Loot Hound™

a simple and relaxing game and easy to play.....

Simple life within a passive nature reduces the joy of being alive? This game is full of searching wilderness and enjoying the loneliness with your selected pet around city outskirts. Do not think its cartoonish style from top-down view is reason to abandon a game in 2019+. The flawless ambient sounds and other effects make a relaxing combination for nerves. It is about having fun and gaining a smile; not about beating some AI nor unlocking inane amount of achievements. Better yet, it is long enough to forget about replayability value.

Poor optimization leads to massive lag spikes when "a lot" is happening on screen (rain or leaves), which really spoils the experience. However, the worst flaw of this game is its reliance on grinding the same areas over and over, with a high failure rate if you have not min-maxed your stats correctly from the beginning (which all new players will not know to do). Two hours in, and the game works like this: You have three dogs; one that's good at digging (and the only one who digs in rock), one that's good at detecting (and the only one that fits in small gaps), and one that's... I don't know, yet, but seems fine at everything (and the only one who can scare away stubborn animals). You're bound to dump all your points (XP) into your first dog, since you don't know any better, instead of focusing on digging for when the detection dog comes. The problem with not knowing that dogs are specialised is that you end up being too weak to make any progress later on - the digging dog can't find anything, the finding dog gets distracted, and the third dog... I don't know, isn't specialised enough to be better than the others? Unfortunately this rock-paper-scissors approach to gameplay means that you have to enter a map with the detection dog and begin to dig things up but fail, since he isn't good enough, then return with the digging dog to finish the job (since he can see the pre-dug spots), inherently leading the game to repetition. The problem the failure grind then comes from the stone-digging dog not being able to find stone-tresure (which the finder can't dig), the finding dog not being able to dig up treasure in small spaces, and whatever the third one's deal is. Not having the ever-increasing points to upgrade your dogs means grinding earlier levels, which themselves carry the risk of failing to dig something up, except this time the locations and loot aren't saved between attempts, so you can't switch dogs. I'm not sure I'm at this point yet, but I fully beleive it is possible to upgrade your dogs in such a way as to make the game unprogressable. All I wanted was to walk around a dig things up, but this stat meta really spoils the experience for me, turning relaxing and easy into frustrating and boring.

The concept for Loot Hound sounds great on paper. Digging up some loot with your dog? Heck yeah! Unfortunately, the gameplay is incredibly shallow, and the game feels very boring. There is no skill to finding loot, you just walk around the parks with your dog in hopes that they find something. Then you wait as they dig it up, then you collect the dug up item. Maybe if there would have at least been a nice soundtrack this could have been a fun, chill experience, but as it is, it just feels empty and dull. A way the developers tried to make the game more intriguing is by giving all loot items a slightly humorous description, but there's two issues here. First, you can only read the description in your home, not right after digging something up (which I feel would have made the core gameplay more interesting rather than segmenting it into "walking around looking for stuff" and "look through stuff you've dug up"). Also, there's typos. If your game already is low on content, the least you could do is make sure this content is free of embarassing mistakes like that. Your dog won't always be able to immediately find an item, maybe their detection or digging skill is too low, or they get easily distracted. You can upgrade these skills, but it doesn't feel very exciting and the sense of improvement isn't there. It just feels like a way to pad out the game, rather than any real obstacle or strategic element. Later levels also feature park guards, which you have to avoid while digging up stuff. There's no real challenge there either, though. You either manage to avoid them or you don't, but exciting, risky stealth gameplay this is not. I get that the developers set out to make something casual, not focused on risks and rewards or getting high scores, but even if I viewed this like a walking simulator type game, the lack of immediate loot descriptions and the typos make the game feel unsuccessful in creating that kind of experience as well. Not that there would be any real story to keep your interest either, at least as far as I've played. Again, Loot Hound is a decent idea with cute enough visuals, but it ended up as a vastly boring and bland disappointment for me. Wouldn't recommend it, unless the game still seems like it could be up your alley after reading this review.

It's a cute little game. Real silly and great for kids.

Simple, but very cute and addictive game. Woof-woof!

Loot Hound est un petit passe-temps pacifique sans prétention qui ravira tous les propriétaires de chats. Les autres ne peuvent pas comprendre le plaisir intense qu'il y a à guider, ne serait-ce qu'une fois dans une vie et tout virtuel qu'il soit, un animal qui accepte d'aller là où on veut qu'il aille.

Nice, simple game.

A fun, easy, casual scavenger hunt with dogs. You upgrade your dog's abilities by digging up different loot and gaining points, also unlocking new parks. The goal is to complete all the collections of different types of loot. It's relaxing and low-stress. The park patrols chase you occasionally but if you get caught you can just restart the level. The dogs are cute and parks are varied with their own themes. Each piece of loot has its own description, and reading them as you go or after finding them all adds some story and humor. Can be played when half asleep, as you can't really go wrong. About 10 hours of content.

> Get Marley: "This dog can dig her way into your heart, and also through solid stone!" Aww that's sweet, and the stone thing sounds cool, wonder if that's a gameplay thing or just flavor text. > Get in game, start playing first level, turns out digging through stone IS apparently a special thing she can do. Hey, that's pretty neat > 2nd level, Marley walks over to patch of grass and starts digging > Marley almost finishes digging, then suddenly stops > 'Your dog can't dig through this until you upgrade her digging skill' You've got to be f-ing kidding me, she can dig through stone but not grass I grind up some some useless stat? > Uninstall game