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Wobbledogsis a
joyfully chaotic
physics toythat is
unfortunately burdened
by a clunky sandbox.VERDICT
nourish my big and my colourful
breeds in the same way. But having
multiple pens seems to break them,
because if I’m not looking at their
pen, they won’t sleep or play without
being commanded to – which is also
its own problem.
Even when the pet sim features
aren’t in crisis, they don’t seem to do
well, due to some ambiguous UI. It’s
not clear whether the dogs are stupid
on purpose (as some dogs are in life),
or whether the game is
communicating badly. Is this dog
refusing to do a task because there’s a
pathfinding obstacle, or is it sulking?
And if I scold another dog for eating
dirt, and it only learns that ‘eating’ is
bad, is that a bug? Or a dog that can’t
tell that dirt isn’t food?
Almost everything that isn’t the
dogs wobbling struggles with this
kind of clunkiness. Wobbledogs feels
like it was made around its core
physics idea, and everything else
was packed around to make it
sufficiently ‘videogame’. It’s a great
and chaotic physics toy, stretching
the definition of ‘dog’ far, wide, and
polka-dot, but the packaging dilutes
it, and makes it more awkward to
engage with.TOP: (^) Small mercies:
there’s a quick clean
button for this debris.
ABOVE: Dogs in the
‘toy’ room include
Tiny,Baby, and Bear.
FAR RIGHT: We all
grieve in different
ways. For wobbledogs:
cannibalism.
AN EVOLUTION
The birds, the bees and the dog_breeder_v 0. 6. 01 .exe1
When two dogs
love each other
very much (read:
they are adults), you
plug them into a
vaguely sinister
matrix, to see how
their genes – and
stomach contents- smush together.
2
This first
simulated litter
has a little of
Bounce’s height and
Randy’scolouring,
but after one,
entirely stable
generation, why not
look a gift horse in
the mouth?3
After just one
more generation,
the new offspring
look exceedingly
dafter. You’ve got
tiny heads, chunky
bodies, and one little
guy who can’t
support his weightat
all. Pedigree perfect.4
A further 1 3
generations is
hubris, but you have
to see the ‘simulation
stability’ number tick
down to single digits
at least once. You
know what’s also
unstable? These
spindly-legged dogs.