Game: Pet the Pup at the Party
Developer: Will Herring
Platform: PC/Mac
Game Page: https://grey2scale.itch.io/pet-the-pup
When I first started doing this whole blogging thing, I stuck to mainly taking a look at microgames that I find on the internet. That was before I redid the whole thing and stuck to film reviews. Then depression and lack of self-confidence kicked and I haven't touched this darn thing for almost a year. So, today I decided that eh, I might try reviving this travesty again. My interests over the past year or so have gone all over the place but at some point earlier this year, I got back into finding and playing microgames and the like. It brought back some old memories of the earlier state of this excuse for a blog, both good and bad. Good that I look back on some interesting finds that accidentally stumbled upon, and bad where I essentially bullied a small, bare-bones concept that was put itch.io that I still haven't fully forgiven myself for covering. Still, I thought I'd go back to looking at microgames like I once did back a few years ago.
Who likes dogs? Trick question! Everyone likes dogs! Or at least they should! Dogs can be high maintenance at times, but you'll never find a more loyal and loving companion by your side. Until they vomit on the carpet or fart rancid corpse gas. But I digress. As much love dogs get in real life, on the internet, cats get the majority of the attention pie, from cat videos to webcomics about cats, or weird animations involving cats, like this one. Dogs tend to get the short end of the stick in comparison to cats. But then around comes a small game like Pet the Pup at the Party that gives some attention to dogs so that they aren't suffering from separation anxiety long enough to not chew up the backdoor.
Pet the Pup at the Party is a microgame developed by Will Herring and released on the itch.io platform alongside other games he has developed. You're at a house party, but you don't want to talk to anybody. You just want to find a dog to pet. Your goal is to scour throughout the house to find and pet the puppy before time runs out. You find the puppy, more time is added to the timer. Time runs out, the game is over. Each run has randomly generated rooms to scour and a dog is bound to be in one of those rooms. You can also talk to people at the party, but who really cares? It's all about petting the puppies.
Being very much a dog person, this game speaks to me on a social level, since I'm not always that crazy about huge social gatherings, since I tend to socially burn out at them. Sometimes, I don't want to socialize with people at a social gathering and just want to have fun petting a dog. Why? Because dogs are cool and social interaction requires too much work sometimes. Besides, I'm not exactly the most social person on the planet, but I try my best at social gatherings, even if I just want to be left alone (no offense to the people around me, of course).
Honestly, Pet the Pup at the Party is a pretty straightforward experience. It's not exactly meant to be the deepest experience; I mean it is a microgame after all. But hey, sometimes its the simplest experience that leaves a significant impact on you, as opposed to a piece of media that's trying its hardest to be socially conscious or game-changing, like an album about the state of race relations in America, like Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly or a biopic drama meant to emotionally sway you about a particular figure in history, be it successfully like in Darkest Hour, a film about Winston Churchill, or unsuccessfully like in Trumbo, a film about screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood blacklist in the 1940s and 50s.
I'm not trying to say Pet the Pup at the Party is super socially conscious or game-changing in any way. I'm just saying that this game speaks to me personally in a small way. For a microgame, I do recommend giving it a shot. The game's page is linked near the top, give it a shot, and experience it for yourself. Maybe it won't say much to my more extroverted peers, but for someone who is more introverted in a world where extroversion is the name of the game, I'm happy I found a game that I was able to connect to. Give it a shot and see what it does for you.
