When [Terence Grover] set out to build a Tamagotchi-inspired simulator, he didn’t just add a few modern tweaks. He ditched the entire concept and rebuilt it from the ground up. Forget cute wide-eyed blobby animals and pixel-poop. This Raspberry Pi-powered project ditches nostalgia in favour of brutal realism: inflation, burnout, capitalism, and the occasional existential crisis. Think Sims meets cyberpunk, rendered charmingly in Python on a low-res RGB LED matrix.
Instead of hunger and poop meters, this dystopian pet juggles Maslow’s hierarchy: hunger, rest, safety, social life, esteem, and money. Players make real-life-inspired decisions like working, socialising, and going into education – each affecting the stats in logical (and often unfair) ways. No free lunch here: food requires money, money requires mind-numbing labour, and labour tanks your rest. You can even die of overwork à la Amazon warehouse. The UI and animation logic are all hand-coded, and there’s a working buzzer, pixel-perfect sprite movement, and even mini-games to simulate job repetition.
It’s equal parts social commentary and pixel art fever dream. While we have covered Tamagotchi recreations some time ago, this one makes you the needy survivor. Want your own dystopia in 64×32? Head over to [Terence Grover]’s Github and fork the full open source code. We’ll be watching. The Tamagotchi certainly is.
From the title I expected this to be an AI that gives you the commands that you would give to a Tamagotchi. No more deciding things yourself!
Thanks for talking about it! Great article <3
The build and the video is good. But the swearing is a bit too much.
“Black Mirror”, anyone ?
yes!
There’s a reference of it in the video!
Makes me scared. The github doesn’t look to the latest version…
The main branch is the simulation to run on a computer. The other branch is where all the goodies are!
Your “dying of overwork” link says nothing about Amazon, or death from overwork. Unless you are trying to make a joke about viruses dying under UV exposure.
very fun video, too short article. More technical would be great to read