The Good Dog: Chasing Shadows

Needs Work: (Ik the game is in early access) I will change review as things get updated. If your like me and you like to challenge yourself playing harder difficulties to try and get better at the game, than this game isn't for you its just punishment. I tried difficulty 3 since that is where most of the achievements currently are able to be achieved plus if you stay on difficulty 1 or 2 the game is straight grind. It seems like the dev wants you to crouch around everything and basically sneak your way across the map. Which doesn't make sense because the whole point of fetch mode is to move quickly and gather items as fast as possible especially when you have to gather 9 - 14 supplies and install 2 fuses. My main issue is this contradiction right here. I mean if you want longer game times that would make sense but forcing the player to sneak around to artificially increase the amount of time spent playing is a boring way to execute that idea. Developer needs to rework entities and or dog breed sizes, It would be a good idea if you played as a larger dog you could pounce on wraiths to stun them for 10 secs or more allowing you to get away before your forced to use the flashlight to kill them the next encounter. Mainly because if a wraith and a banshee are chasing you, your screwed the banshee will magically port to you damage you and they are hard enough to see as is. Then you'll most likely panic and can't even deal with the wraith or even slow down to try and pick up the flashlight you dropped so you can bark at the banshee. He also buffed the wraiths speed?????? Why would you do that? If anything if you wanted to keep wraiths as is make it where we can wear a vest like military or police dogs do. The strap the flashlight to the top of the vest on the dogs back pointing up or around like a turret. Or even give them a headband with a light over their ears. Then you can use the mouse to move it around and the F button to turn it on and off. You could even make it where other entities are drawn to the flashlight to balance it out. That way you wouldn't want to walk around with it on. Make banshees easier to see by giving them some sort of outline around their cloud so we can make them out easier especially on my potat computer. Spiders are the easiest to deal with but you barely run into them they should be more common than wraiths are even on harder difficulties. I've only ran into 1 swarm and dusted it so no complaints there besides they don't spawn until late in the game when your almost done completing everything. I don't have enough experience with them to offer constructive criticism. I think dog size should also play major part into difficulty, If you play as a smaller dog (Dachshund, pug, Frenchie, yorkie, etc) you should be less likely to be spotted and if you were to add any physical pouncing or bite they shouldn't be able to pounce and their bites would be considerably weaker making it more rewarding to be stealthy with smaller dogs fit for experienced players with an added XP bonus to compensate . I would love a mechanic like in most stealth games where if you hide in bushes or in foliage you can reduce visibility to entities even more by crouching in foliage or to break line of sight by crouching and hiding in foliage. Lastly, they should be the weakest of the dog sizes with not much health to spare and even making spiders a considerable threat to these small pups. These would also be slower runners as they're legs are shorter but like I said their mainly built around stealth and their footsteps should be quieter if not audible at all. If you decided to play as a medium sized dog (beagle sized I forgot all the other medium sized breeds writing this) then you should get the best of both worlds with a decent attack power and stealth capabilities good for new players. Along with a decent sized health bar to absorb some hits but not as much as larger breeds. They should be quicker that smaller dogs and a bit slower than large breed counterparts. Making for the best balanced gameplay with their footsteps also not as loud as larger breeds. Large dogs ( husky, shepard, retrievers, etc) you should have the ability to pounce on wraiths and spiders. It should do good damage to spiders and stun wraiths allowing you to run far enough away to reduce agro. Also should have a larger health bar being decently healthy allowing players to take hits to make up for their lack of stealth compared to smaller breeds. Should also be the quickest of any size dog but make a fair bit of noise as these are 65-80+ pound animals with foliage and other bushes not providing as much concealment as they would for smaller breeds. X Large dogs (Malamutes, King shepards, Great pyranese) these don't exist but should be added. They are the brutes of this game, they should be able to rip spiders in half with 2-3 bites regardless of difficulty. Be able to pounce on wraiths and if you had a flashlight in your mouth perform an execution on said wraith by pouncing and shining the light directly in their face for 3 secs killing them. Be able to take a considerable amount of damage before dying. Using their threatening barks to rid of banshees relatively quickly. They should have no stealth at all and make the most noise when running around being able to be spotted quickly by entities. Good for players who don't want to play stealth and would rather use brute force to win. Should also be relatively quick for short burst of speed faster than large dogs for a small period of time but if you run for more than 3-5 secs you begin to slow down to a trot. I believe this would add additional layers to this game, thanks for coming to my ted talk. EDITED: 5/23/36 - Changed to negative until fixes are made. Dev needs to add another scent back to the robot dog so you can track him properly in the field allowing you to quickly retrieve tools you have stored on its back rather than waiting for it to catch up to you. I also think the compass should be visible at all times, that way if you are being chased you don't have to slow yourself down by crouching and allowing the entity to catch up to you just because your trying to find out where the safe house is. There needs to be more entities example like bats that can swoop down and nick you causing overtime damage, but dogs should also be able jump and bite to combat these, Bats should also be as common as spiders if they were to be added. Also to add to this with the addition of more entities they should be biome specific that way maps can also be used as a tool to yield the player more XP based on what your going up against but this would require more entities to be added to be interesting which currently there are only 4.

