Review: “Touch Pets Dogs” Lets You Adopt and Play with Super Adorable Virtual Puppies

Monday, November 16, 2009

Game Name:	Touch Pets Dogs
Platforms:	iPhone, iPod Touch
Publisher(s):	ngmoco
Genre(s):	Simulation
Release Date:	11-10-2009
Version Reviewed:	1.1

Very rarely do you get a well polished game as good as Touch Pets Dogs. Touch Pet Dogs allows players to interact with their dogs in so many ways that you’ll feel the dogs on your iPhone or iPod Touch are actually alive!

Touch Pet Dogs features 7 breeds of puppies you can adopt and interact. Start your game with a cute Labrador, Portuguese water dog, west highland terrier, German shepherd, Jack Russell, dachshund, or even a robot dog. Within each breed, players can select puppies based on their look, gender, and personality. These puppy traits can affect how your dogs will interact with you as well as other dogs.

In Touch Pets Dogs players care for their puppies’ everyday needs including petting, feeding, bathing, grooming, and even scooping their poop. These needs are displayed in the dog’s status menu as a percentage. With time, these needs gradually fall to 0% unless players take care of these needs. By taking care of your dog’s everyday needs, puppies will become happier. And when its happiness level reaches a certain point, the player will earn puppy points. These puppy points can be used to buy virtual items such as new toys, clothes, and gears. Puppy points can even be used to adopt additional puppies.

Players can also play with their puppies. Teach your dog to do some tricks such as sit, stand, roll over. Get your dogs to play with Frisbees, balls, and sticks to increase their abilities. Don’t like your pup’s look? Players can dress up their dogs with various clothes and accessories. Your dog can even have careers. With the proper career item and ability, your dog can catch thieves, rescue victims from fire, and win beauty pageants.

Touch Pets Dogs also allows players to interact with their friends’ dogs. Invite your friend’s dog for a playdate, and watch as they develop friendships, romances, and rivalries. Your friend doesn’t even have to be online for the playdate to occur. In the playdate, you can care and play for the other dog the same way you can interact with your own dog.

Players advance in Touch Pets Dogs through leveling up. Players level up as they complete daily and career tasks for experience points. Certain items and accessories cannot be obtained unless the player reached a certain level. Leveling up is another motivation for players to come back for their virtual puppies daily.

The most enjoyable part of Touch Pets Dogs is the interaction with the pups. Playing fetch, petting your dogs, and engaging in various activities with them make the game really fun. The puppies look adorable, and their animation is smooth. Most people will fall in love with their pups the moment they started to play the game.

One major concern for most players is the pay system. Even though players start with many bowls of food. As the food bowls dwindle down to zero, players have to either wait for the food to slowly regenerate, or buy food with real money. The problem with waiting for new food to regenerate is that it only gets you a maximum of 1 bowl of food. Thus if you have multiple puppies to feed, this can cause a rather short game session. Ngmoco has recently lengthened the time it takes for energy to deplete. That is probably due to complaints that you cannot even finish caring for your dogs with a full bowl of food. Even with the increase in energy depletion time, there’s an outcry to make foods payable with in-game puppy points. But game companies are out to make money, thus that will probably not occur anytime soon. In the mean time, here’s a tip to make the game more enjoyable for those who don’t want to buy virtual pet food for real money. First, get your dog to 100% energy. Then wait until the food regenerates to 1.0 bowl of food. With more time to play with your dog, this will make a play session much more enjoyable.

The game can also become repetitive. Once you are familiar with the activities you can engage with your dog, daily tasks of cleaning, petting, feeding, and playing with them can become a chore for some people.

Overall, Touch Pets Dogs is still the best virtual pet game in the App Store with its great graphics and features. Since it is free to play, everyone, whether they like dogs or not, should at least try this game. The game is sure to captivate your attention for at least a few hours. Who knows, it may even motivate you to get a real pet!