Review | To The Rescue - Who Let The Dogs In?
To The Rescue! Is a dog shelter simulator where your role is to take care of as many of the cute fluffy critters as possible, all of which will come with their own unique challenges.
Me every time a new dog enters the shelter: Hi, I love you already and would kill for you!
The first thing I noticed was the incredibly chipper music, which I loved. It set up a chaotic and fun tone, but when opening the new game tab, you are given an option to choose between euthanasing and sending away any unwanted dogs. Quite the emotional whiplash. I think it’s a nice option to add for people who don’t want to think about the dark potentials of shelters, however.
The controls are a little bit hard to get hold of, especially when it comes to leashing the puppies. You have to press at least three buttons at once. This is very difficult for players who have motor difficulties as I do. I also had issues with changing my keybinds, as every time I tried to change them, they all changed to the same key, and wouldn’t let me reset to default, meaning I had to create a whole new save every single time. It was frustrating, to say the least. However, these cumbersome controls and naughty puppies personally didn’t detract away from the heartwarming story that was about to unfold!
Your character, who can be mildly customised through skin colour, hair, and name, is offered a job after doing a good job of looking after a puppy. Then, it’s all hands on deck at the shelter! For a few days, you work there, before you are offered the opportunity to run your very own canine halfway house.
Editor’s note: I wish I had files like these to keep track of all the startmenu writers.
To The Rescue is a very hands-on game, with a lot of aspects to consider. There are different food types for the dogs, different medications, making sure they’re clean, scooping poop… It’s very time-consuming, and there isn’t a single moment to rest! There are so many different dogs with unique personalities. Some are more demanding than others, and some keep to themselves, but all are fun to look after. There’s always something going on at the shelter, whether it be receiving new dogs, watching dogs get adopted, or receiving donations online. The events tab seems to always be on the move!
I love you all equally. I just love Munster more equally than everyone else, ok?
At times, I found the game a bit too hectic. Although it’s a fun game, you don’t want any of the dogs to get sick or die whilst you are looking after them, so the option to be able to hire help would be a really good feature to add. Even though I made my shelter relatively small to start out with, I still felt like 10 dogs was a lot, and wasn’t sure if I’d be able to handle many more.
By day three, I’d experienced a disease breakout. Parasites and worms had taken residence within and on my dogs, and despite my best efforts of vaccinating and quarantining the dogs, they still got sick regardless. It was a stressful situation, and I had to take a break from the game at that point.
It is important you learn your way around the tools of the trade.
Overall, To The Rescue is a really fun and unique experience, with a heartwarming story. It gives a brief and comedic insight into all the work that goes into animal shelters, and everything they have to keep in mind when looking after all of these different dogs. Although the game mentions difficult topics like euthanasia and unwanted dogs, it’s a harsh reality of life in a dog shelter, so it may show the reality of dog shelters to people who really had no idea what they were like, and may even inspire people to help out with their local animal shelters, or adopt pets instead of buying them in the future! For me, the game was comedic instead of sad because you are just constantly running around after all these silly little dogs who are just pooping all the time, eating all the time, and wanting to run around all of the time. They just have you doing so much constantly, so it makes it a really wild experience! I really enjoyed my time playing it, and would play it again!
