Pou

Pou is a triangle-eyed alien blob who lives in a small flat and needs feeding.

The brown blob that outlived its own era

Zakeh’s app arrived when cheap Android handsets were new, and a generation of children grew up poking this thing on a hand-me-down phone. That history is most of the reason to consider it now: as a first virtual pet for a small child, or as something an adult remembers fondly. The routine is about as bare as the format allows. Meters for hunger, health, fun and energy drop over time, you top them up from the kitchen, the bathroom and the bedroom, and mini-games earn coins that unlock wallpapers, clothing and furniture.

It still boots on a phone nobody else supports

This app is remarkably light and remarkably stable. Hand it to an ancient device at the back of a drawer and it runs without complaint, which is genuinely useful for a child’s first game and something almost nothing modern can claim. The visual simplicity that reads as dated is the same thing that makes it work on hardware everything else abandoned.

What years without a real update cost it

The defining problem is that the design stopped. Not that it is simple, but that it is exactly as simple as it was years ago, so the mini-games never grow, the care meters ask nothing once understood, and the unlock grind stretches on towards wallpapers that are the same reward as the last wallpaper. A shallow loop can be charming while it is still being tended. This one has been left, and the advert load rising as the audience thinned lands harder on a game with so little holding you there.

Install it for a nostalgic evening or as a gentle first pet app for a young child, and it does that job without fuss. Anyone hoping for a virtual pet with actual depth should look at what has arrived since. Its place in mobile history is earned, but history is most of what is on offer.