Gameplay basics
Starting life with your critter
Last updated
Starting life with your critter
Last updated
All of the μCritAir's gameplay systems are accessible from the home screen and/or the menu. The home screen is the root view of the game, so the menu is itself accessed from the home screen.
The home screen is your live view of the μCritAir's world. From here, you may:
Interact with your pet
Activate the arcade cabinet or the vending machine
Decorate your room
Collect farmed coins
Open the menu
The coloured action buttons at the bottom of the home screen are, in order: feed, study, play, decorate, and menu. The first three enter care actions, the fourth enters the decoration system, and the last opens the menu. While in the home screen, use the D-pad or touch to navigate between these buttons.
At the back edge of the room, by the window, are the arcade cabinet and the vending machine. Use touch or open the menu to access these.
The pet itself, when touched, will play a small interaction animation indicative of its status.
The menu is the access point for a variety of interfaces that are essential to the game. Menu entries may lead to yet more menus or they may place you in an entirely new game mode. In addition to the button on the home screen, the menu can be accessed by pressing start while in the home screen.
The μCritAir's gameplay revolves around the virtual pet that resides within the device. The pet must be cared for lest it enter a state of physical and emotional crisis, and a pet that is well cared for will be visibly healthier and happier than one that is not. Care comes down a mix of player engagement and air quality management.
The pet has 3 core stats: vigour, focus, and spirit. Vigour is a measure of physical soundness, focus a measure of mental soundness, and spirit a measure of emotional soundness. If any 1 of the three stats is exceptionally high or low, it will be expressed in the pet's appearance and behaviour.
To view core stats, navigate to [MENU] > [INSIGHTS]
As the pet lives its life, its stats naturally deplete over time. All else being equal, depletion occurs uniformly across all stats. However, certain conditions can accelerate or decelerate depletion. Poor air quality conditions will harm your pet's health and will cause stats to deplete considerably faster.
The pet cannot passively restore its own stats. It is by your care and attention that the pet's good health is maintained. In general: feeding your pet restores its vigour, giving it interesting reading material restores its focus, and playing with it restores its spirit. It is worth noting that some specialized consumable items affect focus or spirit rather than vigour, and there are even consumables with negative effects on the pet's health.
Multiple interrelated metrics track your pet's maturity. The most basic is lifetime. For every day that your pet stays alive, its lifetime will increase by 1.
The more interesting metric is experience, or XP. XP is awarded once per day, alongside lifetime. The higher your pet's stats are on average, the more daily XP will be earned. If, at the time of earning, your pet's XP meets or surpasses the threshold that separates the current level from the next then XP up to and including the threshold will be spent and your pet will level up.
If any of your pet's stats are critically low, XP will start to deplete. The rate at which depletion occurs can be lessened using special equipment that combats deleterious health effects. Although XP can be depleted to 0, in such cases it will merely remain at 0 until increased. Your pet can never lose a level by losing too much XP.
To view lifetime and level information, navigate to [MENU] > [INSIGHTS]
Your pet can be given a name. By default, it is named Waldo.
To change your pet's name, navigate to [MENU] > [SETTINGS] > [PET NAME]
Care actions are the primary means of keeping your pet in good health. There is one care action for each core stat, although in some circumstances a care action may affect a stat other than the one it is most closely associated with.
All care actions require items of a particular type. When you enter a care action, the first thing you will be shown is a list of suitable items currently in your inventory. To continue with the care action, you must select an item from the list. If there are no suitable items, you will not be able to continue with the care action.
Once an item has been selected, a cursor representing the item will appear in the world. Use the D-pad to move the item wherever you wish, and then press A to leave it there. When the item is in place, your pet will navigate to it and interact. Once the interaction is complete, the item's effects will be applied.
Feeding primarily restores vigour, and requires food. Food items are one-time consumables, so each food item in your inventory can only be fed to your pet once before it is used up. Different foods affect the pet's stats in different ways.
Studying primarily restores focus, and requires books. Books are not consumable, so once you have obtained a book it can be used for study as many times as you wish. Different books affect the pet's stats in different ways.
Playing primarily restores spirit, and requires toys. Like books, toys are not consumable. Different toys affect the pet's stats in different ways.
Your pet's home is relatively sparse upon first boot. An arcade cabinet and a vending machine, both permanent installations, are the only pieces of furniture. However, much more is possible. A plethora of items and mechanics are at your fingertips to enable and encourage customization of the space.
Props are items which can be placed in the world via the decoration system. Many props are available in the vending machine, but some must be obtained through special means.
