Tamagotchi-inspired Rive Game

This is our team submission (Me, Megg, and Anna) to the Rive x Contra Interactive Character Animation Challenge.

You can test the interaction here: https://www.plainlysimple.studio/moomin-rive-game (This works for both desktop and mobile)

It’s a Tamagotchi-inspired experience based on Moomin, Megg’s American Bully Dog. Moomin isn’t my dog, but I’ve played with him, hand-fed him, and taken turns in potty training him. And boy, does potty training a puppy sure 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 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 with 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.

We finished the whole experience within 2 weeks

This was made possible because of Rive's features and approach. Rive's joysticks, constraints (which allow switching between user control and animation control over the character easily), and state blending (such an underrated feature in my opinion), all made the character feel alive. The AI agent helping with the game's logic and mechanics was super helpful. To make the character feel alive, a delayer script plugged to the cursor tracking was necessary (again with the help of the agent).