Dewkeep: a virtual pet in a glass terrarium that grows while you are away

01  What it is

Dewkeep is a virtual pet you keep in a browser tab. One small creature lives under glass in a terrarium, and you feed it, water it and settle it to sleep. That is the whole of it — there is no score, no round, no opponent, no timer running down toward a failure, and no way to lose the creature. It is a care sim, not a game you win.

The app is one room rather than one page. The terrarium rests on a shelf, and the creature inside blinks and breathes while nothing is happening — the idle animation runs whether or not you are doing anything to it. There is no navigation bar and no dashboard to find your way around: you open the page and you are already looking at your pet.

It is free and ad-supported, runs entirely in your browser, and needs no account. Nothing is installed and there is nothing to sign up for. The first thing it asks you to do is give the creature a name, and that name stays on your device.

02  The loop: about a minute, once or twice a day

Three needs drain while you are gone, each at a different speed, and each has one matching action. Fed empties over roughly twenty hours, Watered is the fastest at about fourteen, and Rested takes around thirty hours of the creature being awake. These run on the real wall clock, so an hour away is an hour away whether the tab was open or closed.

Feed restores a solid chunk of Fed, Water restores more of Watered, and Settle lays the creature down to sleep — while it sleeps, Rested refills to full over about six hours and the other two needs drain more slowly. One tap wakes it again. An action politely greys out when its need is already high, with a plain reason rather than an error: the creature simply is not hungry yet, and topping up early gains you nothing.

A full visit is well under a minute, and that is the design goal rather than a limitation. Open it with your coffee, tap twice, close the tab. Nothing is gated behind a session length and there is no daily reward for staying longer.

03  The terrarium is the actual game

The reward for coming back is not a number, it is a place. Every day you open the app and the creature is not dormant counts as one thriving day, and thriving days unlock the terrarium piece by piece — sixteen of them, authored by hand and permanent once earned.

It starts with a cushion of moss on day one. A creeping moss by day three, a haircap moss by seven, a fern crozier at ten, a small flower at forty-five, a river stone at ninety, driftwood at a hundred and fifty, and a vine trailing down the glass at three hundred and sixty-five. Nothing you have earned can be taken back, and missing a day costs you a thriving day rather than a piece you already own.

Thriving days also grow the creature itself through five stages — Spore, Shoot, Frond, Bloom and Elder — at two, seven, twenty-one and sixty thriving days. The stage never regresses, and when a new piece appears the creature turns its head to look at it.

Because milestones are counted in thriving days rather than calendar days, the terrarium is an honest record of how often you actually showed up. There is no ranking attached to it and nothing is tallied against you, which is why the shelf at day 47 is a nicer thing to look at than a score would be.

04  What happens when you leave

The needs keep draining, so the creature notices a long absence. That is the honest trade for a pet living on a real schedule rather than a session you start and stop. What does not happen is a punishment: there is no screen counting the days you missed, no debt to work off, and nothing you earned is ever removed.

It cannot die. If all three needs sit at zero for a continuous forty-eight hours the creature curls up and goes dormant — and a weekend away will not do it. A dormant creature keeps its entire terrarium around it, and a single care action wakes it up gently. Come back after a fortnight and you will find it asleep with everything you grew still intact and lit, and any milestones your thriving days earned in the meantime unlock as you arrive, before the page has finished drawing.

Short absences are not remarked on at all. Below about six hours the app says nothing whatsoever about your return, which is deliberate: remarking on nothing is what makes an app feel needy.

05  What it deliberately does not do

The list of things Dewkeep refuses to do is longer than the list of things it does, and most of them are the standard machinery of a pet game. There are no notifications, no streaks, no leaderboards, no daily-login rewards, no currency, no shop, no timed events and no mini-games. It will not push, nag, or scold you for being away, and it never congratulates you for showing up either — it simply describes what happened.

There is no account, no email address and no social graph. Your pet — its name, its needs, its day count and its terrarium — is stored in your own browser’s local storage on the device you play on. It is never sent to a server and there is no way for anyone else to read it. That cuts both ways: clearing your browser data clears your pet, so the app gives you a short export code you can keep as a backup or paste into another device. Importing always asks you to confirm first, showing both pets and both day counts before it replaces anything.

The creature’s name is the only thing you ever type, and it is never drawn onto the shareable image or put in a link. A share card carries our own art, the day count and the mood — "day 47 · thriving" — and nothing else.

06  How to start well

The first week is the part worth getting right, and a few habits make it much easier.

• Water first. Watered runs out faster than anything else, so if you only have time for one tap, make it that one.
• Settle the creature before you close the tab for the night. Rest refills while it sleeps, so you wake up to one fewer thing to fix.
• Copy your export code somewhere safe once you have a terrarium you would be sorry to lose. It is the only backup that exists.
• Do not worry about a missed day. It costs you one thriving day and nothing else — the moss does not recede.
• Ignore the greyed-out buttons. An action that will not press is the app telling you the creature is already content, not that something is broken.

07  Questions people ask

Is Dewkeep free, and do I need an account?

It is free to play in your browser and supported by advertising. There is no account, no email, no sign-up and no download — open the page and the creature is there. Nothing in the app is paywalled.

Does the pet keep living while the tab is closed?

Yes. Needs are worked out from timestamps rather than from a running loop, so an hour away is an hour away whether you watched it or not. Come back tomorrow and the creature will genuinely have got hungrier.

Can my creature die if I forget about it?

No. There is no death state and nothing you can do to lose it. Sustained neglect makes it go dormant, which takes all three needs sitting at zero for a continuous forty-eight hours, and one care action wakes it up. It keeps its whole terrarium even while dormant.

Where is my pet saved, and can I move it to another device?

In your own browser’s local storage on the device you play on — it is never sent to a server. To move it, copy the export code and paste it in on the other device; importing asks you to confirm before it replaces an existing pet. Clearing your browser data will clear your pet, so keep the code if that would bother you.

What if I travel, or my clock changes?

Nothing breaks. Days and timestamps are measured in UTC, so time zones and daylight saving make no difference. Setting your clock backwards does nothing at all, and jumping it forward will not unlock terrarium pieces you have not waited for.

How long does it take to unlock everything?

The last of the sixteen terrarium pieces arrives at three hundred and sixty-five thriving days, and the final creature stage — Elder — at sixty. The early pieces come quickly: moss on day one, a fern crozier by day ten, a small flower by day forty-five.

08  More from the shelf

• Tilewright — Draw seven tiles. Outword the AI.
• Yearmark — The year you were born, as a poster.
• Chess — Beat the engine. Post the win.
• Fiveaside — Score past the keeper. Post the scoreline.

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