Gamevil USA has just announced a pretty unusual mobile game, named "My Monster Pet", which requires players to raise (and take care of) virtual monsters instead of usual pets like dogs, cats, parrots, hamsters or whatever people might have in or outside their houses. Well, what kind of mobile gamer needs to raise cats and dogs, anyway? You can do that in real life. While a monster is, um, pretty hard to find in real life. Plus, even if you find it, I'm not sure how you will get along with it, regardless of how cute it might be.

At the beginning of the new game, your pet is a baby-monster and, depending upon how you feed and take care of, it will grow into one of the 12 big-monsters available. The growing process has three phases, during which you will have to do all the things you would usually do with a normal pet: offer its favorite food, entertain it, offer it affection and even go to the hospital in case it catches some monster-specific illness.

What's cool about the new title from Gamevil is that your pet is growing even if the game is stopped or your phone is turned off. So, we're talking about having real responsibilities here. If you neglect the monster for a longer period of time, it will probably die and you'll bear the "bad monster parent" etiquette for the rest of your life. Or until you start a new game and raise another monster properly.

Besides taking care of your little pet, My Monster Pet also offers several mini-games: Karaoke, Battle Maze, Fortune Telling and Dance Dance, which will allow both you and your "baby" to have some extra fun.

Talking about the new game and its features, Stephanie Huang, Marketing Manager of GAMEVIL USA, Inc., said, "We wanted the player to be able to share the fun of My Monster Pet, so we included a feature that allows users to send monster eggs to their friends and family. What's really interesting is that when the giver sends a secret message with the egg, the receiver will not be able to view that message until the monster pet grows up and evolves." This definitely sounds like fun.

For the moment, the monstrously cute game is only available in the US, and Gamevil hasn't mentioned anything about a future release for other markets. We hope they will, as European and Asian gamers might also feel the need to take care of a few monsters from time to time.