Dogpile Review | MORE DOGS, MORE!
There have been quite a few merge games coming out lately. It’s a genre I never spent a lot of time with until recently, but I’ve been really enjoying all the different kinds. Dogpile, from Studio Folly, Toot Games, Foot and WINGS, is a roguelike deck builder meets merge games where your goal is to merge small dogs into bigger and bigger dogs. And what’s not to love about that?
In Dogpile, you have a fenced in “yard” as your play area where you drop dogs of different sizes. Two of the same dog will merge into a bigger dog and so on and so forth. Your main goal is to create the biggest dog possible, but things get more complicated pretty quickly. You have a “deck” of dogs at your disposal and once in a while you’ll head to the shop where you can buy upgrades or changes for your dogs using the money you’ve earned by merging.
When you head into the shop there will be a variety of items that you can purchase. You can grab more cards or dog tags. Dog tags will normally affect the entirety of the game. For example, with the “tax return” dog tag, you get $5 every time your deck reshuffles. Some tags add positive or negative status effects to some of your dogs. The “royal” effect, for example, makes a dog bigger than normal while “cheese” gives a dog the “friendly” status effect.
Status effects will make your dogs act in different ways which can make things in the yard get a little bit wild. The “friendly” effect that I mentioned earlier makes dogs basically like magnets to dogs of the same type, making merging a lot easier. You can also get status effects that give your dogs fleas or make them be covered in mud. Eventually, no matter how you play the game, you’ll likely end up with some status effects.
But that’s not the only way that you’ll make changes happen in the yard. Every couple of rounds, you’ll also head to the dog wash where you can add a status effect to three of the dogs in your deck. Additionally, if you don’t reach your score goal for the round, you’ll go to the dog house and get a negative status effect for the rest of the game. Especially for my first couple of rounds, I went to the dog house nearly every time so I was trying to merge my dogs with a lot of obstacles in my way.
My only real issue with Dogpile was that, towards the beginning, I didn't know what all of the phrases meant and how they would interact with one another. I struggled to get the score that I needed because I wasn’t really able to get any good synergies to happen. It’s a big game of trial and error for the first couple of hours until you’re able to figure out what works well together and what creates the synergies you’re looking for.
Dogpile is a fantastic merge game. I fell in love with it when I played the demo a few months ago and was super excited when it dropped earlier this month. It’s very fun, challenging and gosh darn cute. Once you get the hang of things, you’ll be coming back to it again and again and trying out new combinations and new decks.
Breakdown
Game Name: Dogpile
Developer: Team Folly, Toot Games, Foot
Publisher: WINGS
Availability: PC
Reviewed on PC
Final Thoughts
Dogpile is such a fun game, I don’t know how else to say it! Merge mechanics mixed with its roguelike elements makes the game completely different every time you play and that’s the brilliance of it. When you first play it’s hard to interpret what all of the status effects mean, but once you get the hang of things, you’ll be coming up with your own strategies in no time. If you’re a fan of merge games, Dogpile adds a unique challenge to this already super fun genre.