Animal Trainer Simulator: Prologue is a demo for the Cozy Job Simulator game by Games Incubator.
You play in First Person mode as an animal trainer. You start off at a rural house where you'll have to drive a pickup truck to pick up your dog or horse to train. You go to the store to buy resources, then back to the client's house after training their animal. You can place some buildings such as a dog wash station, dog house, horse stables and an attack training section. Once you have the client's dog they'll be fed, washed, taught a few tricks and rewarded. For the horse you first have to attach the horse trailer, you teach them to ride and levade. The gameplay loop is about managing your animals and earning money for clients.
You can drive places and take the animal with you as well as on a leash. The game soundtrack is fine, suitable for the genre. The UI is okay but some elements are blurry like the logo which isn't a vector image. Has different volume sliders. Game is somewhat original since there aren't a lot of pet training games on the market. Sound effects - okay but I'd like to hear more nature sounds. The NPC drivers are fine. The general map layout and neighbourhood layout is alright. The pets are cute and I like interacting with the dog and horse. The demo is suitable to get a decent idea of what the full release would be like and there's potential for replayability in the full game release. The game is leaning more on realism. There are achievements but I wonder if the icons are AI generated.
Now for the many cons I encountered while playing the game. The minimap doesn't show you navigation, like it does when you open the tablet. The zoom and scroll uses the same movement as it does on the GPS. There is no way to see your current client and pet on the tablet. Why does it say "taking an order from a customer?" it should be taking a "training request from a client". There should be a button to teleport to truck or teleport home option if you get lost on the map. Especially since the movement doesn't feel great, outside of a car. It takes forever to run somewhere also there's no way to jump. Not that much attention to asset details. The garage is mostly empty and there is grass clipping through it. You can clip inside certain buildings. There are no side or rear view mirrors on the pickup truck, and I don't think "Animal Trainer" is a legal license plate. I don't like the dog wash station with the floating sponge. The player model has no shadow. There should be some kind of brand logo on the package to differenciate and help the player remember what was bought. There are poor map textures and graphics. The whole map looks sort of blurry and desaturated even on the highest resolution. If you look at the dog bed from a certain angle it loses its texture. I wish there was some voice acting especially when the game is focused on animals learning certain commands and training. The NPCs and pets seem dead inside. Horses shouldn't stand backwards in the trailer - that's a dangerous way of transporting the horse. The animals hardly make any noises or show body language. Giving treats to your pet should be interactive and visual. Pets should have different personalities, temperaments or moods. The animals should have some sort of idle or playful animations based on their mood. For added realism, the animals should be able to pee or poop. I wasn't even prompted to feed or water the horse. I just trained it and then walked it home. There needs to be more variety between animal ages. Some should be puppies or foals and some full adults.
There should be a way to edit building placement. There's no way to pick up buildings if they were placed in the wrong area. There should be an option to place your buildings at 45-degree angles, not just 90. There should also be a way to customise your placeable objects, including inside the house. There needs to be character customisation or at least an option to choose what character you'd want to play. There is a problem with hitching the trailer. A glitch I encountered was that I couldn't hitch the trailer back on to put the horse inside. I had to walk it back on a leash to the client. In the fridge the only food or drink is a massive soda can and a sandwich just out in the open. No plate, no wrapping. What's the point of eating or drinking if the hunger or thirst bar doesn't go down? There's no explanation for what the energy bar is for either. The game doesn't tell you that to bring the items inside the house, you have to reverse your truck into the highlighted area. The UI seems very drab with regards to the design. Needs an option to adjust the text size and have scalable UI or large font mode. Some text is hard to read. "Join us on Discord" or wishlist new game button doesn't work. There is no way to save your progress. You'd have to redo the whole tutorial to get to the same part. Doing minigames doesn't seem exciting. Should have at least some sort of particle or sound effects when you get something right. The minigames aren't that difficult and don't feel very engaging. It feels like you're just letting something happen. Pressing or tapping one button isn't really fun. There should be a day and night cycle. What's the point of the time on the in-game clock going until 10pm if it doesn't even begin to get dark? For time sensitive missions, we should be able to see the in-game time on the hud. The full game should have more animals, not just dogs or horses. There are other domesticated animals that need training like cats, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, chickens or domestic rabbits.
Overall, I had high hopes for this game. Especially since I was looking for a game that would have plenty of animal interaction. Instead of that I was met with seemingly lifeless animals. There is a gap in the market especially since the rise of popularity of Nintendogs. In that game you could verbally speak commands, and train them in a number of ways. This game misses the mark. People desperately want a decent animal training game. I'd really like to see more improvements and the developer listening to public feedback before I'm able to recommend this game to any of my friends.
[b]2/10[/b]
