MiniMonos (lost environmental massively multiplayer online game; 2009-2013)

The game's logo.

Status: Lost

In 2009, the eco-based MMO, MiniMonos, launched in an early alpha stage. This game then grew to a fairly large success at over a million members in 2012, before suddenly closing down in 2013.^[1]

The game was founded by Melissa Clark-Reynolds who believed that there was a lack of environmentally-themed games in the genre, and set forth to create the game. It heavily eco-friendly theming also did not just remain on site, as many members were encouraged to do "eco challenges" and rewarded for these efforts. The game also had a partnership with Buy1Give1 which helped provide water to parts of India through the purchases of membership.^[2]

In the game, there was a large variety of content, with regular updates, and heavy eco-friendly theming. Like any MMO, there were chat rooms designed to communicate with other players. Alongside this though ,there were also a number of mini-games ranging from a Tic-Tac-Toe style game, to one where you had to fly through clouds to collect energy, all encouraging and teaching children about helping the environment. Some of the rewards from these games could be used to buy items for players' monkeys and treehouses, which also were themed towards environment-friendly things, such as a wind turbine, or solar panels. Aswell as this, players could also build robot pets, and participate in regular events as well as participate in and make their own puzzle-style missions.

Furthermore, the game also had a number of things that could be done, such as earning the 100 different Top Caps, which could be earned like badges from completing tasks which ranged in difficulty.

Aswell as this, the game also released a regular number of comics, aswell as merchandise, however, similar to the rest of the games history, cannot be found online anywhere.

The game had an active playerbase, up until its shutdown, where it had dropped to a small 50k members.