Dogurai

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Pets in Action Bundle, along with Dininho Adventures, Milli & Greg, and Rift Adventure.)

Dogurai is an Action-Platformer released on PC in 2019 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2020. This is a game that looks to bring an old-school look and feel to the genre, both in the simplicity of its gameplay, as well as in its presentation.

Speaking on that presentation, Dogurai uses pixel art visuals with a low “monochrome” color palette that’s clearly intended to resemble the original Game Boy, alongside a chiptune soundtrack and sound effects. While these visuals are nicely nostalgic, they also unfortunately negatively affect the gameplay – the limited screen size makes for a lot of “leaps of faith”, and the lack of colors (or the poor use of what’s available) mean that your character and enemies will often blend in somewhat with the background. As much as this game really wants to appeal to nostalgia, I can’t help but feel that this presentation hurts the game more than it helps.

The gameplay also seems to have a similar problem where it clearly wants to use the trappings of the past without fully understanding what to do with them. Although your character uses a melee attack, the game design takes a few cues from the classic Mega Man games – you select what order to take levels, and you even have a “slide” move you can do by pressing down and the jump button. However, the order you take levels doesn’t seem to matter (you don’t get anything in them you can use in other levels) and it’s hard to tell if the slide move reduces your profile in the same way Mega Man’s does, making it less functional. Beyond this, the game is just uneven in its design – in addition to the leaps of faith, you’ll face some absurdly difficult platforming challenges early on (at least, depending on the order you select levels).

When Dogurai isn’t bogged down by these issues, it’s a decent Action-Platformer, but far too often it feels like it’s trying to imitate another era of games without understanding what made those games so great. If you’re looking for a retro-style Action-Platformer on the Nintendo Switch, this one still has some decent gameplay, but it’s just not nearly as mell-made as the games it’s trying to remind you of.

tl;dr – Dogurai is an Action-Platformer with a monochrome “Game Boy”-style presentation and simple gameplay. Unfortunately, the retro design causes numerous problems with the gameplay, and what’s more that retro design just reminds you of other games that did what this game does, but much better. While not a terrible game, Dogurai doesn’t live up to the games it’s copying.

Grade: C-

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