Puppergeist Review: A love letter to our dogs

Puppergeist doesn’t waste any time letting you know what kind of game you’re about to boot up. 

I'm letting you know in advance, that you’re in for an emotional ride. Puppergeist is a short but charming story that is built entirely around one idea - the unconditional love our pets give us - and it wears that heart on its sleeve from the very start. While it does talk about heavy themes such as loss, pain, and grief, it never really leans into anything grim or heavy-handed, but chooses to approach it with warmth, colour, and rhythm.

Puppergeist believes that a well-timed beat and a good melody can also carry the same emotional weight, and the cast of dog spirits that you meet along the way bring their own warmth and personality, which makes the quieter, sadder moments hit even harder when they arrive, mostly because you'll find yourself already attached to these feline fellows. It never forgets to be genuinely charming while telling us more about their stories and how they ended up here.

As a pet owner myself, I went into it expecting something cute. I didn’t expect to leave it feeling sad, and missing my pet.

The kind residents of the Underworld

Our protagonist Claire is a young witch who is searching for her lost puppy - who is also her familiar - and the only way she can find him is by going down to the Doggie Underworld, which is the place all dogs go after they pass away. As the name says, it’s a place filled with the spirits of dogs, so it's logical that she would look there first.

Before she can really even enter, she has one obstacle to overcome, and a pretty mythologically accurate one. 

Before being able to really start her journey, Claire meets Cerberus, a three-headed dog who is guarding the entrance to the Doggie Underworld. His three heads couldn’t be more different from each other; one is always sleeping, the other one is eager to play, while the third one is stern and logical. It’s a cute little nod to Greek mythology, and a fitting introduction to a game about dogs. All three heads want to play a game with Claire, as that is the way they can get to know her, and before she can pass, Cerberus needs to be sure she is an actual dog lover.

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Cerberus being the first dog to greet you in Puppergeist feels very appropriate.

Once she finishes playtime with Cerberus, Claire can proceed further. As she gets in the Underworld, the first person she meets is not a dog, but Lunne, a demon who has her own reasons for being there. She becomes her friend and companion, deciding that she will join Claire in her search. Together they meet different puppergeists (and pupperghasts), which are dog spirits living in the Doggie Underworld who carry their own stories, have their own personalities, and often, have a not-so-happy story behind them.

If Claire wants to find her pup, she needs to earn their trust and help ease their grief, or simply help them accept that they’re in the Doggie Underworld and that if they are waiting for their master to come pick them up, he will unfortunately never arrive. Some of them want to sing, some just want pets, and others want to play some some sort of game.

With every dog she helps, Claire can venture further into the Doggie Underworld and is one step closer to finding her puppy.

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Claire isn't alone on her journey in the Doggie Underworld.

What makes the story of Puppergeist hit hard is the way it treats the dogs from the Underworld. Some of them aren’t even aware that they’ve passed away because the Underworld seems like a big doggie park, it reminds them of home because they can still run around, play, and everything points to them still being alive and with their families. 

It’s really a heartbreaking detail, but the game approaches every story with care and treats every dog’s story in the way it deserves to be treated, after all they are man's best friends.

Another thing that adds a more devastatingly sad notion to the story is the fact that for some of these dogs, they are treated way better here, in the Underworld, than they were treated while still being on Earth. It’s a detail that kind of sneaks up on you and it's unfortunately something that is very believable, and it may or may not push you over the edge and bring on the tears.

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Puppergeist tells an emotionally heavy story in a light, colourful way.

At its core, this is a story about healing and overcoming the grief and pain of losing someone you truly love, and by helping all these dogs, Claire is also helping herself move forward, and quietly working on her grief and own connection to loss. While everyone feels these feelings differently, it's sometimes easier to overcome them if you have support, someone that will listen or a shoulder to cry on.

Follow the beat, ease the heart

Puppergeist is at its core a rhythm visual novel, and it’s pretty much straightforward.

