Deck Pets: Reptiles

Deck Pets: Reptiles

Reptiles turns your Stream Deck into a vivarium. The whole deck becomes the glass: a heat lamp warms the left-hand end, the water dish sits at the cool end on the right, and your animals move between the two to get the heat they want, basking on the rock, climbing the branches or tucked into a hide. The lamp is lit by day, on your computer's clock.

Six species join as you level up:

Leopard gecko, the starter: a desert gecko, up at night

Crested gecko: from the rainforest, likes it damp and climbs

Corn snake: a mouse every four days or so

Bearded dragon: up by day, with hot basking and a UVB tube

Ball python: humid, slow to tame, a mouse about every six days

Hermann's tortoise, at level 6: greens, basking and UVB

The care is the environment. Press Lamp for warmer and hold it for cooler; below Low the lamp goes off. A thermostat from the shop sets the heat for you. The dragon and the tortoise need a UVB tube for their bones, and the others are happier with one. Mist raises the air to what your animals like; its key shows the air against the band they want. Feed puts in what each hungry animal eats: live insects that run about the floor until they are caught, greens, fruit mix or a thawed mouse. Water fills the dish, and Clean clears the mess.

Now and then an animal sheds its skin in one piece; pick it up for a few scales. In air too dry a shed can stick, and a mist loosens it. Press the glass to handle the animal nearest: handling tames them, dragons fastest and pythons slowest, but leave one alone while it is digesting a meal or in shed.

A content pair lays eggs. Left in the substrate few hatch; in an incubator, with its own page, nearly all do. For leopard geckos, bearded dragons and tortoises the heat decides whether the hatchlings are male or female, as it does in real life.

Content animals earn scales for new species, lamps, UVB tubes, hides, plants, substrates, food, bigger vivariums and a second vivarium, and each level opens more of the shop.

Every animal is a morph, Common, Uncommon, Rare or Legendary, up to a Blizzard gecko or a Blue-eyed Leucistic python, and rare parents make rare hatchlings more likely. Above them are six one-off Uniques, one per species, such as Ember, a blood-red leopard gecko. They are never for sale: two Rare or better parents can hatch one, once per vivarium.

How hard it is is up to you. In Simulation, animals that are neglected can die, UVB tubes wear out and heat bulbs blow now and then. In Casual nobody dies, and tubes and bulbs never wear out. Illness is off unless you turn it on, and you can speed up scales and XP. While Stream Deck is closed time runs at half speed for up to three days, and nothing dies of it.

Everything happens on the keys, even typing a name. Press Status and the whole vivarium is laid out a fact to a key: the warm and cool ends, the air, the UVB and who needs what. On a Stream Deck + the dials feed, mist, clean and turn the lamp up or down, and a Vivarium dial puts a live view on the touch strip of your own pages. There are layouts for the Stream Deck, Mini, XL, +, Neo and Mobile, and with more than one deck the vivarium can stretch across all of them.

Adds support for the Corsair Galleon 100 SD: the habitat, shop, settings, status and every other page are now laid out for its 12 keys, and both dials work on both layers.