How to play

The whole game on one page: how it plays, how to work the watch, and what to do when something looks wrong.

Gameplay

The active pet

Your movement is the whole game. Steps — or active minutes, or calories — fill the bar at the bottom of your pet's room; a full bar is a level; a level buys a reward. The pet takes care of itself while you're away, and is earned by moving. Device history is scanned for the past week, so if you don't check it at least once a week, you'll lose credit for older activities.

The panda's room with the earn bar nearly full — The bar fills as you move

The stats page: meters, level bar and steps — Stats: meters and the level bar

The level-up congratulations screen — A level lands

Activity level

To create a balanced-feeling game, the difficulty of earning rewards is based on your activity level. This is asked at the beginning, and can be changed at any time in Settings. There is a suggested daily step count for each difficulty, but difficulty scales all earn modes: steps, active minutes, and calories:

Pace	Steps	Active minutes	Calories
Easy	4k a day	20 a day	200 a day
Medium	7.5k a day	32 a day	400 a day
Hard	11k a day	60 a day	700 a day

The Daily activity level picker: Easy (4k steps), Medium (7.5k steps), Hard (11k steps) — Each row says what it asks for

Minutes are counted as moderate ones, and a vigorous minute counts as two. Calories means active calories — simply being alive never feeds your pet. The three ways of earning are tuned so that the mode that suits your body is the fastest one for you: steps for walkers, minutes for runners and cyclists, calories for anyone who would rather track burn.

What levels buy

Below is an example progression. Currently, there are 30 levels of rewards to earn in total, but that takes quite a while.

Getting access to all play modes for two pets, including sleepover, is a good place to start:

StartHatch Panda

Feed

Groom

Play

L1Ride

Ride

L2Hatch

Feed

Groom

L3Toy

Play

Playdate!

L4Ride

Ride ×2!

L5First Bunk Bed Panda

Sleepover! Panda

L6Second Bunk Bed Sparky

Two pets complete!

The diagram below shows how play modes are unlocked by combining rewards on multiple pets:

Your pet can visit a friend’s watch — any watch, anywhere, no phone pairing and no accounts. Turn on Friend share (it is a question during setup, and a row in Settings any time after) and a Share row joins the care menu.

To send a pet: Share → “Share [your pet]”. The watch shows a code made of four little pictures — hold it up so your friend can copy them. Codes are single-use and only last a couple of minutes, so this is a together-in-one-room thing.
To receive one: Share → “Receive guest”, then pick the four pictures your friend is showing you. Their pet moves in like a playdate — you can feed it, play, ride and groom together, it sleeps over if your pet owns a bunk bed, and End playdate sends it home whenever you like (bedtime does too).
While your pet is visiting, its house at home stands empty with a note — and calling it back is always one press away (Return home in its empty room). Its meters freeze while it travels, so it never comes home starving.

One honest detail the watch also tells you at the moment it matters: what travels is a copy. Calling your pet home doesn’t take it away from your friend — their guest stays until they end the playdate. Your pet, its levels and its rewards never leave your watch; the code carries a snapshot and nothing else, and nothing about it is stored anywhere once the visit begins.

Birthday parties

Every pet has a birthday, and it is the day of the month it hatched on. There is no year and no age — a pet hatched on the 12th simply has a birthday on the 12th of every month, for as long as you keep it. An egg hasn’t got one yet; it gets its day the moment it hatches, and it keeps that day for good, even if you send it back to its egg later on.

A birthday on the 29th, 30th or 31st falls on the last day of any month that has no such date — the 31st is the 30th in April and the 28th in February. Nobody ever misses a birthday.

Open the game on the day and it says so: “It’s [pet]’s birthday!”, with Have a party! and Not now underneath. Saying no costs nothing. A Party! row — a little cake — sits in that pet’s care menu all day, in the place Visit usually holds, so you can throw the party whenever you feel like it. Off the birthday there is no party to throw, and no row.
The birthday pet hosts, in its own room — it is their day, they don’t go anywhere. It needs its toy, or there would be nothing to play with, and the game says so if it hasn’t got one yet.
Guests ride over. Any other critter that has hatched and earned its Ride can come, and you pick them: the neighborhood comes up titled Who’s coming?, you mark the ones you want, and Back sends the invitations. Three guests is the most a room holds — four critters together. A cell that takes no mark is one that can’t come: an egg, a critter with no way to get there, the host, or a fourth guest.
There is cake, and a stack of presents beside it, and everything you do at a party you do for everybody in the room. Feed once and they all eat; groom once and they all get brushed; play once and they all play with the host’s toy. Ride takes the whole party out on the host’s trail together, strung out along it, each on its own ride — and when the ride ends the party is still going.
Ending it. End party takes the Party! row’s place while one is running, and that is one way. Bedtime is another — the guests go home when the night starts. And closing the game is the third. None of the three costs anybody anything — the guests walk back to their own houses with their meters exactly as they were, the same as a playdate ending. The Party! row comes back for the rest of the day, so you can throw another one.

