Pet Game Design

Recently I played the game Dragon City (on facebook) and one thing I particularly liked about the game is the mechanism for making the pets progress from baby to adult. You feed them to make them grow up, but it's not one of those annoying systems where you have to feed the pet every X amount of time to prevent it from getting sick or dying. Instead you can feed any pet whenever you want, because food functions as the pet's experience points. I think this would be awesomely compatible with a ...

I don't know if this idea is new in general, or just new to me and someone else already thought of it. But I love time management games (such as Ranch Rush), which are like the non-combat version of a real-time strategy game (such as Warcraft/Starcraft). I also like speedpuzzle minigames ranging from Freaky Factory to Vasebreaker. The two share a structure where each level is a mission with its own goal or multiple goals, and within each mission the player may gather resources, build up infrastructure ...

Since I am currently looking for a position as a designer on a pet game project that is getting started, I thought I would make a blog entry to introduce the different types of pet games I would be interested in creating. I'm mainly interested in three categories of game:

1. Single Player Breeder Tycoon Sims

2. Single Player RPG where the player uses a deck of pet cards or a small army of pet units on a tactical battlefield to fight

3. MMO games where ...