WordPress Archive

2025-04-15

♧ — This is where I've left off for now! Check again tomorrow! — ♧

2025-03-31

[WordPress] Breedz Lore: Maskbunnies!

The power finally came back on after around one and a half days of a massive outage here in Ontario, so needless to say I am very, very happy!

Considering that Maskbunnies were pretty much divorced from their original inspirations anyway, here’s a bunch of my old lore about them.

So, what is a Maskbunny?

Maskbunnies are inhabitants of a desert surrounding the massive tree known as Kaukau. They aren’t truly bunnies, more like bunny-like entities.

They belong to seven group – fire (red), sun (yellow), plants (green), water (blue), animals (purple), earth (brown), and moon (white). Each of these groups lives beneath the Kaukau tree, in the sands. The Kaukau tree gives them their power, and if it were ever to die, they would cease to exist as well.

The Maskbunnies have two main sources of food: rodentlike Misa (singular Mousa), and porcine Piggis. These creatures fed on the Kaukau tree, damaging it, and necessitating intervention from the Maskbunnies. Naturally, as almost all of my Maskbunny stuff was carried out through Petz 5, these consisted of the mice and the host pig in the Backyard. If I trained my (then-Dachshund) bunnies to catch mice from my hand, sometimes they’d grab the Pig from my hand too when I lifted them up!

Maskbunnies grow up and progress through stages, starting with “newlings”, then “proggen”, then “younga”, then “addils”, then “maska”, plus “high maska” for a leader. They also apparently… shed their skins?

If you, for whatever reason, would like to grade your Maskbunnies on their progress as I used to, here’s the guide:

• Newling – 3 mice and 1 pig.
• Proggen – 5 mice and 2 pigs.
• Younga – 10 mice and 3 pigs.
• Addil – 15 mice and 5 pigs.
• Maska – 20 mice and 8 pigs.
• High Maska – 25 mice and 10 pigs, plus proof of leadership, whatever that might look like (I basically just went with vibes)

Maskbunnies also have an immense hatred of conch shells due to the belief that they cause corruption.

2025-03-29

[WordPress] “Basic Hexing Techniques” is out!

Want to hex a pet or a breedfile? My Hexing 101 tutorial is up now here!

♧ — Note - This was the text of the WordPress post. I don't actually have the page up yet! — ♧

2025-03-28

[WordPress] Breedz Lore: BirdWormz!

Sorry for not posting the past couple days! Being at the beginning of exam season means that my motivation to do anything besides lie in bed and suffer is through the floor, and unfortunately, posts count as that.

But yay! I’m back again, for a little bit anyway. And here’s our very first lore post, for the BirdWorms!

So, what is a BirdWorm?

As mentioned in the original BirdWorm post, the BirdWorm is based on the TK from Crash: Mind Over Mutant. I was very fond of TKs as a child, and made some out of pompoms.

I came up with all of these interesting little details about my doubly-fictionalized version of these little guys. They were part of a species known as Telekan flubus (referencing another strange creature I adored, the Flube from the reboot of The Electric Company, for whatever reason) at one point, which I’m going to rename (more properly at that) Avivermis mentemovens. I went through all the bits of lore I still had, and here’s some tidbits that I thought were still interesting enough:

• They were originally from very cold habitats.
• They are commonly kept as pets, but are also farmed for meat like numerous other birds.
• They are very affectionate and tactile, and also very soft.
• A group of BirdWorms used to be called a “needle”, like pine needles. A needle of BirdWorms usually has a social structure akin to (real) wolves, being family units.
• BirdWorms are omnivores with a primarily meat-eating diet (makes sense for their frigid homes!).
• Certain, more basal forms of BirdWorm had a mask-like facial disc of feathers, like in owls! (Maybe someday I’ll make a BirdWorm file where this mask is a variant.)
• BirdWorms lay small clutches of eggs, 1-4 at a time, usually. (Perfect number for Petz!)

2025-03-25

[WordPress] “Getting Started With Petz” is out!

