Dogz - Crumbling Facade

2/10/23

Repetition is the core of some games - sometimes to its benefit, more often as a detriment. I think of one of my favorite mega-franchises: Basically every Musou game. Those games are minor variations on doing the same things over and over again, and I bloody *love them*. Seriously, I’ve put way too many hours in stuff like Warriors Orochi or Hyrule Warriors, but I really can’t get enough of them. More often, though, repetition is the death knell for some games, usually when the core gameplay loop just… y’know, kinda bad? Unless you’re somehow the most optimistic person ever, I think you’ve got a good grasp on which category Dogz for the Game Boy Advance is; a beautiful facade, hiding one of the most repetitive, un-interactive, and flat out boring games I’ve played in quite some time.

This was one of those big gaming sub-genres that I kind of missed; pet rearing simulators. Look, if you were born in the 90s, you probably got your hands on Nintendogs at least once, and I think it was with the DS era that this sub-genre really found its place. Which is why it was so surprising that Dogz, obviously a part of this rising trend, actually released on the GBA. This made more sense to me once I learnt it came out in late 2004, just before Nintendogs changed the game for the DS - but I was even more surprised to learnt that this game - a Japanese-produced game, at that - is actually an installment of a series that had been running for over a decade at this point in time. Anyway, full disclosure, I was recommended this game by my partner, but she was actually talking about a different dog-based game for the GBA which looks far… far more wacky and bizarre, and thus I blame her for playing Dogz. But let’s not put the cart before the horse - why do I feel so strongly about Dogz?

So, as you can probably guess, Dogz is all about raising a fresh new puppy. You get a good number of different dog breeds to select from, but I picked a female Pomeranian, which I named Tao (my character’s name is Bubbis, by the way), though this choice was only because Pomeranian’s are the least weird looking dog breed in Dogz, though every breed has their own admittedly strange charms, that’s just kind of how this game looks. Plus, Pomeranians rule. After this little intro, you’ll bring your puppy home, and begin to integrate its care and training into your day-to-day life.

Now, Dogz has a very set-in-stone gameplay loop. Your main objective, as shown in the Puppy status screen, is to train your new dog; having them learn their name, sit, stay, and all the classic staples of dog-rearing. Now, when I booted up this game, I kinda hoped the methods of training would be sort of akin to Nintendogs and other games of this ilk - y’know, minigames and whatnot. No, no, and no. Training your dog is as simple - and exhaustingly boring - as walking up to your puppy, selecting the trick you want them to learn, and just praying that it works. And… that’s it. The bulk of your time in this game will be spent in the same spot, in the same room, selecting the exact same options just hoping that your dog will actually perform their tricks. It takes dozens of successes to actually ‘learn’ the trick, as shown by hitting Start and checking the Puppy Training Status, but you don’t really get anything for actually achieving this, besides some misplaced sense of satisfaction. At most, learning a trick, like sit, will unlock shake, which is just another trick to learn. Theoretically, you could learn all these tricks in a few days, but the game intentionally puts a pause on your progress, with your mother telling you the puppy doesn’t like being told over and over again to do the same things, but spreading out the experience doesn’t really do much to make it any more engaging.

After about a week or so, in-game, you’ll gain the ability to take your puppy for walkies, but this adds pretty much nothing to the overall experience - you just wander around the relatively empty town, pausing to visit the dog park and do exactly what you’ve been doing at home, or maybe getting an item or two from the various pet shops dotted around the map. There is, as small as it is, a practical element to going for walks, as you’ll have to keep your puppy on the straight and narrow, much like when it takes a dump in the house, but I barely engaged with these walks and still got a good training result at the end of the game. Personally, I don’t think the walks add much besides looking at the admittedly nice design for the town, but I guess that just factors into how nice this game looks overall.

To say the least, Dogz main gameplay loop is incredibly boring and utterly devoid of meaningful content. Occasionally you’ll have little events pop up - like the dog taking a dump on the carpet, requiring you to scold it and clean it up to encourage it to, y’know, crap in the actual litter tray. In fact, this was one of the elements of the game I just couldn’t complete - you can ‘train’ your dog to go in it’s litter box, but only by scolding it for crapping on the floor; considering this is seemingly totally random, how the hell am I meant to get a full completion on my dog training report!? Why is one of the core features - scratch that, the only core feature - of the game locked up to pure chance? Madness. I’ll be completely honest with y’all, I don’t have much to say about this game. It’s a boring, snoozefest of a title that has pretty much nothing going for it. You will be going through the same routines, the same menus, and the same *nothing* that encompasses this game for hours upon hours, all for nothing. But it couldn’t just be boring, oh no. No, Dogz for the Game Boy Advance goes out of its way to be as annoying as possible.

