This is our team submission (Me, Megg, and Anna) to the Rive x Contra Interactive Character Animation Challenge. It’s a tamagotchi inspired experience based off of Moomin, Megg’s american bully dog. Moomin isn’t my dog but I’ve played with him, hand fed him, and took turns in potty training him. And boy does potty training a puppy sure does take a lot of patience, and I mean a LOT. Moomin’s a good boy, sometimes a naughty boy, and sometimes a bad boy. I’m not a dog person and the experience has been a little bit frustrating (especially when Moomin refuses to listen 🙄), but also rewarding, and overall sparks joy. And that’s the goal of this Rive app, to share that whole experience with Moomin to anyone who plays around with the app. We tried to capture Moomin’s mannerisms when he eats, when you pat him, and he really does flop to the ground when he refuses to listen. We wanted to make the digital Moomin feel as alive as possible. And if we’ve done our jobs well, we hope you’ll be so engaged that you forget it’s an app, and feel like he’s a real digital pet. I’m not sure if we can win the challenge because there are a lot of amazing entries (but hopefully we do, and Moomin gets a share, of course, if we win) but even if we don’t, if we’re able to make people playing with the app feel a spark of joy in a world that feels uncertain as ever, then I feel like we’ve already won. Test it here: https://rive.app/s/CvJQJr-eGk6PN7W46_8-KA/embed?runtime=rive-renderer

We’ve made this specifically for the challenge, so we didn’t have the time to optimize for a mobile experience. This is only optimized for the desktop experience.

Hope you’ll enjoy the experience, and let me know what you think in the comments.