Who let the dogs out, woof woof woof! Yes! It’s time for our review about puppies and even more puppies. I’m talking about Little Friends: Puppy Island, a brand new dog-sim released this month on the Nintendo Switch (and Steam). Time to take them for a walk and find out if this is the next best thing to Nintendogs!
Puppy Galore!
In Little Friends: Puppy Island, it’s time to embark on an exciting new adventure that furthers your puppy care experience! Explore an entire paradise island, find exciting new locations, dig up treasures, and embrace your adventurous side. And when they say a whole island filled with puppies, it’s exactly that – there are so many puppies. It all starts with a vacation to an island of one of your friends, who left his house in your care. Luckily you brought your new friend and have time to explore the beautiful island.
Gameplay Elements
Once you are accustomed to the controls, it’s time to take your lovable companion out on their adventure across an island filled with puppies! Even though it starts with just your average forest, you can soon discover sandy beaches, snowy mountains, cherry blossom sanctuaries, and much more! Each area offers different challenges for you to complete and leaves room to train and dress up (yes, you can dress them up) your favorite puppies in your way.
While exploring the island, you can become friends with nine different breeds of puppies and find the perfect companions to enjoy your adventure with! Each puppy has its traits and might be more suitable for certain tasks you can perform. While discovering new locations, you must gather resources and help your puppy pals construct an array of new activity spots throughout the island. From puppy spas and puppy schools to frisbee parks and accessory shops, there’s plenty to build for you and the locals to enjoy. You can even assign puppies to help perform certain ‘permanent’ jobs like park ranger (including an outfit) to gain more bones used as currency.
But that’s not all! I mentioned Nintendogs since they had a very interesting stat system of feeding your animal, playing with them, etc., just like the Tamagotchi did back in the day. Little Friends: Puppy Island has a similar system, in which you need to Brush, bathe, feed, and play with your pups to give them everything they need for their adventures. By performing certain tasks or while improving their obedience, agility, endurance & more, your dog gets dirty, hungry, or fatigued. So even though you need to explore to level up their stats and gain access to exciting new areas of the island, you will also need to spend some personal time with them.
Minigames & Dress-Up
Completing certain aspects in-game, like passing through a cave or jumping over a fallen tree, requires stats. These stats are leveled by completing certain tasks ingame and training them by playing minigames. These minigames are another place where Little Friends: Puppy Island shines. With great 8/16bit minigames that are perfectly doable for an almost four-year-old (my daughter) but also challenging enough for me as her dad to play with her. I loved this subtle touch in gameplay since it derives the game from just pressing a button and crouching or jumping over a certain hazard in-game. It challenges the player to think about certain actions you have to take. The same with obedience leveling, which requires a quick-time event with a cute critter. When timed correctly, you can praise the dog, which both levels his obedience and friendliness, which helps with befriending new dogs.
And yes, you can dress up your pups. I don’t think we should dress up dogs in real life, except for those who need it for health reasons. These are digital dogs – so yes, I made my pups wear cute hats, tutus, and other pink outfits since my daughter wants to be a ballerina, and so should the dogs. Little Friends: Puppy Island offers over 350 colorful outfits and accessories, which should be enough to find your puppy’s unique style! From tiaras and dresses to mohawks and sunglasses, customize your puppy’s look however you like. And no, you can’t drive a motorcycle with a wingspan in this one; sorry to disappoint.
Conclusion
So, to conclude! Little Friends: Puppy Island is much more than a Nintendogs clone or successor. It offers genuine gameplay with a wide variety of dogs (so many dogs), locations, and other elements to keep you on your hind legs wagging your tail for hours. It is easy enough for children up to two and older (I tested it with both my kids) and challenging enough for adults to have fun with it. It eats up a lot of your game time without noticing that you have already spent a few hours in-game, so that’s usually a good sign in my books. Graphically it looks great, with enough scenery changes to keep you from going forest-blind. And if you’re unsure if you need to play this game, be sure to take their test – it helps convince you to do so. I’m a labrador, by the way, in case you were wondering.
