Princess Of Previews: To The Rescue Demo
To The Rescue is a management sim with a simple premise. Running a dog shelter. Management sims are one of my favorite genres, and the game features really cute dogs. Thus This seemed right up my alley! Imagine my disappointment when the demo fell flat.
Full Disclosure: I backed this game on Kickstarter! D:
Ya’ll...saying something is just not good gives me no joy. And I really really tried with this demo. The problem is plain and simple...the controls are garbage, it’s buggy, and between the two they render the game nearly unplayable. Which is a shame. I like how the game looks, and it seems to have a decent core loop...but trying to do anything in To The Rescue is a battle and a half.
Simply put, this is a game very reliant on clicking on objects. But god forbid players click on objects to make them do the thing you want. Instead, every different action has a different button on the keyboard, and none of them are very well explained. One button triggers the leash, another selects the objects/pick-up objects, one set of buttons to change the selection in inventory, another to change the selection of objects on the world map, and another allows you to use the objects. This is just needless complicated and there has to be a better way! Further complicating things is the tutorial, which just doesn't explain how to do things at all. On top of that, the hitboxes are weird and often unresponsive unless the player is at just the right angle. I was stuck helplessly pressing buttons and checking the (lengthy) control menu to do things. I even tried a controller instead and unfortunately it wasn’t any better.
I really really hope the devs scrap this control scheme. Because it straight up sucks. I finally gave up when I dropped my bucket and it phased out of existence. At this point, I’d played the game for about an hour and a half and had experienced 15 minutes of gameplay.
The worst thing is there clearly an interesting and fun game underneath all this that I really want to play. I just can’t. I’m really bummed. In its current state, I just can’t recommend it! Which makes me sad. If you want a Dog ‘em up, may I recommend Dog Sled Saga instead? That is an absolutely beautiful and playable game. I think I’m going to play that instead.
Until next week fellow doggo fans.