, available for a relatively nominal fee of regular currency in the premium shop". There's also the ability to set yourself to vacation mode, which means you won't lose rep for days you're not logged in. Cooking has been fully implemented, and so has tailoring. Gardening's rumoured, but hasn't been implemented yet. There's some stuff that's still Kickstarter-exclusive, but it's pretty much just decorative stuff and being able to access the behind-the-scenes forums. Stuff like recipes and the items you need to get premium Kith are available for sale in the premium shop. If anyone's interested, let me know - I can share my referral code with you, if you want.