A birthday party in the panda's bamboo grove: three guests, cake and presents — Cake, presents and three guests

The whole party riding out along the panda's bamboo trail, each on its own ride — Ride takes the whole party out

If two critters share a day, the game asks whose party it is, and then offers to remember the answer: Yes keeps that one on the day from now on and moves the others to the next free one, Just today settles it for this month only.

A party is a good time and nothing more: no levels, no gifts, no faster earning. Four critters fed at once is exactly four critters fed. The diary writes the day down — threw a birthday party, shared birthday cake, waved everyone goodbye — which is the whole of what a party leaves behind. Parties are a Garmin feature today; the Apple Watch app doesn’t throw them yet.

The eight critters

Every critter plays exactly the same — nobody is stronger, faster or rarer. What differs is where they live, what they throw around, and where a ride takes them: the panda’s bamboo trail, Sparky’s circuit board, the penguin’s ice, the octopus’s seafloor — and the platypus’s city at dusk, which it skates in a fedora.

The panda in its bamboo grove, bike parked and beach ball on the shelf — Panda A bamboo grove

Its striped beach ball — Panda A bamboo grove

The alien in its spaceship, a ringed planet out the viewport — Alien A spaceship interior

Its blue diamond — Alien A spaceship interior

The puppy in its backyard, doghouse and picket fence — Puppy A backyard

Sparky in its garage workshop, charging dock on the wall — Sparky A garage workshop

The star out in the milky way, its comet hanging overhead and its ringed planet resting on the dust — Star The milky way

Its little ringed planet — Star The milky way

The penguin on its ice floe, igloo and aurora overhead — Penguin An ice floe

The platypus on its riverbank, burrow mound among the cattail reeds, the city lights small on the horizon — Platypus A riverbank, in sight of town

Its boomerang — Platypus A riverbank, in sight of town

The octopus on its reef, submarine parked on the sand — Octopus A coral reef

Controls

The game screens

You can move through the screens using your watch's natural swiping or up/down mechanism. Navigating deeper into a page is generally done by using your device's natural selection or activation button:

The neighborhood, page one: the panda and three eggs, with the page dots and a right chevron underneath — Neighborhood (page one)

The neighborhood's second page — star, penguin, platypus and octopus — with the page dots and a left chevron underneath — Neighborhood (page two)

The care menu roller with the Visit row under the ring — Select: the care menu — Visit

The stats page with levels waiting to spend — Pet Stats — levels waiting

Choose reward: the roster grid with the panda ringed and Levels: 3 beneath — Level up: Choose a pet to advance

Garmin watch controls

Start/Enter — select: open the care menu from the room, choose the focused row or cell.
Up / Down buttons — move through the carousel (room → stats → diary → neighborhood) and roll through menus.
Back/Lap — step out: close a menu, end a ride, leave a page.
Press and hold Up (the left button) — open Settings, from anywhere in the game. It is the same hold your watch uses everywhere else, and it is deliberately not a row on the care menu: a small person tapping through their pet should not land in Settings by accident.
In the grids, Select rings a cell and Up/Down walk the ring in reading order — walking off the end of a page turns to the next one.
On touch Garmins, a tap selects and vertical swipes roll the menus — buttons always work too.

Apple Watch Controls

Tap — select. In menus, the tap acts on the row under your finger.
Digital Crown — roll through the menus.
Swipe up / down — the carousel and menu rolling.
In the grids there is no ring to walk. Tapping a critter is choosing it, and a sideways swipe turns the page.
Swipe right — back, exactly like the Garmin Back button.

Settings

On a Garmin watch — press and hold Up, the left button, from anywhere in the game. Back returns you to your pet’s room.
On Apple Watch — the Settings row at the bottom of the care menu (tap your pet, then roll to the end of the list).

Every option lives on the watch itself — there is no phone app to set anything from. Rows that toggle say what they are set to, and selecting one changes it on the spot.