My tutorial on starting the Petz games is up! Go check it out on my Tutorials page here!

♧ — Note - This was the text of the WordPress post. I don't actually have the page up yet! — ♧

2025-03-22

[WordPress] The Forbidden One, and why he’s called that

I’m no stranger to making weird Petz creatures – I had someone on Petzcord call me a “weird breed appreciator”, and a more apt label has never existed for Ivy “ivymercury” Hydrargyrykennelz.

But what about that one time I swear I summoned an entity to my Petz game?

This is the tale of The Forbidden One, or more properly, Mr. Smiles.

The dream

I keep a dream journal because my dreams are strange as hell sometimes. I’ve had dreams involving elevator juice, a basement full of anthropomorphic chameleons, a loose bull in the school, and having lavender lemonade sprinkled over me.

So, on the night of November 25, 2022, when I had a dream about summoning an entity to Petz on a livestream, and hearing from my in-dream chat about another entity named Loopy, I didn’t really question things. After all, I don’t stream, and digital entities are a thing of creepypasta.

The birth

This was before I ever got into hexing, so I was attempting to naturally breed things. In this case, I wanted small, fuzzy terrier-like dog, the prototype to my Yorkie. At some point, I had the Pug involved, likely for size purposes.

My most recent dog, Anwen, was pregnant. This was probably anywhere from three to twelve attempts in, so I was really hoping to get something that looked good.

And then I got him.

Mr. Smiles, called such because of the markings his pug face gave him, was an odd but normal pet at first. My roomie found him unsettling, but that was before they really got used to Petz’s art style, so I just thought it was that.

Then things started… happening.

The curse

As biology students, I and my roommate both know that scientists are a superstitious lot. “If we don’t stand near the centrifuge it’ll explode”-type things, mostly. But we accepted we had a curse. Generally it was technology-related, such as my laptop not liking the programs we needed to process our data, or an equipment issue, such as the lenses that were off by 0.6 centimetres (about a quarter inch).

Until this incident. We were running samples of our hair for DNA gel electrophoresis (the experiment isn’t really relevant to the story). I’d just dyed my own hair, so we used my roomie’s, and our not-partners-but-adjacent-lab-group were using the hair of our class’ Resident Genius.

And the gel turned out like… this:

As you can see from lane 4, Resident Genius had none of his hair samples show up, but there was a suspiciously overlaid smiley face-shaped smudge on the image.

After getting this weird dog and suffering a weird string of curses? Yeah, this pretty much confirmed that I needed to do something.

The sealing

Because I don’t use PetzA profiles, I have a bunch of folders for my various projects and such. I decided to feed and treat Mr. Smiles as well as I could, then put him in a hidden folder to “seal” him away.

To do so, and to counteract the curse, I decided to breed what I considered a “lucky dog”, which turned out to be a green-eyed Dalmatian with lots of spots. (No picture for obvious reasons.) I put her in with him, buried the folder, and thought that was the end of it.

We stopped referring to him by name, instead referring to him as “The Forbidden One”. (After all, if we call out to him, he’ll return to the real world – or that was the logic, anyway.) The curse faded after that, and since then, we’ve had a lot less failures of equipment and stuff too.

It continues?

But that wasn’t the end! In the process of writing this post, I spoke Mr. Smiles’ name aloud without thinking. The next lab my roomie had, the equipment started to get finicky…

“But Ivy, you obviously can’t summon an entity to Petz, it’s a computer game.”

*wearing a tinfoil hat* That’s what they want you to believe!

Jokes aside, I really doubt Mr. Smiles was an actual entity living in my geriatric laptop. But the timing and coincidence of the whole thing – dreaming about a Petz entity, then getting a weird pet and a string of mishaps – was too good to pass up.

Have you got any stories of weird Petz situations you’ve had? If so, feel free to let me know!

2025-03-21

[WordPress] Petz questions 2: Electric Boogaloo (featuring Thor and my roommate)

Last time I did something like this, I was getting my questions sourced from old, old polls on the RKC Petz Forum, but this time I’m getting my questions more organically!

