THE NURSERY
A whole picture house that fits in one hand. Cast a kitten, feed her, warm her, spoon the fisik when the fever climbs, and put on a show when she is well enough to work. She keeps living between screenings.
What it is
A pocket device from a year that had no pocket devices. The screen is thirty-two pixels wide, drawn on film stock, scratched and flickering, and behind it is the one thing a virtual pet is actually about: a small animal who is unwell and who needs you to turn up.
She has four gauges — fed, warm, clean, and how the fever is doing — and they move whether the page is open or not. Come back after a day and she will have drifted. Come back after a week and the company will have got on with it without you, more slowly, and hungrier.
The seven windows
The row of buttons under the brand is the whole film. Close is the close-up: the kitten, the gauges, and everything you can do with your hands. Co. is the company — every cat you have cast, because one lead becomes a troupe. Shows is the nickelodeon, where a well cat earns her keep. Store is the commissary, Props is the prop box, Set is where she lives, and Ledger is the accounting: days survived, coins taken, tricks learned.
Nothing in it is locked behind a wall. The coins come out of the shows and go into the food, and that loop is the game.
Where the save lives
On your own machine, in this browser, and nowhere else. No account, no sign-in, no ads, no upload. Clearing your site data strikes the set for good — there is a button in the film that does the same thing on purpose, if you would rather start the picture over.
It plays best held upright on a phone, which is the one screen shape a 1903 pocket device never had to worry about.