How it works
The short version
Pugamochi is a quiet little game about caring for a virtual pug that is happiest when you go and live your life.
You adopt a pug. It gently suggests tiny real-world breaks. While you are away it potters about and fills a scrapbook with little adventures. Whenever you come back — an hour later or a month later — it is simply happy to see you. There is nothing to keep up with, and nothing bad happens if you leave.
1. Adopt a pug
Making an account takes a moment, and then you have a pug of your very own. You can give it a name and choose how it looks. That is all it takes to begin — there is nothing to buy and nothing to unlock.
2. It suggests tiny real-world breaks
Now and then your pug offers a small, gentle suggestion to step away from the screen for a moment — stretch, look out of a window, fetch a glass of water, potter into the garden. These are invitations, never demands. You can take one or ignore it, and nothing is lost either way.
If you like, you can use the built-in Pug-modoro timer for a gentle focus-and-break rhythm. It is entirely optional.
3. Go and live your life
This is the part that makes Pugamochi different: the game wants you to leave. Your pug never gets hungry, never decays, and never dies. There are no streaks to protect, no scores to chase, and no punishment for being away. Closing the app is a perfectly good way to play.
4. Come back whenever you like
While you were gone, your pug had a few small, cosy adventures — noticing the seasons, finding little treasures, pottering about. When you return you may be greeted by a gentle “while you were away” note and a scrapbook of what it got up to. The longer you have been away, the more there may be to catch up on — a warm welcome, never a guilt trip.
5. Share and read adventures (optional)
If you want to, you can write your own gentle adventure and submit it to the community library. Approved adventures may later appear in other players’ scrapbooks — and some of the adventures in yours were written by other people. There is no chat, no comments, and no way for players to contact one another; the only thing that travels between people is an adventure, and a human moderator reads every one before anyone else can see it. You can read more on the Safety & Moderation page.
So, what do I do first?
Adopt a pug, give it a name, and then — genuinely — go and do something else for a while. Come back when you feel like it and see what your pug has been up to. That is the whole game.
There is more about the thinking behind all this in About & philosophy, and a page written especially for parents & carers.