Ah, to be a naughty animal. Not a care in the world, no career or taxes or grocery shopping, just the basics of life and a minimum of rules. That’s the premise of many a game in the flourishing cute and cuddly chaos simulator genre, one dominated by the likes of Untitled Goose Game and Little Kitty, Big City. Sydney developer, Rotub Games, saw a pup-sized gap in the market and now brings us Doggy Don’t Care, a chomp-sized rascal sim about a pug named Charlie.
The idea is simple enough – Charlie’s been left unsupervised and finds himself being influenced by a series of mischievous birds to cause havoc across four distinct locations, starting at home and ending big with a trip to a minimum-security museum. Each of the levels tasks the player with fulfilling a series of objectives to earn badges, which typically involve breaking or otherwise vandalising something that’s of great importance to one or many humans. Crucially, the methods to these pranks aren’t spelled out, so the challenge comes from looking at the badge icons or chatting to the local birds to try and discern your goals and then executing them in slapstick-physics fashion.
As a game that can be knocked over in a single sitting, Doggy Don’t Care scratches a very particular itch. I try to think of myself as at least slightly intellectual, but for whatever reason the literal toilet humour on display here – regularly-occurring fart noises with no warning, and even a dedicated piss button – managed to get me. This is not a game with a whole lot of substance or subtext, even in the out-of-pocket interstitial levels that get a little weird and dark with it.
I do find myself wishing there was a bit more to the whole experience. I love a short and sharp game, but this is one that kinda just starts and ends without anything overly impactful or memorable happening in-between. Perhaps I’m just too old and jaded, and I definitely see this as a game that younger players will delight in. The writing in the dialogue between Charlie and his feathered friends is quite fun, at least, with an unmistakably Aussie sensibility. Perhaps leaning into this even further to guide players through some of the more obtuse puzzles could have been a good source of added flair. Dedicated piss button adds more than enough value, to be fair.
Reviewed on PC | Review copy supplied by publisher
Great
- Straightforward and succinct campaign
- Figuring out puzzles from context is usually fun
- Writing is full of cheeky humour
- Piss button
Not great
- Simplistic to a fault
- An extra level or two wouldn't have gone astray
Born into the world of video games through SEGA, and in particular Sonic the Hedgehog, Kieron’s gaming tastes now consist of the latest, shiny AAA thing, an indie darling or two, and an embarrassing number of hours of Balatro.