The Non-Game That Barks Like A Game

Well thought out games blog Lost Garden has a design analysis of Nintendogs. In his estimation, gamers who are shrugging this off as "another Nintendo toy" are doing themselves a disservice. From the article: "There is nothing on that market that compares to Nintendogs. If you dig into the game mechanics at an abstract level, it has surprisingly more in common with a RPG than most virtual pet games. Yet hardcore gamers make a snap judgement and instantly assume it must be a Tamagotchi-style game. This is an unfortunate mistake that limits our understanding of the game design."

Comments

Review

[atarrri]

I just played it a bit and I have to say I'm not impressed. It's nice to see people making games for free but there just really isn't very much to this game. Don't be fooled by the graphics and sound, this plays nothing like a Mario game, basically it's a Jetpac clone with ripped off graphics and sound from Mario. The gameplay is very repetitive and though fun for a few games it quickly loses its charm. There are plenty of better freeware games that don't get slashdotted because they use original ideas. For an example of a very fun original freeware platform game that involves a jetpack check out Cave Story: http://agtp.romhack.net/doukutsu.html