Looking after something together is an oddly effective shared activity — it gives two people a small, external thing to be jointly responsible for. On mobile, though, most “pet” games give you your own pet rather than a shared one, which is a different experience entirely. Worth knowing which is which before you both install something.
The distinction that matters
Shared: one animal, one farm, one thing the two of you both affect.
Parallel: you each have your own and can visit. Pleasant, but you are not actually looking after anything together.
Almost everything on mobile is the second kind. Go in expecting that and you will not be disappointed.
The options
Play Together
Pets you can raise and take around the island, plus a social world to take them into. The closest thing to a shared pet experience here, mostly because you can actually be in the same place with them.
Hay Day
Animals as part of the farm — feeding, collecting, trading what they produce. Not pets in the emotional sense, but there is genuinely something to look after, and the trading layer lets you do it for each other.
Township
Farm animals plus a zoo to build and populate, which is the closest the genre gets to a joint project with animals in it.
PK XD
Pets inside a broader sandbox. Lighter and sillier, good if you want the animals to be one part of a world rather than the whole point.
If what you want is one shared living thing
Honestly, the closest mobile gets is a shared garden rather than a shared pet. Our Flower Garden gives two people one thing to keep alive between them, which is the mechanic people are usually after when they search for this.
Keeping it pleasant
- Pick something without a neglect penalty. A guilt mechanic attached to an animal is a bad thing to put between two people.
- Agree who does what rather than both doing everything.
- If one of you stops playing, do not let the other feel responsible for keeping it going.
More in this space: farming games to play with your partner and fishing and collecting games for couples.
