I havent seen a first play yet (mods plese delete/merge if otherwise), so having played a little thought i better post up something.
Some background first; i gather "The Dog" is an already established franchise since 2000 or so. It utilises a sort of superdeformed camera-style to make animal heads appear larger, and theres a large array of merchandise available: http://www.thedog-clubs.com/home.html
The Dog: Happy Life is a game based on this franchise: http://gamethedog.com/site/pc/php/index.php Essentially its a Tamagotchi which features dogs. Note this is very kanji heavy, with menu headings in english and some descriptive icons, but all descriptions etc are incomprehensible to this Japanese-illiterate person.
The game starts off with you entering your name, choosing a dog (16 or so?) and colour, and then it's name. You then get to design your house, with furniture, windows, dog accessories and so on. I'm not sure if there's a money or limit, you just seem to be able to get what you want. It auto creates the layout, but this can be manually changed if you prefer. Once thats done you get to the "game" proper.
Like certain other recent dog games; Dogz (PC 1995), Dogstation (PS2 2003), Nintendogs (DS 2005), it borrows many ideas from generic Tamagotchi gameplay and these later improvements. You start in your home room with your dog, from here you can interact with tricks and view your surroundings with a freelook mode. You can instruct your pet to carry out tricks, give them "mood" feedback (happy/sad/good/bad) which seems to let them know how happy you are with what they've just done, and manually pat them with the analogue stick controlling a hand.
The main menu has all sorts of options from changing your room and dogs accessories to web downloads. It's all a bit trial and error due to my limited kanji, so any help is appreciated, or i'll just have to struggle thru.
Obvious comparisions are going to be made with Nintendogs, which i own and played thru, and people are going to ask about how much has been ripped off. Well i suppose it has a great many similarities, however you could also see it as the natural progression from earlier pet games. The touchscreen does seem to give a more direct feel of interaction, but TBH i dont miss the shouting... There seems to be more included in TD:HL, but with UMB loads (poor streaming in menus) and the kanji i'm not feeling it as much. It is still very cure and doggy, so probably is a good alternative for non-DS owners.
Some background first; i gather "The Dog" is an already established franchise since 2000 or so. It utilises a sort of superdeformed camera-style to make animal heads appear larger, and theres a large array of merchandise available: http://www.thedog-clubs.com/home.html
The Dog: Happy Life is a game based on this franchise: http://gamethedog.com/site/pc/php/index.php Essentially its a Tamagotchi which features dogs. Note this is very kanji heavy, with menu headings in english and some descriptive icons, but all descriptions etc are incomprehensible to this Japanese-illiterate person.
The game starts off with you entering your name, choosing a dog (16 or so?) and colour, and then it's name. You then get to design your house, with furniture, windows, dog accessories and so on. I'm not sure if there's a money or limit, you just seem to be able to get what you want. It auto creates the layout, but this can be manually changed if you prefer. Once thats done you get to the "game" proper.
Like certain other recent dog games; Dogz (PC 1995), Dogstation (PS2 2003), Nintendogs (DS 2005), it borrows many ideas from generic Tamagotchi gameplay and these later improvements. You start in your home room with your dog, from here you can interact with tricks and view your surroundings with a freelook mode. You can instruct your pet to carry out tricks, give them "mood" feedback (happy/sad/good/bad) which seems to let them know how happy you are with what they've just done, and manually pat them with the analogue stick controlling a hand.
The main menu has all sorts of options from changing your room and dogs accessories to web downloads. It's all a bit trial and error due to my limited kanji, so any help is appreciated, or i'll just have to struggle thru.
Obvious comparisions are going to be made with Nintendogs, which i own and played thru, and people are going to ask about how much has been ripped off. Well i suppose it has a great many similarities, however you could also see it as the natural progression from earlier pet games. The touchscreen does seem to give a more direct feel of interaction, but TBH i dont miss the shouting... There seems to be more included in TD:HL, but with UMB loads (poor streaming in menus) and the kanji i'm not feeling it as much. It is still very cure and doggy, so probably is a good alternative for non-DS owners.
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