Like the care actions and the menu, the decoration system can be entered via one of the coloured buttons on the home screen. When you enter the decoration system, you start in place mode. Pressing select while in the decoration system will cycle through its modes.
Place mode, recognizable by its green plus-sign cursor, is for placing props in the world. When place mode is active but no item has yet been selected for placement, pressing A will display a list of props in your inventory. Selecting one of these props will bring you back to the world, where you can then place the prop in any suitable location.
Under the selected prop, you will see a grid which demarcates its bounds. When the grid is green, that indicates that the currently hovered location can accommodate the prop. A red grid indicates that the currently hovered location cannot accommodate the prop. Pressing A while the prop is in a suitable location will place it, at which point the cycle of selection and placement may begin again. Placing props removes them from your inventory.
In general, props must sit fully within the bounds of the game world and cannot overlap each other. However, although all props can be placed on the floor as normal, some props can also be placed atop others. For this to work, both the top and bottom props must be suitable. That is, a lamp can be placed on a table, but a lamp cannot be placed on a flower and a table cannot be placed on a lamp.
Each bottom prop can only have one top prop at a time.
Remove mode, recognizable by its red cross-out cursor, is for removing props from the world. When the remove cursor overlaps a prop, it will display a red grid beneath that prop. This indicates which spaces will be freed if the prop is removed. Pressing A while a prop is highlighted will remove that prop from the world and return it to your inventory.
If one attempts to remove a bottom prop that has a top prop, it will instead remove the top prop. The newly empty bottom prop can then be removed as normal.
Alter mode, recognizable by its blue rotation cursor, is for changing the properties of configurable props. Pressing A on a configurable prop will move it to its next configuration, cyclically. Pressing A on a non-configurable prop will reflect it across its x-axis.
Not all configuration schemes are the same, and there is no hard and fast rule for determining if a prop is configurable at all. Chairs can be rotated through a series of 90-degree orientations, laptops can be opened and closed, and lanterns can be turned on and off, but the coffee maker is just a coffee maker.
Besides props, the theming of the underlying living space can be selected as well. To change the theme, navigate to [MENU] > [SETTINGS] > [ROOM THEME]. Once a theme has been selected from that menu, return to the home screen to see that it has taken effect.
Every player starts the game with an Ethereum Miner in their inventory. Ethereum Miners are special devices which can be placed as props in the world. Multiple times per day, an miner will produce a coin that drops in the world and can be picked up with touch. Mining is the most consistent way to earn coins, as miners will be active regardless of how much you engage with the game. Keep in mind, however, that there is a limit on how many coins can be dropped in the world. Once this limit is reached, no further coins will be dropped until at least one is picked up. Furthermore, coins can only drop in spaces not filled by props, so make sure you've got at least one such space!
Although they are expensive equipment, more Ethereum Miners beyond the one every player starts with can be purchased. There is no upper limit on the number of miners one can own besides those naturally imposed by space.
The vending machine is the largest and most consistent source of items in the game. Like all vending machines, money goes in and items come out. With the exception of those that are special rewards earned through other means, every item in the game can be purchased there. Food, books, toys, props, key items, you name it.
The currency used to purchase items in the vending machine is coins. There are a variety of ways to earn coins, from crypto farming to arcade games.
When you collect an item, it is added to your inventory. The inventory has a page for every type of item, as well as an "all" page which displays every owned item regardless of type. Pressing A on an item in your inventory will take you to the item inspector, where the item can be viewed in greater detail.
To view your inventory, navigate to [MENU] > [INVENTORY]
The arcade cabinet is the access point for minigames and for the features that let you view the μCritAir's logged air quality readings.
The air quality log shows a textual breakdown of logged air quality readings per-reading, with one page for every logged reading.
The air quality graph shows a visual breakdown of logged air quality readings per-metric, with changes in that metric over time displayed on an interactive graph.
Graph interactions include changing the time period spanned by the graph window and selecting a time interval for a calculation of ACH within that interval.
The arcade cabinet can be accessed from the home screen by clicking on the cabinet itself, or it can be accessed by navigating to [MENU] > [ARCADE CABINET].
Snack is a minigame about snapping up snacks while avoiding collisions with oneself and one's environment. Every successful pickup makes you one block longer, and the goal of the game is to become as long as possible without a nasty collision.
Sweep is a minigame about clearing ground without setting off mines. Clicking on a grass tile will reveal either the underlying rock or a deadly mine. In the case that rock is revealed, all connected tiles that only contain grass and rock will be revealed as well, spreading outwards. The edge tiles in such an arrangement are those that are neighbouring mines, and they bear a number indicating the count of mines in their neighbourhood. The goal of the game is to clear all tiles of grass without uncovering a single mine.
