Ruff's Bone status as a "game" is debatable. Living Books titles were, often, quite what their publisher name stated. They were simply interactive stories, almost like a visual novel combined with point and click aspects. I, probably like many kids of this era, grew up playing Living Books games fairly frequently, but Ruff's Bone is the one that always stuck out to me as the most memorable, and perhaps that's because of my association with dogs more than anything else.
I can remember playing Ruff's Bone one summer at my aunt and uncles house. I believe they got it for their son, but he'd long since outgrown it (my cousin is at least a decade older than me) and so it fell to being my entertainment when I visited. In fact, I loved it so much my uncle flat out gave it to me when I went home and wanted to play it on my own PC. Unsurprisingly, given my family history, this would be one of the few kind gestures those people would ever make.
It's, as I said, barely a game. You hear the text told to you on the screen and you interact with various objects and items on the screen which often play a little looping animation, sometimes with an audio clip to accompany it. Basically you are trying to get Ruff to find, retrieve and return home with his titular bone. Basic story, basic "gameplay", but something about it, perhaps its almost tedious wholesomeness, has always managed to stick around in the craw of my mind.
Or, as I said, perhaps it's the association I have with dogs.
For as long as I can remember, I've loved dogs. I was so happy when my mother married my stepfather, not because I now had a dad, but because he had a dog. We wound up getting another dog when I was a teenager, and now I had two dogs. Then when my parents split up, I got my own dog, and then a few years later my mom got her own dog. Then I moved in with my girlfriend, whose parents had 2 dogs and acquired a third while living with them, while I wound up finding a stray myself. So yeah, dogs have been a sort of source of constant comfort and joy.
In fact, my dog I got after my parents split, who I still have, is actually an emotional support dog. I know these days that's a meme, but honest to god I don't know how I would've gotten through some of what I went through if I hadn't had her. She's my best friend. And, likewise, the puppy I found as a stray is the closest thing I will sadly ever get to raising my own child, and as such I totally treat her like one, spoiled and everything. Dogs are, in a sense, my entire world.
So it makes no surprise to me why I'm drawn to games with dogs in them. The Flame In The Flood, Fallout 3 and of course the Fable franchise just to name a few are games that feature dogs in fairly helpful roles (especially The Flame In The Flood, as he's pretty necessary to your overall survival), and Ruff's Bone was maybe the start of that for me. As a little friendless girl who wanted a dog badly, Ruff's Bone was kind of like having a virtual dog. Sure, we went on the same adventure time and time again, but it didn't matter. I was like 8.
But also like Ruff, I think I related to the idea of constantly searching for something just outside of my reach. While, spoilers, Ruff inevitably does retrieve his bone - sorry to kill the mystery everyone - I more often than not haven't been so lucky in achieving my goals. Okay sure, when I was a child I said I'd write and make art for a living and yes I am doing it, albeit not on a remotely successful scale. But most of my other dreams have gone wholly unfulfilled, always just out of reach. Having a family, going to mortuary school, or even just seeing a goddamned dentist. I haven't seen a dentist in literally a decade plus and my teeth are in major trouble.
So to play as Ruff, someone who never gives up and even goes to extreme lengths to retrieve that which is rightfully is, is sort of vicariously achieving my own goals. Granted I'm not a dog, nor am I looking for a bone, but you know what I mean.
I haven't played Ruff's Bone in years, but I do still have the disc, and sometimes I think about popping it in and trying to run it, if for nothing else than that stupid little girl still inside me (no, not the one piloting me like a meat marionette, the metaphorical one I mean) because often times the best things I have in my modern life are things from my previous life, and often those things wind up being games. Okay, yes, Ruff's Bone barely qualifies as a game, but dammit my point still stands.
The artwork is cartoony to a fault, the dialogue is simplistic to a tee and the overall concept and execution are something that you'd most likely see on PBS kid's gaming section of their website, but it made me happy, because dogs make me happy, which is a rarity, because not much does.
I hope dogs make you happy too, even if only through this write up.
My name is Maggie. I write & make art for a living. If you like this post and maybe wanna help me see a dentist, you might also like my newest novel here, reading my media blog here and you can support me monthly on Patreon.
