I've been quiet here, but not idle. For the past few weeks I've been
building Solgotchi — a small pixel creature you raise in a handheld-style
device that sits in a browser tab.
No download, no app store, no wallet transaction. You sign in (Solana
wallet or Google, whichever you prefer), get one pet per account, and feed it.
What it actually is
Every pet is generated from a hash: colours, face, and one of twelve body
shapes. The shape is rolled once at birth and never changes — and that
shape decides its rarity:
Common, 70% round, blob, cat, dog
Uncommon, 20% bunny, frog, fish
Rare, 8% spiky, dino, grey
Super rare, 2% alien, ghost
So a ghost is roughly 1 in 100. It gives no gameplay advantage. It's just
a nicer silhouette to stare at for four hours.
The loop
- Feeding unlocks every 4 hours: 100 coins and some XP.
- Treats raise bond: +2 each, plus +2 on the first one each day. You hold
up to 5, and one refills every 10 minutes.
- Bond runs 0–100. It sets how much XP a meal pays (x1 / x1.5 / x2, so
10 / 15 / 20 XP) and how eagerly the pet runs over when you call it.
Ignore it for 6 hours and it starts decaying 5 points every 3 hours.
- Levels evolve the pet at 3, 5, 8 and 12: an accessory, a second colour,
its own eyes, then a shimmer. Cap is 12; XP keeps counting after that.
- At bond 100 it gets a golden aura and says something soppy.
It has opinions about your schedule
The part I like most: it naps. Leave it alone for an hour during the day
and it has a 10% chance every 15 minutes to curl up for half an hour. At
night it sleeps properly. Waking it — a tap, a feed, a treat — costs 10
bond. That felt mean the first time I tested it, which is how I knew it
worked.
There's also a five-part story inside the device, told by a gatekeeper at
the end of a cable. Each episode explains one mechanic, so it doubles as
a manual.
Under the hood (for the *nix crowd)
- Next.js 16 on Cloudflare Workers, Turso/libSQL for data
- Pets are SVG, drawn from a DNA JSON derived from a hash
- Auth is shared with my other sites via a one-time-code handoff from
auth.015959.xyz: SIWS or Google, host-only cookies per app
- Cloudflare Turnstile on every mutating route
- The wallet is for login only — nothing is signed on-chain, no gas,
no transactions
Honest fine print
Coins are points right now, not money. No payout, no token, nothing to
buy. I'd rather say that plainly than have someone assume otherwise. Ads
cover the hosting.
Try it: https://solgotchi.015959.xyz
Tell me if it naps too much. I suspect it does.
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