Girls & Lifestyle Games · 30

Virtual-pet games are tiny habit machines: check in, care, wait, return, and slowly become emotionally invested in a collection of pixels. The history behind the category adds another layer: Paper dolls were already popular long before digital dress-up games, making swappable outfits one of the oldest 'loadout systems' in play. Decorating games prove that moving a chair by ten pixels can consume twenty minutes with dignity.