I posed the question “What should I do for my next posts?” to Petzcord, and the lovely Thor of, well, Thor’s Petz Site, responded by giving me an idea to do another questions page!

… But that wasn’t enough! So I got my university roommate to ask me a thing. (Roomie has been involved with my Petz escapades before, but has never played them themself.)

And that still wasn’t enough to sate my desire for being grilled! So I went back to the forums. (Lol.)

So, without further ado:

Thor's Question: How do you usually play Petz?

Most of the time, when it comes to Petz, I’m doing breeding projects or just trying to test hexes. I’m always trying to see what stuff I can get from combining features! (I think the parrot-opossums were one of the cutest. Maybe I’ll show some of them off later…)

When I actually do things in-game outside of breeding, usually it’s during free time, with me opening Petz to check on any creatures I’ve got at that point, feed them, play with them, and then return to whatever I was working on.

There have been occasions, mostly before I started hexing like crazy, where I actually would play the game as vanilla as I could. I’ve been trying to get back into that, actually…

Roomie's Question: Why did you unleash these monstrosities upon the world?

Because I like creating weird creatures and breeding weird creatures. The “I Love Hybrids” clique on my Cliques page isn’t undeserved.

(I kept saying this out loud as “monstrosipies uton the world”. Spoonerisms.)

RelevantForum Questions: Wow much do you use brainsliders?

All the time. When I’m in the middle of a breeding project, expect a lot of Age slider usage. Now that I have Prism’s PetzA fork, though, I’m using the Age slider less in favour of the “Age to 100” button.

Before the hexing began, I would also use the Fullness slider to ensure my picky Poodle, Cherry, would eat. (Lowering it to 0 means that the pet will immediately eat anything without issue. Is it cruel? Arguably, kind of…)

Top 3 favourite pet toyz?

I assume this is without any hexed toys, so here’s those:

1. Love Potion – Every vanilla breeder’s godsend
2. Auto-Rolling Ball – Great for entertaining pets while AFK
3. Bird Feeder – Seeing the cute hummingbirds was always the best, and for some reason my old file of Petz 5 never used to give it to me at the start…

With hexed toys, though, they’ve got to be:

1. Oasis’ wacky weasel ball – It’s just like the autoroller but with a cute little weasel toy attached!
2. Funfetti’s butterfly terrarium – I always loved the butterflies from Petz and having a portable one is perfect!
3. Filthy Hippie’s moth decor – I adore moths and these hangable decorations are amazing (the cecropia moth is my favourite because we get them here in Canada!)

And treats/foods?

Vanilla:

1. Catnip – It’s so fun to watch petz be silly.
2. Leftovers – I loved watching the different foods disappear. This also looked appetizing to me as a kid.
3. Cheese – I love watching mice collect the crumbs!

Hexed (I don’t actually use a lot of hexed food or treats…)

1. Mythic Silence’s flavoured bowls (and Gyiyg’s cheese bowl as well!) – Super handy for picky petz!
2. Gyiyg’s edible clover – It’s cute and also actually a good indicator of when you haven’t fed petz enough, since they’ll automatically default to eating the clover if no other food is around.
3. Mythic Silence’s edible decorative mushrooms – They also catnip your petz, which is honestly hilarious to me.

(Plugplugplugplug for everyone mentioned in these two questions! If you like this site, go check everyone else out! More of the community is on the Links page.)

How do you choose names for your petz?

Sometimes, I think long and hard and deep and come up with a name that’s the very essence of a petz’ being (e.g. Sunny, UV, Charcoal). Sometimes, it’s Roomie (e.g. Forceps, Sneefer, and Kuro).

I love both methods.

Random Forum Questions: What’s your star sign?

Virgo.

Which web browser do you use?

Firefox.

What real life pets do you own?

As of right now, just my bird, Bonnie.

Favourite computer game?

