Pet Society Vacation Review

Pet Society Vacation is to Pet Society what CityVille Hometown was to CityVille. That is, a mobile version of a hit Facebook game that streamlines the experience to make it suitable for a new platform. The two games play virtually identically, but with a few additions and a new theme, Pet Society Vacation manages to stand out as a great new entry in the series.

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Pet Society Vacation lets you take your pets with you wherever you go

Pet Society Vacation is to Pet Society what CityVille Hometown was to CityVille. That is, a mobile version of a hit Facebook game that streamlines the experience to make it suitable for a new platform. The two games play virtually identically, but with a few additions and a new theme, Pet Society Vacation manages to stand out as a great new entry in the series.

The basic premise is the same, except instead of taking care of your pet in a quaint little town, you’ll be doing it on a tropical island. The size has been scaled back, but Vacation still includes most of the features that fans have come to expect. There are plenty of shops to browse and you’ll need to keep your pet clean and happy by using ample applications of soap and food. Basically, if you’ve played Pet Society you’ll feel instantly at home. The menus, the icons; it all looks and feels familiar.

Pet Society Vacation

This means that, for the most part, you’ll be doing the same activities, which means lots of time spent decorating your house boat and dressing up your pet. But thankfully, there’s one very welcome addition to add a bit more flavor to the experience: scuba diving. This mini-game plays out much like a 2D side-scrolling game, something like a simplified Ecco the Dolphin. You explore the depths while avoiding pointy blower fish and angry squids, all in the search for money and treasure. The hook, is that you only have a limited amount of air for each dive, and only a few air tanks at a time. You can either wait for them to refill after a few hours or pay some premium bucks to dive back in right away.

Vacation also has one big advantage over a game like Hometown: it actually connects to the Facebook version of the game. So if you already play Pet Society, you’ll be able to bring that same pet with you into the new game. Syncing up the two games also unlocks some special content. It’s not much, but it goes a long way towards making the game feel less like a completely separate experience.

Pet Society Vacation

The new tropical theme suits Pet Society quite well, and though the art style is the same, the new items and locale make it feel fresh again. It’s almost enough to make you wish you were on vacation yourself. There’s also a large number of new items and clothing to collect, most of which fit in with the tropical/nautical theme. The steel drum-inspired soundtrack is just the soothing icing on the cake.

Pet Society Vacation is about exactly what you’d expect from a mobile version of Pet Society. It offers up the same great gameplay and charming sense of style, only on a smaller scale. But while the game overall feels very familiar, the new scuba diving mode and tropical theme help to give it a personality of its own.

The good

    The bad

      80 out of 100