![]() ![]() The narrator’s constant monologue takes us in a lot of directions that remind us of the vast gap between these two titles-the problematic fact that a novel-memoir named My Dog Tulip can never be a domestic dog simulator in any meaningful sense.īeneath the narrative lies a metadrama about narrative itself: the man constantly tries to organize his dog’s life into a chronology that extends beyond momentary impulses (to chase another dog) and daily needs (to poop). ![]() At the same time, it fidgets in the seat of that subject position. Other works of fiction, from Paul Auster’s Timbuktu all the way back to the “it-narratives” of the 18th century (which resemble our anti-games in several ways: we should all be waiting for game adaptations of The Sofa: A Moral Tale or The Secret History of an Old Shoe), have tried the whole dog’s-eye-view thing but this one stays firmly grounded in the human first-person. Isn’t that a pretty good metaphor for the life of a domestic dog?ĭomestic Dog Simulator is essentially a roguelikeĪs its title suggests, My Dog Tulip is not a domestic dog simulator: it’s a book about a man’s attempts to take care of his dog rather than an account of what it’s like to be that dog from her perspective. You, not the world, are randomly generated. And then, in an instant, you’re a new dog in a new house, hatching from an egg. You get as far as you can in this hostile world until it catches up to you. Domestic Dog Simulator is essentially a roguelike. Then again, what’s strange about Domestic Dog Simulator is that it retains this feeling of pointlessness and incompleteness endemic to the anti-game even though, in a lot of ways, it fits into a recognizable and metaphorically potent game genre. ![]() Even writing about it makes me feel like I’m part of some sort of problem, just feeding into the ironic commentary life-support system that allows a game like this to become more than the paltry sum of its rudimentary parts. For the average player, it works best if you make your own challenges-like shepherding all the sheep into the pen, or buying a new flatscreen before you die, or crossing the field without getting your dog bucks stolen by godforsaken raccoons -and look at the game, and yourself playing it, from a healthy ironic distance. No doubt it’s already achieved comic sublimity on YouTube. Yes, it is what it is (and it is what the name of its developer promises: a Surreal Distraction), but in order for it to work as an enjoyable aesthetic experience, it requires a whole overlay of mental effort and interpretation on the part of the player. The game is one of those non or anti-games like Goat Simulator or I am Bread, which means it carries with it a sense of incompleteness. Even before that, you’re probably going to get hit by a car. The game has five meters (food, water, fitness, happiness, poop) that tick down and down with every passing second you can refill them individually, but it’s only a matter of time before the entropy of dog life gets out of hand. And that’s assuming you haven’t died yet. At the northwest corner of the map you’ll find the Lost Woods, but what do you get if you reach the end? Not the Master Sword but one of the squirrels that hangs out around it-a squirrel that goes to live in your house. Nailing something small, like a butterfly, with that almighty stream is one of the few things in this game that feels rewarding another is using your explosive poop to blow up walls or cars.Īlthough it gets its pixelated, deliberately grungy aesthetic from Atari 2600 simulations, Domestic Dog plays more like a rudimentary Zelda in which there is no quest, no princess, and no discernible point. Above all else, pee physics appear to have been the designers’ primary focus. Or you can pee, which transforms everything and provides immediate satisfaction: animals turn yellow, manhole covers flip over, transistors fizzle, the world comes alive. You can use the contextual action button, which will do things like dig a hole or trample grass. You can bark, which has zero effect on the environment around you birds will not fly away, other dogs will not come running. ![]() In Domestic Dog Simulator, you can do precisely three things at any given moment in your life as a randomly-generated dog. They have little in common aside from the way they ostentatiously foreground your average dog’s heroic capacity to produce what Ackerley calls “liquids and solids”-but good Lord do they get mileage out of that. My Dog Tulip is a weird book Domestic Dog Simulator is a weird game. ![]()
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