Smile Dog

I can see what this game is doing, I can [i]appreciate[/i] what this game is doing, but it meanders far too much for its own good, falls off a total cliff by the very end, and is rather disappointing as an entire package despite strong presentation initially Based on the classic [i]Smile Dog[/i] creepypasta, which I would actually recommend if for some reason you want to play this game - as there are many references directly to it and the story is honestly not bad, this game somewhat "modernizes" the story by encapsulating the titular memetic horror within a video game sent to you by your friend, which you play and interact with via the virtual desktop in the game. This aspect is something I think actually deserves praise, it is pretty cool to click around on random stuff and check your emails, even if there's not much to it. It aids with immersion pretty significantly and I enjoyed many of the references to the original story peppered throughout the emails and the "lore" within the game, as well as the frantic pace of emails later on as the game segments begin to get timed. This is where my praises end, because dog, I am [i]not[/i] smiling. The vast majority of the gameplay is contained within the [i]Smile Dog[/i] game-within-a-game. It's a little spot-the-difference game where you are shown two slightly different images of a dog and have to click the differences on the left image. This sounds basic because this [i]is[/i] basic. Oftentimes they are just either regular images of a dog with poorly photoshopped differences, illustrations of dogs with the same thing, or pixel art. Very few of these are scary by any significant means, and let me tell you - this game [i]drags[/i] out the regular dog stuff. With this game, there is way more time spent playing an aggressively mediocre cutesy dog comparison game than time spent even pretending to be remotely frightened by anything going on. By the time the dogs start getting scary (read: their eyes warped in an image editing program to be a bit strange and occasionally giving their fur a couple blotches of bad-looking blood), and the desktop starts "glitching" (read: getting slightly darker and red tinted) the game is practically over - and when the game ends, any praise I had given the presentation at an early date is nulled and voided as the game displays an ending cutscene/comic with some of the lowest-effort art I've ever seen, reminiscent of [i]Newgrounds[/i] flash animations except drawn with the finesse of a chicken handling the controls of a Boeing 747. Not good. I don't even know where this came from, because the rest of the assets in this game such as the dog illustrations are completely fine, if nothing particularly special. Did they give up? Who knows. Who cares. Just read the original story, look at the spooky picture, and spread the word: this game sucks.