Social networks have been burdened by an overabundance of copycat social games with dozens of variations on essentially the same game type clogging Facebook's search function. The pets genre in particular is looking pretty crowded on the platform with almost 100 apps tagged as such in our social game traffic tracking service, AppData. So we were surprised when Rivet Games, formerly known as FooMojo, announced a pet game as its first Facebook offering after closing a $5 million round of series B funding.

Far from feeling like a copycat, Rivet Games CEO Jesse Janosov says the company's game is a unique offering based on its visual style alone. The game, called Pet Tales, uses a photorealistic style detailed enough to render individual hairs on cats and dogs when viewed close up within certain game modes like the "play with pet" one pictured below.

"It's not really cartoony, like a lot of the other pet games aimed at [a younger audience]," Janosov says. "This game is for an older audience, for people who like pets."

Pet Tales builds on the collectible pets theme established by FooMojo with its now off-Facebook title, FooPets, by adding a gameplay loop around decoration in addition to the pet care and other interactions. Players decorate a park for their adopted pets to inhabit and play with other pets. The game monetizes mainly around premium decoration items, much the same as other social games in the pets genre.

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