Row	What it does
Earn	What fills the bar: steps, minutes or calories. Selecting cycles through the three. Your progress comes with you — each way of earning remembers what it has already counted, so nothing is lost and nothing is counted twice.
Pace	How much movement a level asks for: easy, medium or hard (the amounts are in Activity level). Selecting cycles. Changing it re-prices the level you are filling now; levels you have already banked stay yours.
Recover a day…	A short list of your recent days that have minutes on them. Pick one and those minutes are credited just as if you had opened the app that day. It appears on Garmin watches, in Active minutes, for players updating from an older version — and it lets itself out again after about a week.
Sound	Chirps when you feed, play, groom or celebrate, on watches with a beeper. Never a sound you did not ask for.
Vibes	A short buzz on those same moments. Same rule.
Friend share	On or off: whether the care menu offers sharing pets with friends. Off by default; the Share row exists exactly while this is on. On watches that support sharing.
Notify	Should the watch tap your wrist when a pet is hungry, bored or needs a brush — or just handled it itself? Always (a tap as it happens), fewer (at most two round-ups a day, late morning and evening), or off. Selecting cycles. It is asked once during setup, it never buzzes at night while the pets are asleep, and there are no streaks, no reminders and no “your pet misses you” — ever. Only on watches that can deliver notifications.
Crash reports	Anonymous technical reports, so we can fix crashes we would never otherwise hear about. No personal or health information, ever, and it is off with one press — the details are in the privacy policy.
Help	A link to this page.
Re-allocate…	Changed your mind about a reward? This hands every reward you have bought back to the shop so you can choose again, for a fee of 15% of what you spent. It shows you the exact numbers and asks before anything happens, and it appears only once you have something to return.
Start over…	Everything back to scratch: pets, levels, diary, day one again. It asks first, and there is no undo. Always the last row.

Questions

My pet is asleep

Isn't it adorable?! Pets sleep at night and wake in the morning, all on their own. A sleeping pet is fine! Your movement still counts while it dreams.

Also, there is no penalty to wake it up to give it some love. If it is hungry or wants to play, or if you just want to interact, it will go back to sleep shortly after the activity is over.

My pet’s room is empty

Then it is out visiting. A pet you send calling rides over to the friend’s house and stays there until you bring it back, and its own room keeps standing while it is away — its toy on the shelf, nothing parked outside, nobody home. Nothing is wrong, and nothing is lost.

To look in on it, open the Neighborhood and pick the friend it went to see: that room has both critters in it. To bring it back, open the care menu in either room and choose Return home (in the empty one) or End playdate (in the one they are sharing) — the same ending, whichever side of the street you are standing on. A playtime visit also ends by itself at bedtime; a sleepover is the one that stays the night. And once it is bedtime, a sleepover is the only kind of visit there is: pick a friend who owns a bunk bed and your pet goes straight over for the night, no question asked — pick one who doesn’t and the game says so, because there would be nowhere to sleep. Come back in the morning, or go and earn that friend a bunk bed. And it is one playdate at a time: while two critters are together, nobody else can start a visit — the game will say so, and end the playdate first if asked.

Do I have to feed it?

No. The pet looks after itself while you are away and it never gets sick. Caring for it is a treat, not a chore — the game will never guilt you.

Accounts and backups

There are no accounts and nothing to sign into. Your game lives entirely on the watch, which also means it stays on that watch — a new watch starts a new neighborhood.

I didn’t earn points for my activity

The game reads about a week of your watch’s own history every time you open it. That is the whole rule, and it is a generous one: days you never opened the app still count, so a big weekend is safe even if you do not look in until Tuesday.

It is also the limit. Activity older than that week cannot be recovered — not by us, not by the app, not by anything on the watch. The history the game asks for simply does not go back further. So the one habit worth having is opening your pet at least once a week; do that and you will never lose a thing.

That rule holds for every mode on every watch: steps, calories and active minutes all back-credit day by day. Active minutes used to be the one exception on Apple Watch — counted by the week, so a week that turned over while the app was closed started fresh — and they are not any more.

A particular Apple Watch case: the pet quietly stops growing. Check the Health permission first. The game reads your movement from Health, and it asks for exactly one thing — the metric you chose: Steps, Exercise Minutes or Active Energy. The ask appears on your pet’s screen when you finish setup, and again the first time you switch to a new mode.

Here is the important part: if you decline, the app has no way to know. Apple designed Health privacy so that “no permission” and “no movement” look identical to an app — so Watchables cannot warn you or nag you. The pet simply stops growing, quietly, until access is granted. Open the Settings app on the watch, go to Privacy & Security → Health → Watchables, and allow the category for your current mode (or all of them). Your movement counts again right away.

And if the bar is moving but slower than you hoped, remember the pace: a level is meant to take days of ordinary movement — Settings → Pace makes a level cheaper if the one you picked turned out to be someone else’s.

If a day you were proud of went missing and it genuinely stings, write to support@watchables.fit and tell us about it — there is a human on the other end.

Purchases

Watchables is sold through the Garmin Connect IQ Store and the Apple App Store. (A Wear OS version is coming; it is not in the Play Store yet.) One purchase is the end of it — no subscriptions, no in-app purchases. Payments and refunds are handled by those stores under their own policies, so for a refund, start with the store you bought it from. If you are stuck, write to us and we will point you the right way.

Something confusing that isn’t covered here? support@watchables.fit takes bug reports, questions, and pictures of your pet doing something great.

Crash reports

With your permission the app sends anonymous technical reports so we can fix crashes — no personal or health information, ever. Toggle it any time in Settings → Crash reports. The details are in our privacy policy.