I’m in a fight with my landlord over getting a dog, if “fight” means I texted him about it a couple times and he never answered and now I just drive myself nuts wondering if he’s purposefully not answering so that he doesn’t have to say “no” or if he just regular isn’t answering and I should harangue him. I am a person who should have a dog, and in the absence of one, I get my fix wherever I can: friends’ dogs, convincing dogs on the street to notice me and then pretending to be surprised, and video games that have dogs in them, like Dogpile.
Dogpile is a collaboration between two Australian studios, Studio Folly and Toot Games. You have a deck of dog cards, which you play to drop dogs into a yard. If two dogs of the same type touch, they merge to form a bigger dog. Those bigger dogs merge to form even bigger dogs, and you keep merging dogs until you either win by getting the biggest dog, or your dogs spill out of your yard and you have to start over. There’s also the smaller goal of earning an increasing amount of “bones” in a certain number of hands, with penalties coming into play if you don’t make the requirement.
I appreciate a game that understands that the best dog is a big dog (a problem for my own desire to have a dog, since I have a very small apartment). The game’s dogs are very charming, from tiny angry chihuahuas to greyhounds that look like they’ve been up too late doomscrolling to golden retrievers that just look happy to be included.
Size isn’t the only quality of a dog you have to pay attention to. Dogs can have traits: friendly dogs will be drawn toward dogs of their type, while timid dogs will move away from other dogs. This can be really useful for space management, helping jostle dogs around to get them to touch. Some dogs can be unusually big or small, and dogs can also get fleas that make their traits not work. My least favorite trait is “crated,” which prevents a dog from merging for several turns. You can change dogs’ traits in an interface stylized like a dog wash, removing bad ones or adding good ones.
In the game’s pet shop, you can buy new dog cards or “tags” that modify your game, such as by making all the dogs super bouncy (I thought this would be great, but it backfired on me). The tags add a metagame over the whole thing that I’m sure will appeal to strategy nerds, but honestly I most like just dropping the dogs into the yard, watching them tumble and then pop into another kind of dog, and seeing all of them pile up in an awkward, jostling crush.
The whole thing is bright, cute, and chill, and it ate up most of my Friday night as I said things like “get over there, butt dog” and “aah, no more puffballs” at my computer. Dogpile is out now on Steam.