Frustratingly, your already boring attempts to raise your puppy are stymied at every turn by the game itself. Let me give you a basic rundown of my character’s average weekday. They wake up, and by the time they’ve reached the living room, you’re called to breakfast. With breakfast done, you’ve got *just* enough time to feed your puppy, and then half your day is, dare I say, wasted at school. By the time you’re back, you’ve got a few in-game hours to train your puppy… assuming your mum doesn’t want help with dinner, which coupled with dinner itself, will take up even more time. Thankfully, most evenings are given you in full, but even these can occasionally be totally taken up with certain events - you’ve also gotta feed your dog, brush them, vacuum up rubbish; it’s all busywork that takes up time from the main goal of the game; actually training the damn dog. And that’s what this game is - boring busywork. Boring busywork that is stretched out into a 3-4 hours package that really is only going to pull delight from the smallest of children who just want to look at cute graphics and animals. This, I will admit, is the one saving grace of the game.

Also, why the hell is a ten year old girl doing all the bloody chores? I’m sorry, this is a dumb thing to bring up, by why do the player’s parents do *nothing* to help out with raising the dog. You’re the only one who feeds and trains them, the only one who vacuums around the house, fetches the bloody newspaper… and why are you getting the newspaper, anyway? It’s a common trope that dogs fetch the paper, why wouldn’t your puppy do that!? Seriously, for as supportive as the parents claim to be in raising this puppy, they do *literally nothing* to help out. Thanks Mum, thanks Dad.

Now, I think an argument could made that without all these constant interruptions, the amount of training and whatnot you can do to your dog currently present in the game would be woefully inadequate, and you’d be sitting around trying to kill time, but that just doesn’t excuse the constant interruptions and flat out wasted time you have to deal with. With the limited time span and already unclear, inconsistent methods to raise your puppy, it genuinely feels like the game is just wasting your time, feeling more akin to a toy (and a broken one at that) - which makes its final moments even more confusing. You see, Dogz pretty unceremoniously, just sort of… ends. I thought the ‘Day x’ was just a way of tracking how long you’d been playing, but after 21 in-game days, the game suddenly ends with your puppy being entered into a dog show, its result pretty much a summary of how well you raised your puppy. After that, you can use your save data to enter a mode where you can just endlessly walk or play with your puppy, but it lacks… Well, anything of substance to do, just like the main game doesn’t really give it much incentive to keep playing.

Probably the biggest Trojan Horse element that actually got me playing his game in the first place was it’s graphics and art direction - it’s not a particularly complex looking game, but everything - from it’s characters, environments, and of course, our four-legged friend - are beautiful, with fantastic pixel art and just a real cozy atmosphere that makes this game bearable… Well, at all. Can’t say the same about the music, though; every track feels repetitive as all hell, and if you aren’t even aware of how to change the music in the living room, you’ll be listening to the same theme over and over again, which is just… just great, y’know?

Dogz, beyond its bright, colorful facade, is nothing short of a borefest, filled with the most basic busywork and non-events I’ve pretty much ever seen. Whilst it can be delightful to see some of the cute animations of the dog itself, training your new puppy is nothing short of sleep-inducing, culminating in a genuine nothing-burger of an ending that does nothing to inspire further play. Whilst children might be delighted by its visuals, I can’t recommend this game to pretty much anyone else, especially when there are far better, more fleshed out entries in this genre readily available (in a sense) on the DS and beyond. Dogz is proof that cute visuals and animals a good game doesn’t make - you have to have a bit of a game to go along with all, y’know?

Thank you so much for reading my review of Dogz for the Game Boy Advance! Whilst I was only pretty down on this game, that doesn’t matter, as my next review is game #50, and to celebrate this milestone, I’ll be playing one of my favorite games for the system! Thanks for all the views and support this last year and a half, The Game Boy Abyss remains such a fun little hobby and I really can’t imagine ceasing work on it in the near future. As always, you can find me over on Twitter @Lemmy7003, or you can email me at cckaiju@gmail.com or mgeorge7003@hotmail.com if you have any questions or requests. Next review might be a few weeks away, just so you know, so I’ll see you then!