Tamagotchi Paradise: Trading Pet Stress for Peaceful Wildlife Conservation

Tamagotchi Paradise: Trading Stressful Pet Parenting for Nature and Tranquility

Imagine becoming the caretaker of an entire planet, one born from the collective love of Tamagotchis. That’s exactly what happened to me one August Saturday with Tamagotchi Paradise. From a single egg, a planet emerged, then a critter, and soon I was nurturing a bustling hub of adorable alien life across three virtual habitats.

Unlike previous Tamagotchi devices that challenged you to keep individual characters alive indefinitely, Tamagotchi Paradise shifts the focus. It rewards you for populating your planet, nurturing a steady stream of new characters that you ultimately release into the peaceful wild. It’s less about traditional pet-keeping and more akin to wildlife conservation, a really cool reimagining of the classic toy.

This new Tamagotchi comes with a hefty egg design featuring a dial and a stopwatch-like button. It runs on AAA batteries and includes a docking port reminiscent of 90s designs, allowing you to physically connect with another device. The user interface has also been completely overhauled. While it’s a lot of change and some fans might find it polarizing, I’m firmly on team Paradise.

The Dial

The new dial is a significant feature. Primarily used for zooming into your planet to observe the activity, it also scrolls through menus and plays a role in some games. While the initial novelty faded, it’s a surprisingly practical addition. After the frustration of the flat buttons on the Tamagotchi Pix, I was relieved to find this dial doesn’t suck. It took a little practice to get the hang of the right amount of spin, but now it’s smooth sailing. An improvement thanks to the dial is the ability to easily go back to a skipped menu option, avoiding the need to cycle through everything again. It still allows for one-handed operation, albeit less comfortably than the three-button devices, and adds a nice touch of whimsy.

Caretaking

Tamagotchi Paradise takes a gamified approach to raising Tamas, with much of the content locked behind a leveling system. You start with basic games and shopping, but accessing all three environments (Land, Sky, Water) requires hitting Level 6 by raising two Tamas to adulthood – a process that takes several days. By Level 10, with your sixth adult Tama, everything is unlocked. While it’s a bit of a grind, I appreciated how it spaced out the discovery of new features.

This system also changed my play style. On other Tamagotchis, I’d care for characters for weeks or months. Here, I found myself raising Tamas back-to-back to reach higher levels. Now that I’m past Level 10, I can focus on keeping specific characters longer. Despite the high turnover, Tamagotchi Paradise feels like one of the least needy models. Beyond the baby stage, I don’t need to be overly attentive to keep my Tama alive and happy. For me, this easygoing nature is quite refreshing.

Food gathering and feeding are also more forgiving. You can send your Tamas on daily egg hunts for free food, or use foraged ingredients to cook meals that fill them up and keep them happy. You can even feed them raw ingredients. Plus, you can finally store more than three of a given food item in your inventory.

The characters are a highlight. Paradise includes beloved Tamas from older devices alongside many fantastic new ones, even a charming rock character that makes me smile. For the first time, care factors are visualized with icons, clearly showing care mistakes and happiness levels. This removes the guesswork and potential disappointment of not getting your desired character.

When you’re ready for a new egg, you release your current Tama to the Field, where it continues to play in the background. Each Field can hold four released Tamas before older ones start disappearing. It’s wonderful to see them enjoying the virtual wild. However, this leads to my biggest complaint: you can only have one active character to care for at a time. This feels like a huge missed opportunity, especially given promotional materials suggested simultaneous care in each Field. If that were true, this would be the ultimate Tamagotchi.

I also wished for more complex gene mixing, beyond just body color and eye design, to create more unique offspring. Customization for the Tamas themselves is limited; you can’t name them or dress them up. You can, however, accessorize the planet and change your character’s color and mood with special snack items, which I really enjoy. This allowed me to create a perfect pink and yellow version of the adorable Elizardotchi.

Is It Worth It?

Tamagotchi Paradise offers a lot of content. It features a good mix of old and new games, all with multiple difficulty options to increase challenges and Gotchi Point rewards. Harvesting “poop” can fuel a rocket, letting you travel to seven other themed Tamagotchi planets, each offering special items. While I wished these worlds offered more activities like themed games and shops, it’s still a nice way to unlock new items.

Emergency events occasionally pop up, adding a thrilling contrast to the game’s usual chillness. Miss an alert, and your planet could be pummeled by meteorites or stampeding birds, creating some heart-pounding moments. I love the excitement, even if I felt terrible seeing my Tama sad and beat-up after a Dododotchi herd attack.

The device also assigns around two dozen “missions” – achievements for completing tasks, like cleaning 500 poops. Similar to Tamagotchi Uni’s care icons, these provide ongoing goals even after everything else is unlocked, appealing to completionists.

The Connection feature, requiring a second device, is a fun way to swap items, experiment with gene mixing, or simply watch two Tamas interact. While there’s no Wi-Fi, new items can be obtained via download codes (the official website has already released some) and Lab Tama in-store installations (though these are not widely accessible). Given the continued content for Tamagotchi Uni, I hope Paradise receives similar support.

Overall, Tamagotchi Paradise feels more complete than the Tamagotchi Uni did at launch. At approximately $45 (if you can find it at retail price), it’s also surprisingly more affordable than the Uni, Pix, and On. There’s a lot of fun to be had here, especially if you’re open to a significant amount of change in your virtual pet experience.