I've gotten into a new petsite, Felisfire.

I should probably make a page at some point with a list of all the different pet sites I've tried... There've been a lot.

Gameplay

I really like it so far! It's got a unique premise that I haven't seen in any other petsite, where you are playing as a scientist on an alien planet breeding, genetically engineering, and experimenting on alien cats called Xenofelids.

Amusingly, although this is a breeding game, you don't actually have direct control over how your felids breed. You can encourage them by isolating the specimens you want bred together (either by putting them in their own room or by cryogenically freezing everyone else), but even then they only have a chance to breed if their relationship score is very high, which can take a while and is not guarunteed. Sometimes two specimens won't get along!

There are of course consumable items you can use that can help speed this process, but I almost don't want to use them. I love that you have to wrangle these animals and hope for the best. It makes me feel like a real xenobiologist herding alien cats.

Community

I assumed at first that it must have been a newer game, since the user id-numbers were so low, but apparently it has existed since about 2013. It looks like it's gone through multiple staff changes and owners, and was in danger of dying for good in 2017, but was bought out by an active player and has remained stable ever since. At some point there was a purge of inactive accounts and a shifting of account id-numbers to fill in the gaps.

The playerbase seems pretty small, but is very active and friendly. I didn't have much energy when I first joined and didn't really seek out any interaction, but multiple people went out of their way to send me items, xenofelids, and welcoming messages anyway. I was even given a custom designed xenofelid, pictured below!

This is the starter species, common name "Felidae". If you're wondering why it just looks like a normal cat with wings, that's because in-universe that's basically what it is. It's a genetically engineered species created from domestic cats and native xenofelid dna that has established widespread feral breeding populations on Felisfire. Some of the actual indiginous xenofelids look a lot more wild

Science

This game has a science and biology theme, which is what drew me to it in the first place.

It's pretty good, although obviously fantastical. For the most part it works for me, although my suspension of disbelief is constantly disrupted when I see alien species referred to as having earth taxonomy or being "cousins" of earth animals. In-universe there are a lot of invasive earth creatures on the planet felifire, which is fine and I completely buy. But indigenous alien species being directly related to earth life? Sharing common ancestors? Being in the same family? Absolute nonsense, which is not acknowledged anywhere in the lore.

You'd think a team of scientists would notice and be alarmed if these completely alien creatures that evolved on another planet were actually genetically related to earth species, you'd think this would be mentioned in the encyoclopedia entries, you'd think this would bring up all kinds of fascinating extistential questions about the origins of life, like, for example, this would be pretty good evidence of some sort of life-seeding event billions of years ago, perhaps by an advanced sentient species? Like to be clear I would be fine if that's the direction they wanted to go in but as it is it just looks like a glaring mistake.

Anyway, if I ignore all of that it's fine.

There are plenty of earth animals and genes running wild, but it's all explained by genetic engineering and very careless scientists. Honestly, playing the game you get the impression that the felisfire colony (either the current colony or the mysteriously vanished first colonyship) is less focused on biology and more on developing new designer pets, with any actual scientific research being a secondary concern at best, and a complete front at worst.

I kind of love it. Obviously I the player was never going to get any science done on this site, but it's hilarious that you can also embrace that in-universe if you want.

Here's a referral link if you're into that, no pressure tho