Life must be simple being a doggo, why not enjoy that kind of life that only video games can provide. Naturally, the developers at Cliffside Studios have chosen an internet-famous dog breed as their mascot and main character, the Shiba Inu.

Made by students/alumni of Uppsala University, the game is running on Unreal Engine 4 with a cell-shaded render. The game is currently available as a free download on their itch.io page.

They do also have a short synopsis of the plot but it seems rather self-explanatory:

Your hometown has been through a great tragedy and your owner feels sad to see her home break apart. Kato sets out to make the village into a better place by barking, digging, sprinting and using objects in the surroundings to spread happiness!

Cliffside Itch.io Page

You can watch a short trailer about the game below:

Short review

Being a free to download title about dogs, this is barking right up my alley. Naturally, I gave this game a shot.

Gameplay is what you would consider a derivative consequence of being a dog; that is, the design document literally writes itself. Do fetch quests, make new frens, deliver mail to other people, that sort of thing.

Play long enough and you’ll eventually get the legendary “Bone” artifact. I also managed to Barkour my way up the houses.

The controls cover all the essentials of being a dog, including a dedicated borking button using the right mouse key. There are buttons to dig and walk very fast along with a ‘use’ button that allows you to interact objects with your mouth.

I give this game a very good boy out of 10, earning it the highest ever score given on this website.

Conclusion
Go play it and have a fun few hours of your life being a dog rather than face the depressingly sad state of your current mortal coil.

Interestingly, a manifest file(aka log file) can be found within the game directory that suggests that they were once looking into the possibility of making this game compatible with VR headsets via the OpenVR steam api so you can actually experience being a dog for real on the VR headset of your choice.

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, they are not actively developing this game anymore. Perhaps if people would send some encouragements or support along their way to their itch.io page (just leave a comment!) about how good it potentially is, we could see them working on it for a steam release!

What are you guys waiting for? Go send them your good thoughts here!

Via RockpaperShotgun

Chia is the horse-author from the far flung year of 2153. While not grazing on grass pastures or reviewing old time-y games and technology from the early 21st century pretending to not know what comes next (as to not disturb the space-time continuum), he can be seen exchanging vast quantities of Earth currency for parts needed to fix his damaged space ship.