Dog Duty, by developers Zanardi & Liza and publisher SOEDESCO, is a ridiculously charming open world RTS that is now available for PC and Mac via Steam Early Access. The charm begins with its eye-catching graphics. Anyone who takes a look at its ridiculously eye catching 16-bit desert world has no choice but to feel the nostalgia with which this game is packed. The fantastically done graphics make Dog Duty feel like a classic right out the gate. The RTS style gameplay works well for people who are not too familiar with that sort of gameplay (like I was going into the game) and is blending with enough action style mechanics to make Dog Duty still feel doable and manageable. Certainly, the gameplay and art style alone make the game well worth it’s $9.99 price tag.
In Dog Duty, your main objective is to infiltrate Octopia’s capital and take down the Octopus Commander. This land is a post-apocalyptic desert land, filled with elements that I remembered enjoying in the Fallout games. The visuals hearken to the original fallout games, and the hilarious exchanges between your squad and other enemies did not fail to make me smile. Octopia’s capital’s huge walls and mish-mashy style remind me of Megaton. The game is bursting with personality, I really enjoyed that aspect of it. The desert is just the first area that you experience, with a swamp coming later. It helps add variety to a game that after a while can get a bit repetitive.
In the beginning of Dog Duty, you wake up, presumably dead in the back of some outpost in the land of Octopia. You liberate two of your friends that are locked up in the outpost with you, and you and your squad set out in a car to capture other outposts and make yourself stronger to finally take down that evil Octopus Commander. Something I love about this game is how little it holds your hand. You are thrust into this world without so much as a tutorial on how to move your character and shoot down enemies. Everything you do, you learn via experimentation. The mechanics here are not complicated, but the challenge in the game lies in surviving the heavily armed enemies that litter the wilds of Octopia. I love that the barrier to entry here is pretty low, it is an easy game to pick up and enjoy.
There is also a lot of potential here to tailor the game to your liking. Throughout the areas you can get to while zooming around on your vehicle (I loved riding around on this thing, it moves fast and fun!), you encounter different shops where you can purchase items with the money you find taking outposts. Here you can buy different weapons and different attachments for your vehicles to make driving safer out on the wild road.
The only gripe I have with Dog Duty is the music. This could possible just be that it was not my thing, but the loud electric guitar was just doing a little too much and I had to turn it down pretty quickly. It is not necessarily that it is a bad song, but it kinda just seems like the same rift being played over and over again. It gets old pretty fast. But this stuff doesn’t really bother me too much, as you can easily go into the settings and turn the music down, or off completely.
Overall, Dog Duty is a solid game with some fantastic elements and some exciting gameplay. Zooming around in your vehicle is super fun, and the gunfights definitely force you to think strategically or else your whole squad will go down. If you like post-apocalyptic game world or RTS this is a solid one to pick up. This is also a solid game to pick up if you are new to the genre, as it is not that difficult to jump into for new players. I can’t wait to see what else the developers going forward.
Check Out the Dog Duty Steam Early Access Trailer:
Dog Duty is available for PC and Mac for $9.99 via Steam Early Access.
I am a senior studying History at the University of Michigan. I've been playing video games since I was very young and around age 16 I had become entirely obsessed with the medium. I hope to one day work in the industry in any way I can.
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