Dogpile

Who made this beautiful game?

From the developers of Gubbins, a poppy and charming word puzzle game (that admittedly I have not played) is another uniquely gorgeous and weird game. I don't know a lot about the Australian game development scene but I'd say there is a lot of talent there. One look at the official site alone and you can tell a lot of love and polish went into this game. The Steam store page is honestly one of the best designed I've ever seen. For a $10 game that often goes on sale, you're getting a helluva lot of production value.

The game loop

The best part about this game is that it can be played with one finger and one eye closed at the end of a long work day and it's still a thinky and fun. In the main game loop, you drag a dog card to drop it into the top of the playfield, aka 'the yard,' to try and merge it with dogs of the same numerical value. Merging dog after dog after dog, you work your way up to a King dog after about 13 merges. There are incremental goals along the way, and punishments for not reaching those goals. And to make things more interesting, there are dog tags (similar to the jokers in Balatro) that modify gameplay in ways ranging from subtle multipliers to insane bouncy physics modifiers.

Surprisingly difficult

This is another one of those games whose cute graphics belie how hard it actually is. Winning the game totally depends on planning a strategy and finding the right synergies between tags and traits and taking risks on dogs with "bad" traits like fleas or "stinky." I lost the game 3 times before I actually understood it. If you have enough patience to figure out how to win, you unlock even more challenging decks and scenarios, which again, give the game more depth than you'd expect from these adorable cartoon dogs.

Final thoughts

I have yet to 'break' Dogpile, which to me is the most fun aspect of 'make number go up' roguelike games. You know, when you discover some overpowered, game-ruining combo that gets you a score so high the number ticks over into scientific notation, like 1.23E789, colloquially called an "e number" in the gaming community. So my next goal is to find a strategy to 'break' Dogpile (PS: is there an actual term for this?) though the game doesn't feel as sticky (replayable + addictive) to me as other roguelikes. As in, I didn't feel the urge to play it while on vacation. But it's possible I could be proven wrong after a few more runs.

The visual design is the standout feature of this game and absolutely worth checking out just to enjoy the sharp, illustrative UI designs. Overall, the simplicity of the gameplay and the variability in runs also lend itself to lots of different play styles and skill levels. The price point is unbeatable, too. So for that reason I would recommend it to both game connoisseurs and "normal" people alike.