Caring for a real animal takes a lot of time, effort, and money. So why not test your skills on a virtual pet with the new Hatch iOS app(Opens in a new window)?

Meet Fugu: bright, rotund animated creatures that thrive on attention and fresh fruit, and are waiting to hatch on your iPhone or iPod touch.

For $1.99, you can adopt and name a unique pet, born with unique markings, eye colors, and personal behavioral ticks. In their own hand-animated world, Fugu eat locally grown fruit, leave post-meal messes for you to clean up, and love lengthy petting sessions, just like a real-life pet.

As the creature grows fat with trust and food, it will show off its happy dance and lick the screen (click below to see it action). Once you’ve unlocked 100 percent trust, your Fugu will learn to play Peekaboo, watching for your face in the phone’s front-facing cam, then hiding when you’re not there.

Plug your phone in at the end of the day and the creature will snore the night away, without making a peep so you can sleep peacefully and wake up to a rested Fugu in the morning. Good care will lead to in-app features like a Hatch camera, Starfruit, and a bag for storage, which can be unlocked along the way and used to interact better with your virtual pet.

Of course, like any domesticated animal, without regular feeding and attention, it may run away after a few days of neglect. The Fugu may be recovered, though with a new lack of trust in its owner. Help it regain its dependence by poking the Fugu’s belly, pinching its cheeks (pictured), and shaking the phone to watch its reactions.

Hatch illustrator David Lanham hopes that users will become emotionally connected to his hand-drawn creatures.

“It all boils down to, how can we make the engagement with your pet as deep as it can be?” he told Fast Company(Opens in a new window), adding that his own experiences with a pet dog and a baby girl helped drive his animations.

“You need that base impression from real life,” he said. “The unexpected things make your heart melt.”

The Hatch concept was born out of collaboration between Impending Inc. and Realmac Software — the studios that built the productivity app Clear. It joins the ranks of recycled 1990s toy concepts, alongside the Tamagotchi, which was revived in February as an app.

Check out the Hatch app in action in the video below, and download the app(Opens in a new window) from the Apple iTunes Store.