Each dog spirit that Claire meets has its own mini-game attached, and clearing it with a satisfactory mark allows her to earn their trust, ease their troubles, and move the story forward. The challenges are made around different activities that a dog would enjoy, such as fetch, tug of war or gentle petting, while sometimes you’ll also need to help out with different things, such as clearing mice or spiders. For one dog you meet, it's fur is in a bad shape so the mini-game revolves around Claire trimming it and making it less of a mess.

The variety is there, even though the core loop stays the same: follow the beat and keep the rhythm. While I was playing the game, I never felt like I had played this mini-game before, it always felt fresh and interesting, although you're more or less pressing the same button.

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Depending on the which dog you're playing with, the beat and music will change.

Most levels have two to three mini-games and each one lasts a few minutes. After each challenge, you can be graded by Woof, Good Boy, or Top Dog, while you only need Good Boy to pass through, so the game doesn’t really punish those that are rhythm challenged, such as myself.

It’s important to note that the mini-games, while appearing simple, do require attention. A few of them left me confused and not sure why I’m missing the prompts, and a few made me retry more times than I am willing to admit, but again I believe that in my case it’s more a skill issue than anything the game did. Players who have experience with games like these will have no issues becoming Top Dogs.

You have the option to set your latency, which is a helpful thing to at least try just to check whether that is holding you back. And also each of the mini-games has their own tutorial where the game explains to you what you actually need to do. My advice is, do not skip the tutorials. I did it for the first game, thinking “oh I don’t need a tutorial” and then the game sucker punched me back to the tutorial.

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Not all the dogs Claire meets during her journey had an easy life.

Puppergeist is split across five levels, which means you won’t be spending too much time searching for your pup. In case you want to become Top Dog, you have the option to revisit the mini-games and give them a shot, however it’s important to know that Claire can’t really fast travel from level to level, which means that you’ll need to backtrack through the world to reach a certain level again.

Colour that mends the heartbreak

Visually, Puppergeist keeps things more or less simple, but that simplicity works completely in its favour.

The art style is colourful, charming, and instantly readable, it never looks overcomplicated, and it’s there to sell you the cuteness of its cast while also making sure you feel the emotional weight of their stories. When Cookie was talking about being neglected by her owner and trying to do anything to make him love her, she looked like a cute, cartoonish dog, but the sadness in her eyes and words was more than readable, even through all that colour. The game has a presentation that doesn’t need to be flashy to get its point across, and for a game that deals with such personal themes such as loss, grief, and sadness, all that flashiness would feel out of place.

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Claire is getting to know the dogs in the Doggie Underworld, but also ease their grief, as well as hers.

The music and the beats vary from scene to scene and from level to level, and depending on what you do, the music will change. If you’re petting Fido, the beat you’ll need to follow will be playful and fun, while if you’re playing tug of war with the Pupperghasts, the music will switch to rock, something tougher with a lot of riffs and drums. Depending on the situation, the music will adapt and you will not get the feeling that you're playing the same beat over and over again. In the section where you clean the mice and the spiders, the music starts to be spooky, fitting at task neatly.

Since it's a rhythm game and there is no combat, no exploration, Puppergeist made sure that the music and the beats you need to follow have variety and keep you on your toes, trying to make sure that the core gameplay loop doesn't become stale or boring.

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Each level in Puppergeist has two to three mini-games Claire needs to pass.

Performance wise, I didn’t experience any issues while playing the game, everything ran smoothly on my machine, no stutters or FPS drops in sight.

Bring rhythm, and some tissues

Puppergeist knows which feelings it will bring to its players, and it won’t take long to do that. 

To any pet owner, this will hit too close to home as none of us are prepared for the day our pets will leave us. This game, however, finds a gentle way to sit with that fear without making it really unbearable. It’s a short and simple game, and it works. Every dog that Claire meets has just enough story to leave a mark on the player, and by the time you’re done, you’ll likely be attached to more than a few of them.

If you’re into dogs, or have loved any pet that you loved so much it made you dread the day you’ll lose them, Puppergeist is worth your time. 

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you about the tissues.