To the Rescue! (2021)

Giving this two stars hurts my heart but it was literally unplayable. The two stars are for the fun I had during the two hours it worked fine - the gameplay loop is very fun, there's lots of different dog breeds and it's overall very charming. However, after around two hours I encountered four major bugs, one of which basically broke the game.

1. Dogs get stuck in kennel walls. They don't move, they can't be targeted and moved, they just stay there and continually lose hunger/thirst/cleanliness. I "fixed" this by giving the dogs into a foster home so they just disappeared from the kennel.
2. Visitors stayed in their spot in the show room after not choosing a dog. They just stacked on top of each other.
3. Hunger, thirst and cleanliness status bars didn't go down anymore. So there was basically nothing to do because the dogs were permanently well-fed and clean.
4. This one broke the game completely. No new dogs arrived in the shelter. I had tons of visitors a day that wanted to adopt but literally only had one dog in the shelter. For days. I was standing around doing nothing for days in hopes another dog would show up - nothing. Can't give dogs up for adoption, can't get skill points, can't get money, can't expand shelter, can't do anything at all.

Devs haven't updated this game since June 2023 so I guess this is a lost cause. Sad.

Initially this game is quite enjoyable, and considering that this game was made predominantly to raise money for charity it is made very well.

The designers have showed great care for the game by fixing glitches that hampered the game early in its release. There are still a few minor glitches that occur occasionally, but 99% of them can be fixed either when the new day starts or just by restarting the game.

The only criticism I would offer of this game is that once you've mastered it, the game becomes very easy and a little boring. The randomiser that dictates how many dogs that come in or get adopted each day can get very faulty. I played one game where in the early stages I had so many dogs coming in that I had to make space for 40 dogs, and then the last 5 weeks of gameplay I've been struggling to have any dogs in at all.

There also aren't enough little power ups, and if you play the game well enough then by Day 50 of game time, odds are that you've unlocked everything and no longer really have any goals to work to.

The game is always being improved upon though, so this review might be out of date in a few months.