Yo, shoutout to dogs, but they've gotta have some of the worst representation in gaming. Maybe I'm just more of a cat person, but I feel like half the time you see a game with or about dogs, it's that "pet teh heckin' pupper" brand of humor... gross... Thankfully "Dogpile" steers clear from this pitfall and delivers a game that is, dare I say, pretty funny! Not necessarily "haha funny," but I had a good chuckle. Unfortunately, that's about where my praise ends—"good dog jokes." Past that, I found this game to be largely underwhelming; seeing all it had to offer in just over two hours and, after that, finding the game just didn't take its core mechanics seriously enough to make dedicating the time to 𝗴𝗶𝘁 𝗴𝘂𝗱 even remotely interesting for me.

On the surface, Dogpile is advertised as a roguelike/deck-builder/merge game hybrid—what a mouthful! While I've adamantly avoided this whole 'deck builder psy-op,' the tacked-on mechanics of a merge game drew me in like a pie resting on a windowsill; merge games like 2048, Triple Town, and Cow Evolution used to be my sh!t, I envisioned a game with the satisfying puzzle-solving of a merge game, formatted to be as strategic and replayable as a roguelike... but this excitement only left me frustrated and blue-balled. When this game says it's a roguelike, what it's really trying to say is that it's just random, and that clashes with the puzzle-solving aspect in a way that is just too chaotic for me.

Like, imagine you were trying to solve a jig-saw puzzle, right? Except your only way to solve the puzzle was by going absolute ape-sh!t and smashing the table around until you happened to knock the pieces together. Sound like fun? Now imagine you finally start getting some matches, so I tell you, "Okay, for this next turn you can either select a puzzle piece by hand... or you can just keep smashing the table, even harder!" Hopefully, that makes sense because that's exactly what playing this game feels like. I had the most fun when I had perks that gave me more control over what was happening, which was entirely down to RNG that was not in my favor. It's fine for a game to be zany, and at times it's even enjoyable here, but this game feels like it's screaming for your dedicated improvement only to huck a garbage can at you when you try to better understand it.

Dogpile is cute and quirky but overall feels like missed potential. Probably super comfy on the Steam Deck, though; if the trailer looks appealing to you and you don't mind what I've just described, then I can absolutely recommend the game when it's on sale.

Great!

Simple, but fun merging game. It's definitely worth the purchase.