June 2025 beta registration window

The second beta registration window for Dopcom Creechers opens tonight! To everyone joining the site, welcome in and I hope you enjoy your time here!

Be sure to check the getting started guide and the rest of the information section; there's a lot of good information there to help you get started. If you encounter any bugs or have any other feedback on the site, don't hesitate to email creechers@dopcom.net.

To ensure that Dopcom Creechers stays a safe and friendly place for everyone, all user bios and room descriptions made by users who have joined in the past 7 days are held for moderation. Our moderation team aims to review posts in a timely manner, but please allow up to twelve hours for posts to become visible.

The site is still under development. Some features that you can expect to see in the next few updates are:

• Private trades between users
• Calendar and weather system
• Three new species of pets
• Modifications to how creatures drop items

Surprise update: Bios and room descriptions!

This feature was planned to be part of the next major update, probably in mid to late july. However, it turned out to be significantly easier to get working than I expected, so I figured I would tack it on as a belated part of the scrapbook and Curio Shop update.

You can now write a bio on your userpage, and a description for each of your rooms! There is limited support for formatting with BBCode; a list of all available formatting options can be found on the edit page. Note that this also means that the terms of service have been updated; please take a look at the new section on user content before writing your bios.

Scrapbook & Curio Shop

Releasing pets into the wild is, for many Dopcom users, a bittersweet occasion. On the one hand, your pet gets a new life and you get some resources, but on the other hand you don't get to see them again. But it doesn't have to be bittersweet, because now there's a way to visit the pets you've released! The scrapbook lists every pet that you've released and has links to pages where you can visit them and see them in their natural habitats. And this includes pets dating back to the initial alpha release, not just going forward! And, for the completionists, the scrapbook lets you sort your released pets by species and see how many forms you've discovered of each one.

Along with the scrapbook system, there is a new system of embed codes. Every pet room page now has two sets of embed codes: one that corresponds to the room more generally, and one that corresponds to the current pet. The room codes can be used to embed whatever pet is currently in the room on another site, whereas the pet codes will embed the specific pet and will keep working even after the pet is released (at which point the link will redirect to the pet's scrapbook page).

There's a second big feature in this update: the Curio Shop, where you can exchange your excess furniture. Got a massive pile of shelf items but can't seem to find that specific one you're looking for? The Curio Shop has you covered. You can trade in most furniture items to the shop in exchange for tickets, and then use those tickets to buy the furniture you want. The shop has a rotating stock, with five random items available every day, but every item in the shop's catalog is guaranteed to appear at least once every 30 days. Any of the tier-5 furniture items that can be obtained from the summoning circle can be found at the Curio Shop for four tickets, and there are many new furniture items that are exclusive to the shop that can be purchased for three.

As always, there are plenty of minor tweaks, bugfixes, and quality-of-life improvements:

• The Town Kitchen now features a "cook this again" button so that you can make multiple of the same meal without reloading the page
• Item descriptions appear when selecting from dropdowns
• The General Store now buys Decorative Gourds for 12 dopcoins
• The inventory page can be filtered by item type
• The Clarity Charm has been reworked: the affinity meter that previously appeared on pets wearing a Clarity Charm is now visible on all pets; equipping a Clarity Charm instead increases the level of detail on this meter and adds a second meter for estimating a pet's progress towards the next growth stage
• Pets now get one fewer socialization if they did not eat during the previous day, in order to ensure that users' socialization clicks are going to pets owned by active players; this change is experimental and may be reverted in the future if it proves unpopular

The next priorities on the development agenda after this are:

• Direct trade requests between players
• Customizable user bios
• In-game calendar and weather system

The three new species promised in past newsposts are still coming; they've just been sidelined a little bit until more of the core systems are built out. And speaking of core systems, with summer starting there's going to be far more available development time, meaning that the Realms and Exploration system can get underway...

End of April Fools

This is the last day of the April Fools event! The mysterious capsule machine will remain available for you to trade in any remaining tokens you may have, but tokens will stop appearing in social interactions, and all of the event-exclusive random events (including any that produce tokens or Normal Eggs) will stop occurring as well. All event-exclusive items will return next year, though, so don't worry too much if you missed anything.

With the event completed, it's time to resume normal development on the site! Direct trades and the Curio Shop are still planned to release pretty soon, as well as editable user bios and a Scrapbook page where you can see all of the pets that you've released. My day job has been pretty busy lately, so these things might take longer than I'd hoped, but rest assured that they're all coming within the next few months. And once all of those are done, development will start on the Realms and Exploration update, a massive expansion that will more than double the amount of content in the game.

Also, just one last reminder that the Q&A stream is still planned for 8 pm Eastern time on thursday the 17th. All of the site staff will be available to answer any questions you have about the game and also talk about any playtesting feedback you may have. Come stop by if you're interested!

April Fools event

Happy April Fools Day, everyone! There's an interesting new contraption over in the town square that you might want to investigate...

The April Fools event will run for two weeks. All of the event-exclusive items from the event will be returning every year.

This also means that the March 2025 beta registration window is officially over, but I'm not going to disable signups until end of day on the 2nd, just in case anyone else wants to join at the last minute. The next registration window will probably be in June.

Also, one last announcement: to welcome in all of the new users and get some playtest feedback, there will be a Q&A stream on EpiglottalAxolotl's Twitch channel from 8:00 PM to 12:00 AM Eastern time on thursday, April 17th. Stop by if you have any questions or comments about the site!