Stay: Your Forever Pet!

Stay: Your Forever Pet! takes the familiar virtual-pet concept and turns it into a gentle adventure centered on companionship, exploration, and everyday interaction. Developed and published by Windup Minds, the game places Ember, a magical fox-like creature, at the heart of nearly everything you do. Instead of presenting her as another follower controlled through menus, the game emphasizes believable animation and spontaneous behavior. Ember reacts to her surroundings, expresses her needs, gets curious about things, and occasionally requires the player to guide her away from trouble. The result is a cozy simulation where building a connection with the pet is more important than chasing complicated statistics. Daily life follows a comfortable rhythm. Time at home is spent caring for Ember, preparing her for activities, playing together, and enjoying quieter moments before heading into the Shimmershift. This routine gives the game structure without making it feel like a demanding schedule simulator. There is little pressure to optimize every action, which suits the relaxing atmosphere particularly well. The design encourages players to observe Ember and respond naturally rather than…

I do not recommend this game in its current state. It is beautiful and profound and Ember is one of the best NPC companions I've ever had the fortune of playing with. But the game's core loop isn't that of a pet sim. It's a roguelike/lite, and the biggest challenge it offers are random traps Ember runs straight into without much capacity to stop her (which is the only thing that ended any of my runs. That and the arbitrary limitation of how much magic she has.) The recurring levels are frankly boring, the few surprises they offer growing stale quickly. It would be fine in early alpha, but the roadmap reads to me as bonus features and polish as opposed to core content and levels. I don't want to negatively affect the studio's reviews, there is clearly a lot of heart poured into the game and I wish them the absolute best, but I felt it needed to be said.

great art direction! Ember is always an attentive, expressive pet. Im glad caretaking is its own sub menu so that you can pet/groom at any time. the world feels vibrant, lush. Recommended to both fans of the pet sim and cozy survival sim genres

A very cute an cozy game. It is a very adorable and adventurous game. love Ember's sounds and the exploration. hope to see future content soon!!

I want to recommend this very cute game but as someone on linux I ran into issues from the start with, trying to find a proton version that would even make the game bootup. Then when i finally get into the game, I get into the 2nd zone just to find out ember was out of bounds pretty much getting me softlocked, I wish nothing but the best for this game and the devs above all else.

Fun, sweet, and relaxing!