I’d be the first to admit that my time with VR and AR is fairly limited, but at this years GDC in San Francisco, it was impossible not to be drawn in by the awesome tech and games that developers are working on in the space. In fact, one of my biggest takeaways from GDC is that I’ve walked away eager to try out virtual reality again after briefly giving it a go a few years back.
One game that stuck out as particularly impressive to me was Stay: Forever Home, a soon-to-be-released XR game that pushes the boundaries of VR and AR technology to create a fully immersive pet simulator. Its developers, Windup Minds, are a small fully-remote team consisting of veteran developers behind the likes of Meta’s Bogo and First Steps.
Stay: Forever Home evolves around your pet named Ember, a magical canine that lives by your side and is fully responsive to your actions to how you also interact with the world. Ember is powered by unscripted AI-powered behaviour that creates a familiar feeling that everyone with a real-life dog knows. From mischievous antics to being needy because she wants to be petted, it creates a genuine feeling of immersion that no pet simulator on the market has been able to pull off.
The developers say that the game designs to “love you back” and during my 25-30 minute demo, I got to see exactly what they meant first-hand. Despite being initially weirded out by feeling somewhat unnatural wearing a VR headset and watched by the developers (again, I’m not super into VR), it didn’t take long to realise that the developers were onto something special.
To start, I was introduced to Ember who appeared in a floating portal in her own world and at first she was a little nervous and skittish of who I was – just like how a real-world pet would be. To gain her trust, I was instructed to feed her a few berries, where she progressively became more trusting of me and soon, she trusted me enough to jump from her world into mine. From here, the game was designed for me to get familiar with the controls and what you can do with Ember, from petting and brushing her down to making her fetch a ball. It was all very reminiscent of being at home with my own dogs, where I could sit down and pet her for as long as I wanted at my own leisure and mess with her floppy ears as I would do with my Labrador (sorry Max).
Moving on from the mixed-reality environment, I was then prompted to take Ember into a fully-fledged VR world via a magical door. This is where you can take Ember for those all important ‘walkies’ that every dog needs. But this is where you’ll also be able to complete challenges, do trades for treats and other items, and more. The developers tell me that these challenges and activities will be updated regularly, but for those with a more relaxed approach, you can just go for a stroll and see what antics she gets up to if preferred. Again, referring back to that unscripted AI behaviour, you’re never quite sure what she’ll do. For example, in my play time, I was harvesting some berries and Ember decided to run off, only to return to be covered in mud – something I presumably would have had to deal with later if I had longer time playing.
The developers told me that this is just the beginning for the VR-world and that they do have plans to update the world in the future, but that it was still early days to announce anything. Hopefully, such updates to reflect the seasons is something that’s being considered to add another layer of immersion to the world, and I think seeing Ember react to the likes of crunchy leaves in Autumn or reacting to snow on the floor for the first would be particularly fun to watch.
In the demo, I was also introduced to the first voice command of “come” or “come here”, where after shouting, Ember would obey the command and return to you. Other voices commands like “sit” where also said to be coming to the game on launch, adding another layer of immersion to a game that stands out from the rest of the pet simulators on the market.
Overall, Stay: Forever Home breaks new ground on pet simulation, not only because of the use of the technology, but because of the caring nature of its developers that has created an experience that I don’t think can be replicated.
Stay: Forever Home launches on the Meta Quest 3S, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, and Meta Quest 2 on April 3, 2025 where you can add it to your wishlist here.
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