Little Friends: Puppy Island (2023)

Little Friends: Puppy Island is a casual game whose main job is to be cute and innocuous. If you go into playing this knowing you're getting exactly what it says on the tin and nothing deeper, then it's a nice de-stresser and a fun way to pass the time.

Dressing up your pups and the on-trail minigames are fun, but otherwise, the monotony sets in quickly.

Out of the ten hours I spent playing Little Friends: Puppy Island, I think I must have spent at least seven of them just mindlessly trudging from one place to another. It feels like the game replicates a lot of the worst parts of owning a dog without capturing too much of what makes it fun, besides how darn cute the little guys are. I could look past some of its faults if it wasn't sold at nearly full price, but there is honestly not a single person on this planet that should pay that much for such a shallow and repetitive experience. If the price got cut in half, I might cautiously recommend it to kids that really love dogs and don't have one – that's honestly the only demographic of people I could see finding some enjoyment out of Little Friends: Puppy Island. To anyone else, I recommend going outside if you desire a good walking simulator.

Going above and beyond its contemporaries have been satisfied with, this adds what ends up being a nice sense of adventure to the mix

They say that interacting with dogs makes your brain produce and spread oxytocin, the “happiness hormone”, in your body. They also say that owning dogs improves your blood pressure and helps cure depression. This is why we can’t get enough of these adorable little creatures. Little Friends: Puppy Island doesn’t exactly reach that point, but even though this game is beyond simplistic, even more than Nintendogs itself at times, it makes me smile while playing it.