focusing on the growing theme i decided to do something inspired by the chao garden from sonic adventure

feed your little flower candies to raise its stats:
Agility: how often your flower hops
Fly: Gliding
Power: Vertical jump
Dexterity: Horizontal Jump

during a race your flower will no longer bounce off a wall and will instead climb a wall using their Power stat. and agility is about 25% stronger.

I might do something like this as a smaller part of another game someday and have a few different kinds of games for your pet to play. For example something like the chao karate could translate to a kind of sumo where power increases knockback, dex could be tackle distance, agility is still hopping speed, and fly would be defense.