Blender Studios created DOGWALK as a free-to-play single-player adventure to showcase some of its development tools. It is a beautiful half-hour adventure, crammed full of more character and charm than most game epics. It showcases Blender’s tools excellently, but also whets my appetite for Blender Studios as a game development team! This is a free title worth playing.
DOGWALK is a very simple fetch quest. We play as a dog owned by a young boy who wants to build a snowman in the forest. Instead of the boy leading the dog on the leash, we drag our poor human around like a comedic ragdoll as we find the snowman’s arms, hat, and face. These objects are dotted around a small but detailed snowy environment with trees, deep snowy pits, gates and bridges to navigate, and an iced lake to skate over. The controls are sublimely smooth and predictable, with a simple interaction button to pick up objects or lick your owner’s face!
Whilst the gameplay is simple, the wholesome vibes are immaculate, elevating a simple game into an endearing and memorable short experience. Numerous interactions between the boy and his dog are just so, so sweet, and when the player causes them directly through gameplay, it brings a sense of belonging and connection to the adventure. Run into densely packed trees quickly, and your boy is going to fall over. Give him a lick to wake up from his daze. Run into deep snow, and you’ll risk your boy sinking like quicksand. The interact button will pull him back out again for a cuddle. There is no fail state or jeopardy, but the character gleaned from a few moments of quiet is astounding. I’ll also give a shout-out to the end credits, which show some behind-the-scenes footage of all the props being handmade and scanned into Blender to be digitalised into assets. It helped me appreciate just how close to a stop-motion animation DOGWALK had to be to realise its vision. Honestly, every frame on the screen is poetry in motion.
I’d pay decent money for a longer stay in the world of DOGWALK. Beyond its simplistic fetch quest perhaps not engaging a player, there is little to critique or complain about. This is a free, wholesome adventure that would be perfect as a Christmas or Winter winddown. I chose to play it in the UK heatwave, and whilst I sweated like a pig regardless, I felt full of the warm glow of humanity after playing. What an uplifting adventure. I’d love a sequel, pretty please.
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