COMPLETE: I Became a Dog
Sep. 1st, 2019 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoI was in bed one night looking for mobile games that weren't terrible, and stumbled across this one somehow.
I Became a Dog is a free... uh... adventure game, I guess? You are a former human who wakes up as a dog with no memories. The other dogs in the household are happy to take you in, though... or are they? What looks at first like like a light and fluffy pixel game with cute happy dogs soon turns dark. Questions are raised about the other dogs' real motives and whom you can trust, and murder is in the air....
That's when you get that far, though, and it does admittedly take a fair grinding to get there on your first playthrough. The core gameplay is "Please bring me item X and I will give you the key to room Y in return" errand management, but in your way are a few blatant "you must have eaten at least this much dog food to speak dog and understand the request" and "the request is they want 500 bugs, get gathering" gates mixed in to slow you down. You can bark to be fed and fart to gather bugs, powers which naturally recharge over time (one use per 30-60 seconds or so?), or you can watch ads or pay $3 to get infinite uses.
(Yes, it's a mobile game and there's the freemium catch right there, but anyone who's played an MMO has experienced cooldown timers longer than that, so it's really not that prohibitive. I got by just fine on just waiting them out, and for reference, you're talking to someone who legitimately purchases JCSoft games.)
There are several endings, and it's probably worth eating the bad ones first just so you can start the New Game Pluses with your language level intact and increased multipliers for gathering bugs. Seriously, you will be here all day if you legitimately try to gather the 1,500 for the last couple endings without each one counting for five or so.
An unfortunate side effect of the story's darker turns is that everyone ends up being kind of an asshole, even (especially) you once you get your memories back and figure out who you were and why you became a dog. The... best? ending involves regaining your humanity (sort of--you have your body back but you forgot how to speak human,) being yelled at by your hateful shrew of a wife (turns out "Woof woof woof" is not the correct answer to her accusations,) and deciding that you were happier as a dog when you didn't have to worry about adulting and were fed and she actually loved you. And getting this ending involves deliberately killing off one of your friends about 75% of the way through the story, so that he can't be there to reteach you how to speak human in the endgame.
It's... cynical. It's fun and pretty, though. There's a second episode, and against my better judgment, I actually did like this enough that I think I'll check it out.
I Became a Dog is a free... uh... adventure game, I guess? You are a former human who wakes up as a dog with no memories. The other dogs in the household are happy to take you in, though... or are they? What looks at first like like a light and fluffy pixel game with cute happy dogs soon turns dark. Questions are raised about the other dogs' real motives and whom you can trust, and murder is in the air....
That's when you get that far, though, and it does admittedly take a fair grinding to get there on your first playthrough. The core gameplay is "Please bring me item X and I will give you the key to room Y in return" errand management, but in your way are a few blatant "you must have eaten at least this much dog food to speak dog and understand the request" and "the request is they want 500 bugs, get gathering" gates mixed in to slow you down. You can bark to be fed and fart to gather bugs, powers which naturally recharge over time (one use per 30-60 seconds or so?), or you can watch ads or pay $3 to get infinite uses.
(Yes, it's a mobile game and there's the freemium catch right there, but anyone who's played an MMO has experienced cooldown timers longer than that, so it's really not that prohibitive. I got by just fine on just waiting them out, and for reference, you're talking to someone who legitimately purchases JCSoft games.)
There are several endings, and it's probably worth eating the bad ones first just so you can start the New Game Pluses with your language level intact and increased multipliers for gathering bugs. Seriously, you will be here all day if you legitimately try to gather the 1,500 for the last couple endings without each one counting for five or so.
An unfortunate side effect of the story's darker turns is that everyone ends up being kind of an asshole, even (especially) you once you get your memories back and figure out who you were and why you became a dog. The... best? ending involves regaining your humanity (sort of--you have your body back but you forgot how to speak human,) being yelled at by your hateful shrew of a wife (turns out "Woof woof woof" is not the correct answer to her accusations,) and deciding that you were happier as a dog when you didn't have to worry about adulting and were fed and she actually loved you. And getting this ending involves deliberately killing off one of your friends about 75% of the way through the story, so that he can't be there to reteach you how to speak human in the endgame.
It's... cynical. It's fun and pretty, though. There's a second episode, and against my better judgment, I actually did like this enough that I think I'll check it out.
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