Anxiety can be debilitating at any age, and this is a concept that Anxiety Puppy explores across a sensitively told story. This game is primarily a visual novel, but across its runtime, you’ll be solving a few simple puzzles and completing various minigames that require a little bit of timing or deduction. These do not distract from the main emotional narrative and instead give way to letting Anxiety Puppy’s story shine brightly.
We play as a young girl entering the job market for the first time. Interviews are scary and brutal in the city, and the unnamed girl freezes up. A dark wolf-like creature keeps appearing in the background, reminding a lot of how depression is often called a black dog that follows you around. Well, it turns out, anxiety is a puppy instead. During a dream at night, the girl is taken back to her childhood to understand where all of her modern-day anxieties come from. The rest of the game is a tour through her childhood, reliving key events from new perspectives with her anxiety puppy in tow. Discussing and reliving these events may well be the perspective shift and breakthrough she needs to cope with her anxiety and spot how to reframe situations to ease her burden.
What I loved most about Anxiety Puppy was how actionable and relatable certain story beats and resolutions were. Whilst this isn’t a therapy substitute, there’s a lot of logic and unpicking of anxiety triggers that could be easily adapted for practical living by everyday people. The graphics have a pristine watercolour, school project feel to them that suits the tone, and whilst the puppy imagery is quite close to the dark dog of depression, it is expanded upon in the narrative, so it doesn’t feel like a cheap clone. I also like that Anxiety Puppy reaches an uplifting but realistic conclusion. This isn’t a cure-all. Instead, the game explores coping and mitigation mechanisms, and it’s all the better for it.
I mentioned that minigames are scattered throughout the game, and they are quite varied. From playing a piano in a rhythm game to solving very easy jigasw puzzles of photos to riding your first bike – they all have unique control schemes and are very forgiving. They aren’t perfectly polished, but they add rather than subtract from the game. My only minor complaint is that whilst there are choices to be made, I’m unsure of their significance. I’ve run through the game twice, making different choices at the end of each chapter, and the story appears quite linear. it is also quite short. You’ll be able to clear this in 90 minutes without a sweat. It is cheaper than buying a movie, though, so I wouldn’t call it poor value for money, either.
Ultimately, Anxiety Puppy left me in a thoughtful and reflective mood. It made me want to go back to key moments in my life that replay over in my head and view them from a different perspective. It also made me think about the times in my life when I’ve not committed to bold choices and decisions, and examine why. This is a warm hug of a game despite its subject matter, and I think more sensitive gamers will get a lot from it.
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