To the Rescue! Review (psycoatde)
*sighs* I so wanted this game to do well.
However, I might as well be a salt statue by now due to the amount of games and devs this year that thought "Hey, let's just release this game out of early access when it's still unfinished!" "And then, THEN! We will tell people we have poured our hearts and souls into this and are working on updates and it's going to be great, swear!"
Devs can only do this so much until Players will not take it anymore.
In this case the order of events roughly was:
- Woo early access, look how great this already is (barring a few bugs, which are very much expected at this stage)
- We released, come play our awesome game!
- Ok so there are a few bugs, we'll fix those asap.
- Woof our patch fixed bugs but introduced new ones, we'll fix those asap.
(Repeat a few times)
- Ok yeah we know you haven't heard from us in a while, but we really want to learn from our mistakes and finally give you a version of this game without any game breaking bugs!
- Finally, new patch released! Honestly, I eagerly booted up the game, started a new save file just to make sure nothing got corrupted, aaand...
The doors don't work.
No, literally, the doors open up to brick walls sometimes. Using the unstuck button sometimes fixes it, reloading the day sometimes fixes it, but it just got seriously. unplayable. again!
Hence, me being a salt statue.
So what can you expect?
- Sweet words
- Broken promises
- a game launched way to early because reasons
- apparently no patch testing
+ very cute graphics and dogs
+ cool trait interactions between dogs (but: - newest trait of separation anxiety leads to fights just like the other traits (where it's working correctly)
+ You can mark the dogs for the current interested person in a menu and get markers on screen to make it easier to find the dogs
+ Helpers mooostly work. They still get stuck or can't access some kennels at all.
+ Dev Team is well-meaning. But that only takes you so far.
Well-meaning people and whole shelters get taken down all the time because they can't keep up with the amount of animals they have to take care of... because they took on too much instead of taking care of the few they realistically were able to as best as they could.
Don't be this kind of dev team. Or that kind of animal welfare activist. Do your job well, not many jobs terribly.
Much sads. :-/
Update for Patch 1.1.143
Whelp, 2 more hours playtime. :D Thankfully, the doors work now and the separation anxiety trait seems to work properly as well.
There still are -some- minor functional issues: Workers don't scoop dog poop / clean kennels and the playpen still doesn't seem to work correctly (I haven't used it in ages because it has game-breaking issues, but I saw other comments that it still is wonky). The former is easily remedied by, well, scooping poop yourself and letting the workers deal with f.e. bathing & feeding, but becomes a bit of an issue with a large, multi-room shelter. The latter isn't strictly necessary as it 'just' raises the adoptability (kind of a mix between happiness and f.e. kennel quality) a bit, but a bit sad for rp purposes.
Other than that there are only information or cosmetic issues (f.e. a dog that arrives injured being categorized as sick & injured & not cared for at the same time. Sick dogs are treated with injections, injured with a first aid kit, so mechanically it makes quite a difference. However! The notification and the info card of a dog (seen in game, not in a menu) show the right information, so it really is just a minor issue.