Weyrdlets Review – A Good Idea Wrecked by Microtransactions

Productivity games have become increasingly popular, as gamers use idle goals to break up long workdays. Unfortunately, Weyrdlets is no Spirit City: Lofi Sessions and a combination of mobile-app graphics and microtransaction saturation ruin the experience.

Weyrdlets attempts to mimic what fans found so appealing in Tamagotchi, creating a space where little creatures can be adopted and cared for throughout their workday. By feeding and caring for their creature, players will complete daily tasks and earn coins.

Key Details

• Developer: Weyrdworks
• Platform: PC via Steam
• Price: Free-to-play (with microtransactions)
• Review Code Provided: Yes

A Free-to-Play That Mimics Mobile Apps In The Wrong Way

When first getting started in Weyrdlets, players will adopt a creature. There is a cat-shaped, rabbit-shaped, and dino-shaped option to select between. After this, the creature is dropped off on its little island with an empty house.

Players are then taken through a barrage of tutorials on how to care for their creature, including feeding it fruit and giving it pets. Doing so raises its happiness, and boosts the “dig” gauge. Once active, players will earn a small sum of coins.

However, after going through the tutorial of this free-to-play game, it became apparent that Weyrdlets is banking on microtransactions, with nearly every item locked behind gold amounts that are just slightly more than what can be made from completing daily tasks and digs.

The game looks and navigates like a mobile app but without the charm or encouragement. While Neko Atsume and Usagi Shima both have similar structures, there are rewards in doing daily grind tasks, and earning currency isn’t the only focus. In Weyrdlets, you are using your critter to make money, and that money won’t go very far.

No Decorations Unless You Pay

If players want to fill their empty house in Weyrdlets with cute decorations, they will need to get grinding. Daily Tasks can reward about 250 Shinies daily, but most furniture costs at least 1,000. If you want to skip the grind, you can purchase Shinies in the Premium Shop, but that puts most furniture at a dollar a piece.

Additionally, Mini Pets and new Weyrdlets cost Jellystars, which are extremely difficult to grind and cost substantially more in the Premium Shop. A new pet will cost about four dollars in Jellystars and minipets cost roughly three dollars.

With the economy of Weyrdlets acting as a roadblock to desirable features like decorating and setting up the island, it quickly becomes a chore to play. Even cute features like Desktop mode, which allows your Weyrdlet to free-roam your workspace, don’t feel worth it when struggling to purchase the apples needed to keep it fed. I ended up feeling guilty and just closed out of the game when I realized I’d have to pick between feeding it or giving it a place to sleep.

Optimization Makes The Game Impossible

Another hurdle for Weyrdlets that many laptop and older PC users will encounter is optimization. This game runs hard and will lag and stutter on computers without decent specs.

Keeping the game up in the background while working made my laptop so hot it went thermal and shut off. Because this game is designed to be up and running in the background as players work, the demand on player computers is a major issue that will prevent those who enjoy it from being able to make use of its main features.

Final Score 3/10

Unfortunately, Weyrdlets just doesn’t run well enough, or incentivize players enough, to stay invested. The crippling cost of in-game items and aggressive encouragement for microtransactions make it an unpleasant game to try and play.

For those who are looking for productivity tools, there are better options than Weyrdlets, even if they have a small base cost to access. In its current state, I can’t recommend it to players, and don’t see it as a useful tool for long workdays. If the developers balance the game’s economy, release a few optimization patches, and create other ways to get decorations and items, it could be a much better experience.

**A review code for Weyrdlets was provided for the purpose of this review**

About the Author

Laura Gray

Administrator

Laura Gray, known as Ezra when not putting pen to paper, is a D&D enthusiast with a love of all things written. They are a collector of fantasy and sci-fi novels, a lover of cooking weird food, and a player of farming sims and Pokémon games. When not engrossed in a re-read of Anne McCaffrey or a deep dive into the Adventure Zone: Balance, they can be found sniffing the cats and napping in half-finished crochet projects.

Visit Website View All Posts