Tamagotchi

My Lil' Bastard is a satire of the genre of Tamagotchi-like pet sims. It's developed by This Is Pop, which specializes in polished games that are not original in terms of design, but approached from a nastily sarcastic viewpoint -- they also developed Bible Fight, Viva Caligula! and Dungeons & Dungeons.

You'll find Virtual Villagers 2 on the casual game sites--but don't let that mislead you. This isn't the usual match-three game, but an extremely unusual--and remarkably compelling--game, in which you help an island of primitives survive and thrive. Unusually, the "world" continues when you're not playing--so, Tamagotchi-like, you need to check in every few days to see what's happening and adjust your strategy.

Virtual Villagers is an offbeat "life sim" game in which you control a village of castaways on what seems to be a South Pacific island, helping them to build something like an adequate life for themselves. What's unique about it in comparison to other life sims is that "time" progresses even when the game isn't running--in other words, if you don't come back to the game for several weeks, you may find that something fairly horrific has happened to your civilization.