Hello all. I once played a virtual pet game called "Animal Acres" and lately I've considered going back to it, but first I wanted confirmation that it wasn't dead. It seems to be crawling along and the developer is till active. This is the same developer who also runs Eliyo, which I saw someone brought up a while back.
Both games have a small player base, but I'd like that to change if I can as Animal acres is a game that is pretty good for a virtual pet game. You pick an animal and have them repeatedly perform in shows as a way to earn points, increase their ranks up a tiered scale, win prizes and game money, and also prep them for breeding, as you don't have a prayer of getting them too high in the first generation, no matter how good you are. The game has I believe 9 different types of free animals, ranging from cats and dogs, to bird, chinchillas, cows, and goats, to a range of premium animals (I use the term loosely) such as dragons, phoenixes, unicorns, and to be a little weird, fairies, centaurs, memaids/mermen, and vampires. The premium guys aren't super-cheap, but you can reproduce them indefinitely once you have a female, particularly since they introduced the Stud system, which allows for more easy breeding.
Getting off the ground is pretty easy, with money coming in easy, a daily gift which often gives you stuff you don't need but sometimes really gives you something of incredible value to what you're doing. Vets to help and train your guys, the ever-looming goal of getting a bloodline which rapidly improves skills and makes your animals really special. and just the ocassional events, wide variety of breeds within each type of animal (though you shouldn't mix breeds if you want a bloodline) and a lot of other things make this an exceptional game of its type, which is why I want to see it do well.
The owner is super-accessible by players and listened to me havily in the past about accessibility. She also is one to listen to players on a lot of things as she largely believes that the community ought to shape the game some, though last time I talked to her, she is not interested in introducing new breeds or new kinds of animals at this time, (though there is still a ton of them even so.)