Besides Petz of course, other ones I’m fond of include Speedy Blupi/Eggbert, Angry Birds, Bejeweled 3, and a whole bunch of Flash games. It seems that liking games that are hard to find copies of is kind of my thing.

Favourite types of these things…?

Ice cream:

1. Mint chip. (It does not taste like toothpaste. If it does to you, I want to know where you get such tasty toothpaste!)
2. Good old plain chocolate.
3. Lime sorbet. (Technically not ice cream but eh.)

Candy:

1. Anything sour. My poor teeth disagree.)
2. Fruit snacks.
3. Pretty much any chocolate.

Chips/crisps:

1. Just plain lightly salted.
2. Bacon flavour. (Ruffles Sour Cream and Bacon comes to mind.)
3. Sour cream and onion.

How do you pronounce “data” and “beta”?

“Day-tuh” and “dah-tuh” are interchangeable. It’s always “bay-tuh” though. (My roomie said the same thing. Maybe this is a Canadian thing.)

And, finally...: Favourite kind of tea?

Mint-chamomile, or just mint.

2025-03-20

[WordPress] The games nobody talks about (and the one game I adore): Ubisoft’s Petz games

The black sheep of Petz

If you’re familiar with the Nintendo DS or the Nintendo Wii, you’ve likely seen this Petz logo (or a logo in the same text) slapped onto a game made by Ubisoft at some point.

This game will be a virtual pet sim, sure (with a few exceptions – more down below!), but it won’t be anything like the Petz 1–5 series. These games are collectively called the “Ubisoft Petz”, and I had no idea there were 70 of them and counting!

Thanks to the Petz Wiki.

Most players of the original Petz games dont acknowledge these, and I understand why, but I actually own a few of them: Petz Dogz 2 and Petz: Puppyz and Kittenz for the Nintendo DS, and the game that is the main reason I wrote this article.

A slapped-on masterpiece

“But Ivy,” you might be asking, “how could you possibly like an Ubisoft Petz game? Aren’t a ton of them derivative knockoffs of a bunch of Japanese-developed games with the Petz label slapped on frivolously?”

Yes. And that’s why I like this one:

(If you see a pause symbol in any of these screenshots, no you don't. /lh)

Petz: Dogz 2 (and Catz 2, but I never had nor ever saw that version) for the PlayStation 2 and the Wii here in North America, not to be confused with Dogz II and Catz II of the proper Petz series, is an Ubisoftized version of わんこと魔法のぼうし, or Puppy and the Magic Hat (Kitten for Catz 2; henceforth PupHat and KitHat because I don’t feel like writing any of these things out again).

I got PupHat for the PS2 and later the Wii, and played them numerous times throughout my childhood and even now, as evidenced by the screenshot above.They’re cute games, being a very kid-friendly adventure that mostly revolves around helping adorable dog characters and stopping the evil wolf Ivlet.

(Though I will admit there were some scenes that were intense for little me, me being a crybaby notwithstanding.)

Running around and just… existing in this game was one of my favourite pastimes. You could explore, fish, catch bugs, find fruit, and get cute clothes from the local tailor.

There was a part before the boss fight where you could do anything without any more quests, and that part was where I spent most of my time, just vibing. I did finish the boss fight, but it pretty much just takes you back to this point anyway, so I haven’t completed it since. I’m still working on 100%-ing the game, but I don’t think that changes anything.

The only reason I actually like Petz: Dogz 2 is because, well, it’s the only port of this amazing game that we get here in North America. I’d love to see a remake of this game under the original PupHat title, but unfortunately outside of some very dedicated fans I don’t personally see that happening.

I honestly highly recomment trying this game out! It's cute, it's cozy, there's no time limits, there's only a few real moments of peril, and the music is great!

Just for fun, to leave off, here is my favourite piece of music from PupHat. My Firefox tells me that this video might be a risk and embedded without permission (it's not - it's literally from my own YouTube), and if your browser does too, here's the link! Otherwise, the video is embedded below.