Been enjoying the game and has some great potentials, yet the game has quite a few bug issues. 1. UI system needs a LOT of adjustments. Main menu in solo-mode works fine, but if in a Multiplayer-lobby, you cannot adjust the sound settings accurately. Even in the Alpines, the "Crunching Snow SFX" doesn't seem to be controlled by ANY of the sound slider options. (Including Master Volume). 2. Sound quality is very loud and disruptive, especially in the Alpine level. Touched up on this in the 1st issue. 3. No hit indications aside from the dog's "barking SFX". (Made some recommendations in the following issue) 4. Forest has no border indicator. Leaving outside the border leads to death, and player has little-to-no notification outside of "Barking SFX". (No screen shake, hit impacts, red screen-flares, etc., would recommend utilizing these as a way to players to know they are taking Damage.) 5. Interactions are faulty. Often times would approach an object, and unable to press E to interact. Even the Robot Dog, unless its on a leveled-ground, the storage interaction would be unavailable. 6. Semi-Tank controls. Feels like when turning or moving sideways, the character would leave its "Axis Point", making it more difficult to interact with objects and contest against monsters (Like the Wraith when aiming the light at them) Other recommendations for better gaming experience I'd suggest: An Upgrade Store (Like a Flea Market or the sort xD) where the player can purchase items for better gaming experience. Their own PERSONAL Tools (Such as multiple Robo-Dogs, flashlights, speakers, etc.) and would cater towards the Tool coloring customization, feeling more personalized for the player. Possibly some Environmental Obstacles/hazards (such as Bear Traps, or pit spikes, or some hazard made by the Entities, or even a Hunter/Animal-Control perhaps). Also some lootable items that is ACCOUNT-BASED, something you can take back with you after you finish your expedition and is permanent to your account progress, aside from the progression system. Hopefully these feedbacks would be helpful, and hope to see this game grow, it has great potential, and looking forward to playing more!

I'm very happy I stumbled onto this game, I love it! It's also a very fun co-op game. The concept is perfect to me. Be a dog, fight entities, bring back goods, I like it. What I'd like to see is more lore because it'd be really cool to know wtf happened to this world. Also, I'm begging for a greyhound to be added, i'd *pay* for a greyhound, to be able to be my irl puppers (alive and passed </3) would be lovely. But if not then that's okay too, the games great and I hope to see it get ironed out more. (There have been some crashing problems on my partners side, which can be a pain when you're playing on max difficulty and you're almost finished then *boom* crash. So like I said, really hope things get ironed out, because I see potential in this game! <3

woof

I love this game, it's so fun, the achievements are fun to get, and the the dog skins, breed tokens, collars, speaker skins, flashlight skins, and nigel skins, from the progression, this game maybe scary, but it's fun.

I think the basic idea of the game is good, but for now there is just not much to do and not much challenge. From my gameplay at least you can just run away from any entity and the objective is to simply fetch items and add fuses to broadcast towers (and kill entities if you want extra exp), but all of the main objectives boil down to "run to place, run back" with little sense of urgency or danger. I can't reccommend the game untill there's more to the game. Still, I can see how, with more time and work, the game could get better.

I'm not a professional reviewer by basically any metric. But I'm going to write this as though I were: just know to take it with a little grain of salt. This game has such a cool concept that's otherwise unexplored in horror. I'd love to know what else is planned to be added to the game. Once you have even a decent grasp of how to deal with the Entities, they're pretty easy to deal with which dampens the horror quite a bit. Here are my suggestions based on my own experience: 1. Add a limited battery life to the flashlight. 1a. Make humans playable in order to be able to replace the batteries in the flashlight, so that the wraith is a real threat. This will make it so that you should only use it sparingly. 1b. Add rare flashlight batteries around the world, randomly spawned so you never know when you'll get one. 2. Let the wraith die while in the vicinity of the fire. It's still light, after all. 3. Don't do what some have said in the review section and add different abilities to different dog breeds. 4. The compass helps a lot for the directionally-challenged like myself. Possibly too much? I don't think it will matter much, either way. 5. On humans: Give an incentive to play humans; don't just make them necessary. Maybe the dogs can see them, but powerless against them while humans are capable of harming them but unable to see them. 6. In the end, the question is: How do you make a co-op game like this where you can actually fight and kill the monsters scary? Short answer is: You don't. 7a. You need to be unable to kill the monsters; just push them away from you for a time and make them lose track of you. If you want to keep the "killing the monsters" idea, remove the ability to get points from killing them and make them respawn infinitely after a certain time, and maybe come back stronger each time. The monsters need to be a real threat to you. So, yeah. Make the Entities a real threat. As it is right now, it's not much of a horror game. Feels more like a spooky-themed collect-a-thon type of game.

I'm only a few hours in and still get my butt kicked a bit. However if you are into the extraction genre of games this is a fun twist on it, especially if you love dogs as much as I do.

It's bare bones right now, did a run of difficulty 1 and had a spider trap itself inside the bunker corner by the food dispenser. Aside from that it was an easy solo run. Jumped straight to difficulty 5, it's no differant to difficulty 1 aside from do more of the same, unless theres fuses in the map i missed im not waiting half an hour for them to spawn one at a time from the machine, which will be way more painful for anyone playing with others. Either having it spawn enough for a tower at a time or pre-placed in the tent or scattered on the map to sniff out would have been much better. The sneak mechanic is completely useless, just run past everything, unless you collide with a creature you won't take damage, even then the food dispenser is infinite meaning any threat of danger is obsolete. The sniff mechanic broke half way through the second game trying to direct me down through the ground The out of bounds area needs feedback, right now its no differant to running into a banshee. The mechanical dog I have no idea its use, most of the time i could only make it follow or send it back as the interact with its back area almsot never showed. The interact with the dog food also would disappear (yes i know it runs out and refills Im talking about when its full) I know the game is early access but it feels very empty, streamed it for a friend and she agrees. It has potential but it has a long way to go One thing in its favour is that it runs better and loads faster than most early access games

There is something super satisfying about running through the snowy woods as a golden retriever. My friends and I really enjoyed this game, even with all the bugs. The game play so far is a lot of fun, and has so much more potential, I am looking forward to seeing where they go with the story and the game development.