For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Dog Man: Mission Impawsible, from Mindscape.
Dog Man: Mission Impawsible looks like a licensed game from something aimed at kids, and i mean that in a positive way. the art style in the game matches the box art!
The demo starts well with a fun story sequence that sets up the game's story. once we start gameplay, it also starts with a basic tutorial that has good level design built around it so that by the end of the level we're good at the controls. unfortunately, i did find the tutorial to be a bit lacking. for example, i only knew of one button to change character when there was a second.
We only get two stages to play. the first sets up the story and is a solid tutorial level. i assume that the second stage we get to play is maybe the third in the game. it had some nice simple puzzles but i think i got soft locked and had to restart the level again. there appears to be no way to restart from a checkpoint so i retried the level. i still kept the item i had made, but i had to collect the icons once again.
Overall, i don't think Dog Man: Mission Impawsible is great for a young kids first platformer. the jumping in the game doesn't have much room for error and isn't too satisfying. but for older kids i think it would be a good time. for someone older, it's more difficult to say as the two levels we played were quite repetitive and i worry that we may do the same things over and over again. this demo was a bit too short to get a sense of what the final game would be like, but i think it's decent enough to judge how well someone younger may cope with it's platforming.
