Tale of a Runaway Dog ~ A DOGSITR Retrospective

(You can also read this on my blog here! I write about other stuff as well, go check it out!)

Hello! I released DOGSITR, my experimental, mood-focused V-Pet (and my first game!) in December 2024. I thought it’d be valuable to reflect on some of its more interesting ideas while it’s still fresh in my mind, and before work on my next game gets fully underway (it’s a turn-based RPG! It’s looking real good so far, and there’s a very early prototype version you can play right now!). Despite being my first ever fully-released game, I’m very happy with how it turned out! So, let’s get into it!

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Ideas and Mechanics

My core idea was to make a “numberless v-pet” as I’ve been interested in removing information from well-defined genres, to drive them away from being systems to be conquered and towards being more engulfing experiences. The ideas I wanted to communicate through this framework came pretty quickly afterwards: I want people to build an emotional relationship with the DOG, with it being representative of a real, living creature; its needs not being represented by numbers were intended to make it feel more autonomous, and less like a spreadsheet. And while I’ll admit now that I’ve never owned a pet, I have a good amount of experience with overcoming and trying to break down communication barriers – it’s something that’s personal enough to my life for me to want to design a game around. 

That’s where building around the “Inspect” command came from. It transforms the DOG’s current needs and mood into a single box of text that vaguely hints towards what it needs from you at the current moment. These prompts can change over the course of the game, with the intent being that they become easier to understand as the DOG becomes more comfortable, but also to make the DOG more interactive and ‘real’ than, like, five different options out of a menu button. I’ll be honest, I think this system is basically perfect for the small scope of the game, with the only problems really being logistical. It doesn’t interact perfectly with a couple of under-the-hood numerical systems, but the problem is really the implementation of those systems (I didn’t really plan out any of the maths out beforehand!! It’s all very weird and messy, truthfully). It’s also contingent on whether or not the text clues are actually helpful! Though that’s down to the writing itself, and I put particular care into writing specific ‘behaviours’ that adhere to each of the activities. It’s perfectly fine if they’re misinterpreted for a bit, too! That’s why they’re vague, after all.

I think one of my biggest regrets is how little negative feedback there is for mistreating the DOG. In part, because it would make it a little easier to know when you’re doing something wrong: everyone I talked to who played the game hit the game’s failure state with very little indication that they were failing. I’m perfectly happy for people who are either clearly doing something wrong or just not “getting it” to reach that point, but with no feedback I think that’s more of an “oh, okay” moment than an emotional one, despite the effort I put in to make it the latter! Also, if I consistently misunderstood and mistreated someone, I’d expect them to be noticeably upset! It’s natural. Beyond that, negative feedback would give an extra avenue for the DOG to express itself, and thus to build emotional connection towards it. I think something like the little positive feedback messages you get from becoming closer to the DOG would’ve been a nice touch: nothing excessive since it’s already an intentionally-obtuse game; piling it on too much would risk turning it into a misery simulator! 

Using Time

If you’ve played the game, you’ll notice some things take uncomfortably long, particularly the CATCH and SWEEP minigames. I wanted to convey delayed satisfaction at the cost of instant gratification – if the game was always fun, caring for the DOG would never risk being unappealing, you probably wouldn’t feel satisfaction from learning to understand it, and the whole premise would generally fall apart. That’s also why the minigames aren’t what I’d call “fun”, despite how much time you spend doing them – they’re a bit repetitive, not that interesting, and I think it’s better that way! I think the game would be worse overall if it was “better” in that sense.

I also intentionally withhold the time limit until near the end of the game. I think it’s important with the game’s actual brevity (well, unless you have to replay it), as if you knew how short it was, you might be less inclined to care about the DOG or even the game itself – I think not knowing there is even an ending helps to alleviate that. I’m even coy about it in the itch description – instead of giving a playtime estimate, I just put “a period of time” (and emphasised it! I’m so funny). That said! I think the same brevity kind of undercuts the impact I’m going for. To really tease out delayed satisfaction, and to foster a stronger personal relationship with the DOG, it’d be better to have the game take longer in real time – at least multiple sessions, rather than just a short sitting.

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While I’m overall very happy with the game, there’s loads of directions I would have loved to take this idea given the time, resources and experience. Maybe there’ll be a DOGSITR 2 some day, who knows…? But for now, I’m focusing on hitting a stride with UNFORMED’s development in the wake of the prototype being finished as of a few weeks ago. So I’ll probably see you again when I’m ready to talk about it in more detail! Thanks for reading, and thanks for playing!

(you did play it, didn’t you…?)