Coming Soon to Second Life: Bento Mesh Cat With Emotive Expressions, Pet-Raising Game, and Both Avatar & NPC Functionality

Here's a pretty impressive preview of Cat Life, a new pet game coming soon to Second Life, perhaps as early as next month. Created by the well-known virtual animal/NPC brand Zooby, you can follow updates by liking the company's Facebook page.

Zooby's Carrie Tatsu narrates this preview, and as you can tell from the video, this cat uses the new Bento technology for highly expressive avatar skeletons.  Carrie tells me the pet-raising game will be just as complex:

"The caring system and token system can be used to receive cat toys," she tells me. "And [there's] potential to ‘gamify’ more with add ons such as cat tag, or cat yoga or cat fishing." Perhaps even cooler than that, "you can be a cat and I can be a cat and we can share our accessories and buy each other litter and food and you can eat from my bowl and I can use your cat nip. Or litter box." 

Yes: Be a virtual cat and poop together with friends.

And once the Animesh system for creating NPCs is released to the official Second Life grid, get ready for a full-fledged mini-MMO for virtual cats:

"Our goal is to allow NPC cats to utilize the same accessories," Carrie tells me. "So it's not a cat avatar. It's a Zooby Cat Life. So I can be a cat, you can be a cat, we can get an NPC cat and all eat together and play together and use toys through an assignment system. It's an experience, not just an avatar."

More info on the Zooby Facebook page.

Comments

[Medhue]

We are very excited about this release. This was not an easy products to make, and it has consumed many months of our lives. I hope everyone enjoys it.

[Carrie Tatsu]

Over 8 months of work and going..almost there though.

[MiaAdeline]

I love cats and SL but this is just too creepy for me.

[Carrie Tatsu]

Not all humans want to take an opportunity to exist as cats. Animesh will allow you to have a cat, or many cats. You can have a house full of NPC cats. Just make sure you keep them happy :)

[Amanda]

Having been a neko for most of my 11 years in SL, this is interesting. I have a Zooby Mesh Cat Avatar from a few years ago. It still looks great but this looks to be another level.