Not quite like the real thing, but they won’t get hair on your furniture.
Adopt a dog, adopt a cat, play games, and dress up your animals! In this carefree simulation, you get to play house with some adorable cats and dogs. The game is very simple, which can leave the player longing for a little more, but it delivers on its basic premise.
You get to adopt a dog first. By feeding it and caring for it, you can level up, and once you reach level 15 you can visit the Friends Plaza to adopt more puppies and even cats. You can take home up to three at a time. You can own more than that, but you have to place them in the Friends Hotel and switch them out later.
Caring for your pets is easy. You can pet them, brush them, play with them, and take your dogs on walks (sorry cats). The pets won’t die or run away if you don’t take care of them regularly, so some urgency is missing in the gameplay. This is good for people who don’t want to have to log in every day, but once the novelty wears off, there isn’t much motivation to spend time with your pets. Even walking your dog becomes tiresome after a while because you can’t leave the prescribed route.
By earning Friend points you level up, and each level gets you access to different things in the shop and rewards you with stamps. Stamps are like badges that let you know you’ve spent a certain amount of time in different activities with your pets. Dogs can go for walks and play in the disc tournaments, where you earn money and tickets to spend on fun customizations. Clothing is quite varied and it is fun to dress up your pets. Even with all that, however, it is hard to feel incentivized to continue leveling up.
Little Friends delivers on its promises, but its failure to do more to capture my attention left me mildly disappointed. The dogs and cats are adorable, and there are many outfits to buy and customize. But after the daily feeding and watering of your friends is over, the gameplay becomes a little rote. Perhaps a more laid back player will find this charming game amusing enough to occupy their sparse free-time.