Wobbledogs from Animal Uprising, available now on Steam, is pretty much what you’d expect: a game about dogs that wobble.
They’re not quite what you’d expect dogs to look like, though. Their bodies are square, their heads are blue, and they pupate like a moth when it comes to maturing into adulthood. Pupate, get it?
They are, however, dog-like in personality. They’ll bark at you. They’ll wiggle happily when you scritch them, and they’ll dig and poo and wee and do all that other stuff that canines like to do. They’ll even sometimes eat their poo. And so, if you’re lacking a dog in your life, you’ll probably gleam several hours of happiness, mindlessly watching your oh-so-colourful wobbledogs wobble around the screen, doing things that only digital dogs can do.
You can breed your wobbledogs, if you like. They lay eggs (spoilers: real dogs don’t lay eggs), which you can later pop in a machine to fertilise by two dogs of your choosing. (Look, if you haven’t had the-birds-and-the-bees talk with your parents yet, you probably shouldn’t take Wobbledogs‘ approach to reproduction as gospel. Real life may vary.) Depending on what you’ve fed your dog, they’ll inherit new traits. And by breeding them together, you can create wobbledogs of different colours, lengths and sizes. It’s fun.
It’s all fun, actually, until a notification pops up on your screen telling you that one of your wobbledogs is getting old, and would you like your camera to focus on that dog? Oh no. I almost cried a little bit as I lovingly petted and praised my wobbledog for the last time, reminded of having to say goodbye to my unwobbly, very real dog last year. How dare a game so colourful and whimsical make me feel REAL LIFE EMOTIONS!
And then… the dog died. It left the mortal coil that is Wobbledogs. And it… exploded. And I was left with dog bones inside my dog den. Dog bones that the closest nearby wobbledog then decided to start eating.
I was aghast. In shock. I quickly cleared up the bones before any other dogs could start gnawing on the remains of my dear Crumpet. And then I just stared at the screen for another five minutes, unsure of how to process what I had just witnessed.
When another message popped up on my screen telling me that another dog was reaching old age, I popped them back in my inventory. If they’re not out on screen, they can’t die. And if they can’t die, I don’t have to witness their bones spraying across my screen.
Anyway, Wobbledogs is fun but prepare yourself for the inevitable death explosion that comes for them all eventually. Well, unless you turn off death in the options, which you absolutely can do. And probably should do. Because no dogs should have to die, not even the wobbly pink and blue ones.
