Dogpile is a delightful merging game that succeeds on pure charm

Dogpile wormed its way inside my head with surprising ease. It’s not only the cute dogs that contributed, but its baked-in sense of moreishness, buoyed by light-touch mechanics, and layers of strategy that encourage you to keep flinging dogs until you hit your bone currency goals.

It adapts the elements of a suika / merging game, while introducing new challenges. You begin by placing dogs into an awaiting kennel, each of which can be combined with dogs of the same type, to form a larger dog. This continues exponentially, until your wrangling large dogs in a tiny space, attempting a merge to get them all below a set line (and if you hit that line, you’re in for failure).

Dogpile is wildly replayable, and entirely charming

Each round is different, making gameplay very moreish.

At set intervals, you’ll draw a Shop card, which invites you to purchase various upgrades. You can buy individual dog cards with your earned cash (which grows with every completed merge), or you can purchase an array of useful perks which shake up gameplay.

These include perks which add fleas to your dogs – which can be a good thing, as fleas negate other perks – or perks that make your dogs bounce out of their enclosure, or bark at other dogs. While this would seem painful, the barks cause a reshuffle within your kennel, allowing dogs to resettle in a new place, and potentially find their pair for a merge.

What’s most satisfying about choosing the right perks and seeing them play out is the possible cascade of changes that result. If you place a dog who barks just right, you might be able to push a stuck dog into its ‘correct’ corner, creating a knock-on impact is it turns into a larger dog, meets another larger dog, and begins a chain reaction of merges.

All along, the bright, cheerful faces of each dog brings joy, as the merging process lets them become cooler (some dogs wear sunglasses, and can gain a cool medal) and larger.

You’ll also need to be clever about which perks you take and how to advance, because while Dogpile is wonderfully simple on the surface, you are also working towards set goals to advance – and if you don’t meet these goals, you’ll be punished with negative perks.

Friction is key to Dogpile‘s success

Friction is essential to making Dogpile such a bright and encouraging challenge. You need friction in any game to feel like you’re advancing, to lend purpose to your moves.

You’re not just dropping dogs into a kennel – the game requires you to earn a set score (recorded in bones) to avoid failure nipping at your heels. Should you fail to hit a certain goal, and be required to select a negative perk card, you must be clever about your future picks and how they interact with your other perks.

Fleas can be useful in certain circumstances, to prevent even greater failure. Dogs that merge with other dogs can be a saving grace. A dog wash card when used at the right time can avert complete disaster. It’s all about balancing your perks – including your negative ones – and charting a brighter future for each and every dog under your care.

When the end inevitably arrives – there’s only so many dogs you can fit in your kennel, after all – there is no hesitation in starting again, which is another major success for Dogpile. The end can be a discouragement in games, but with its mix of perks and chance-based card draw, Dogpile feels replayable in a brain-tickling way.

You know that you’ll never play the same game twice, so you won’t mind starting off on your path again. With the next turn could come a new and unexpectedly good perk, or multiple perks that bounce off each other for a cascade of silly, delightful dogs.

We could all do with the injection of charm that Dogpile offers, delivered so well in a beautiful cartoon art style, and with those all-important, synergistic game mechanics. This is pure, encapsulated delight that’ll leave you buzzing with a happy glow.

_{A PC code for Dogpile was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.}

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