I'm a very simple man. I see a dog in a game that can be petted, belly rubbed, high-fived, rested with and just chilling out with along nice hand-painted vistas. I'm very intrigued and that's exactly what I was doing whilst playing Hello Good Boy. What a great name for a game. In Hello Good Boy, it's a narrative adventure, heavy on the narration, light on the exploration and puzzles that sees you play as Ico has been whisked off to this interesting dream-like world where you meet up with Coco the dog, said good boy, who escorts you throughout this journey that explores people's emotions and feelings. Now I don't know how well-known this is but in the UK there was quite a big push on mental health around depression, anxiety, loneliness, frustration and anger. And quite often it was described as someone having a black dog that would follow them around. And Hello Good Boy takes this approach to explaining emotions in a way that's approachable perhaps for children and young adults, but in an upbeat and uplifting way with colourful, vibrant world around you. And whenever you reach these parts of the world that have been destroyed by the Black Dog, who is kind of billed as this mysterious angry beast or wolf-like creature, who you'll face at the end of the game, what you'll be doing is then seeing the world evaporate into like a monochromatic, like washed out environment with loads of black liquid to show what's been broken that needs fixing. You get out your magic toolbox and through some puzzles and some quick time events you fix what's broken and that earns you joy points that you'll carry around with you to then spend doing different actions at the end of the game which I'll get to in a minute. But the idea is that as you go around this game you're fixing things and bringing happiness back into people's life and giving them joy again and each of the characters that you meet along the way will have an element of depression, loneliness, rejection, fear, anxiety, frustration, anger. And through your conversations and your choices, you'll be able to fix them. And there's different ways how you can do it. Now, this game plays out four different worlds for four different seasons. And each season has multiple choices that you can make and multiple endings and they're different variations of good or you can choose to ignore everyone and not fix their problems and not actually collect joy points to take into your final battle against the black dog at the end of the game. It's up to you. So you could be a good kid alongside your good boy, or you can just be like, no I'm good, and just ignore everything and carry on and see how the end of the game plays out for you. The really interesting thing with the design of this game is that you're also given a magical time, like, sand timer. And so you can only make four big decisions per playthrough. So there's four different doors that you can open, and then there is a big decision choice at the end of the world for what you do at the end of it. So you can only explore two worlds per playthrough. And then once you complete it, you can then go into continue plus and then try out different permutations or different ways of playing the game so that you can see all of the different endings as you go. Whether you've helped people or not, there's a goose and a hen that are married that are trying to raise their babies that you can have as a side story as you go through the different seasons and help them out as well and it's all very cute and wholesome but you can choose to not be cute and wholesome and see what happens at the same time it's entirely up to you and it might be quite heavy-handed and sometimes the dialogue does feel a little bit too on the nose oh good boy on the nose but it's still selling this point of be kind unto others and kindness will come back to you because when you face your black dog days at the end when it will what it's saying is like depression anxiety and fear can creep up on you when you least expect it and it does at the end of the game you can then use all of those joy points that you've bagged throughout the game to then battle against the boss in a turn-based battle system at the end for its own finale boss. In order to see everything, this will require multiple playthroughs, like three or four, and there is a true ending to get at the end. So what seems like a really short game and that's over in just over an hour and a half for one playthrough is built in a way that you're going to have to go around several times to see everything and I quite liked that because it meant that especially with your first few playthroughs your choices really did matter because it locks you out of seeing other parts of the game so you do have to go back in and try everything to see everything and I quite liked that. The art style for this game is absolutely gorgeous and I really really just love the way how it feels hand-painted and vibrant and it really made when you then came into the destroyed and broken areas where all the color seeps away really quite impactful. The soundtrack for this game is a lush, fuzzy, orchestral vibe. So it felt quite retro Disney, early Ghibli patch, perhaps maybe, but it felt wholesome and fresh and vibrant, just like the graphics. And when you're sitting there having a little high-five moment or a little rest on a vista looking out on the lake or the mountains just to take a break in your little wholesome game it did strike a really good emotional chord with me. Some of the narration that takes place in this game is a little bit too on the nose you like yes I get the point that you're trying to make but I think if this is being played out for a younger audience than perhaps a 39 year old guy I think that probably would translate perhaps a little bit better. But even I was like going yeah I think this is actually a really nicely told story to be told and whilst I would have liked perhaps a little bit more challenge from the puzzles that are given to you and the mini games that are provided to you because they are very simple the meat of this game is in the story that it tells and the graphical way how it does that and for me Hello Good Boy lands those both really really well. So yeah, really interesting game. I do really like how game developers are trying new and innovative and interesting ways to tackle emotions, mental health, some big meaty topics in gaming that you just didn't really get in this kind of way 20 years ago. So yeah, long may it continue. Thumbs up from me. Higher Plane Games is part of the Higher Plane Network, a completely independent media outlet supported by people like you. The goal is to create the best possible content that cultivates a richer indie scene for games as well as music and entertainment. 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