Eggling: Retro Virtual Pet

Hatch an egg and keep what comes out of it alive.

Eggling lives in real time, whether the app is open or not. It gets hungry, it gets bored, it makes a mess and it falls ill, at the moments those things would really happen. Close the app for an afternoon and you come back to what happened while you were gone.

Look after it Feed it meals, or snacks when it needs cheering up. Clean up after it before the mess makes it ill. Give it medicine when it's poorly. Turn the light off at bedtime so it can sleep. Scold it when it's playing up — but only then, because it beeps the same way when it's genuinely asking for something, and telling the two apart is the whole skill.

It calls you When it's starving or miserable, your phone calls you, and it keeps calling every hour you leave it. You get a warning before the mess makes it ill, and a reminder if the light is still on at bedtime. A pet that's looked after well hardly calls at all.

Watch it grow up It starts as a tiny baby and grows through child and teen into an adult over about four days. How it turns out depends on how you raised it: its discipline, how many times it was let down, and whether it lived on snacks.

Play with it A game of higher or lower. You see a number; guess whether the next one is higher or lower. Win three rounds out of five and it's delighted — and every game takes a gram off.

From your Lock Screen Put it on your Home Screen or Lock Screen and see how it's doing at a glance. When it needs feeding, cleaning, treating or putting to bed, do it from the widget without opening the app.

Make it yours Choose a creature and a shell. Seasonal themes dress the whole app — the case, the screen and the pet — for Halloween, Christmas and Easter, and you can wear them all year. Everything unlocks every shell and every creature, including the ones added in future updates.

Cosmetics are the only thing for sale. Nothing you buy feeds it, heals it or keeps it alive; that's down to you.

Nothing leaves your device No account, no ads, no tracking. The pet lives on your iPhone or iPad and Eggling collects nothing about you.

In English, Portuguese, French and Spanish. For iPhone and iPad.