At first glance, the animal shelter simulator combines everything that the heart of the casual gamer desires. Not an avid reader of Sector, falling asleep with a gamepad under his pillow. There are animals there, and as we well know, animals are great. The living ones. In Animal Shelter, you build houses for them, treat them if they have bobo, take care of their entertainment, and you must not miss peeing. Capitalist urges are satisfied by a simple model: you get a pet, make it happy and sell it at a profit. And you collect poop in it.
What could possibly go wrong with such a game? Almost everything. The combination of The Sims and NinteDogs is guaranteed to be a hit with gamers (preferably female, and you can throw as much at me as you want), but the latest addition to the near-endless family of simulators has been rife with boredom. Boring. En-ú-dé-á. So lifeless and absorbs the player’s senses that you can’t even talk about short-term relaxation before bed. Because you will fall asleep immediately. Animal Shelter works great as a lullaby. Your head starts to “bimba” at the latest after an academic quarter of an hour, during which you cannot avoid the desperate and monotonous repetition of the same activities. Round and round. Actually, no – sometimes it’s a dog, sometimes it’s a cat.
And animals are adorable after all. They are. While they are small, then they are beasts, but we still love them so much that we consider them family members. Animal Shelter is not sophisticated enough to simulate even the basic activities of caring for domestic animals: you put kibble in one bowl, water in another, then there are toys, and decorative objects, and here is a bone for the dog, a scratching post for the cat. There is so desperately little of everything and the items are so generic that you won’t even start having fun. Not even with lasers that chase cats.
You need to pay attention to each animal if only for the reason that you can sell it. As soon as possible and with the highest possible profit. How to quench your hunger or thirst is obvious. An empty bowl means only one thing: it needs to be filled, and unfortunately, the basic rule of coexistence with cats does not work here at all. You are a slave and screaming number 328 means that the bowl is empty and if you don’t want to get one on the head, quickly, slave, fill it up. In the Animal Shelter, the bowl remains empty, the animal will not show in any way what it is missing. The interaction with the animal is limited to the necessary minimum because from its behaviour you do not have even the remotest feeling that it should be a living creature.
Sometimes he needs to be scratched, other times he needs to be treated (you take blood, remove the tick, bandage the paw, drip medicine into the eyes or give an injection) and drastic hygiene practices must not be missing. Nothing complicated, but you will only find out when it is displayed in the animal’s menu – or you can see an interactive overview of the cage. Each trait has a thermometer that must turn green, and there is always a suitable item to correct. There’s nothing fun about fulfilling a pet’s wishes, and the player is thrown into the role of a pickpocket running back and forth. If you need to buy anything, you have to move to the office, go to the personal computer and look for the item in the modest store. After ordering, a drone will deliver the goods to the appropriate location. Do you understand? You have to run to the computer and you can’t use a tablet or mobile to order, but the drone is here every five minutes.
The recruitment of abandoned animals or the assignment of a specific dog or cat to a potential owner is also ongoing. Based on specific characteristics, you can choose the appropriate type of animals and people. However, if you keep clicking on the same items endlessly, the fun will be lost and you will be loading row after row. Very quickly, adopted animals become consumer goods for you. Buy, feed, treat and sell. You don’t need to rush anywhere, but due to the almost immediate onset of the stereotype, you will want to unlock new items or objects that you can build as soon as possible.
The tutorial will explain the basic rules of the shelter and the completion of individual tasks is just a repetition of not-very-fun procedures. Also for the reason that you can’t actually see the animal’s progress, and whether it lacks fun or has an empty stomach, the game will only show you graphically in the summary overview of the animal. Of course, everything is clear and simplified, but without unnecessary repetition: you will not create any relationship with the animal. They are generic, they do not differ from each other at all – except visually. The fun of playing with animals wears off after a few seconds.
Technical processing could catapult the sterile gameplay to above-average heights because the yowls and meows would at least look worldly. But no: an environment so ordinary and budget-friendly that we could not find a better example of low-budget projects. Not that the textures are hideous and the environment is made of makeshift blocks. It’s just that it’s all lifeless, at least interactive. The worst part is that even the cats don’t look exactly like cats, they don’t move like cats, and the animations of the movements are unnaturally accelerated, they don’t have too many of them. You will try laser chasing and you will repeat it only out of compulsion. If you think of the old CatZ or Dogz, then Animal Shelter would be no competition for these digs. The idea of an interactive animal shelter is not bad, but in Animal Shelter, the gameplay is impersonal and incredibly stereotypical. What works in Zoo Tycoon -type animal games or simulators of any activity, in short, will not entertain anyone in Animal Shelter. Watching animals is boring because they don’t really do anything. As a tycoon, Animal Shelter is such a shallow strategy that it sometimes plays itself.
