Review: Dogpile

Them's some loveable dogs

Platforms Available: PC Platform Reviewed: PC Release Date: 10 Dec 2025 Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3839300/Dogpile/ Inconsequential. That's how I can sum up Dogpile. Inconsequential, with a side order of "well, okay, I'll just do one more round of dropping dogs and then I'll go to bed". It's a game that you can play for 5 minutes, or 5 hours depending on whether or not you've got some washing up to do, and in a world where every game wants to absorb every single second of your waking existence, that's usually the kind of pick up and play nonsense I'm looking for.

Look at that dog's butthole. Look at it. Look at it with your big brown eyes.

Dogpile takes the Fruit Merge Genre (which I presume is now a genre) that became incredibly popular on mobile formats, and turns it into an actual game, instead of something that just happens while you're having a shit. The fruit has been swapped for dogs, and the toilet has been swapped for your comfortable gaming chair; but this time there's an actual game attached to the whole thing, removing the vapid aimlessness of the original that inspired it, and adding in something that will make half the population sigh in wrongness: Deck Building.

Yes, it's a card game. But it's a card game that's also a fruit merge game. You know what, it sounds really fucking awful doesn't it? It sounds like an inherently cynical attempt at making a game based on whatever tags are currently floating highest in some sort of SEO obsessed word cloud, but I promise you - Dogpile is good. It might sound like something your grandma could wax lyrical about, but your grandmother would be absolutely fucking baffled by this, which is great, because not all games should be made for your grandma. Tell her to mind her own business.

You can buy stuff at a shop, but as no tooltips are currently showing, your grandma is livid with confusion.

The general gist is this: You pick a deck of dogs and jump into the game. Each deck will have pros and cons, but they're all here to give you a new set of challenges to try and overcome, in a similar style to, say, Balatro. Each starting deck will feature a handful of small dogs, and (usually) a pet shop card. You drop your dogs into the play area, two matching dogs merge into the next highest level of dog, and through judicious capitalism, you'll purchase new dogs using your shop card, new boosters or rule-altering dog tags that will hopefully help you merge your way up to the biggest dog of all. Merging dogs gives you two things: money, and bones. Money is for purchasing the stuff you'll need to better your deck, but bones are important for reaching an ever-increasing goal. In five rounds, you must reach the bone zone (it's not called that, but now it is) - if you're successful, you get a randomised choice of upgrade for three dogs in your deck... If you're unsuccessful, you get to pick one of two horrible shitty things that you've then got to try and resolve.

Being at one with the bone zone is very important. Make those little ankle biters friendly for an easier time.

The magic in Dogpile is how these different aspects interweave. One upgrade for your dogs, for instance, might be "Barky". Whenever you drop a dog, they bark on landing, which in turn makes all the dogs they've barked at jump out of position. That's useful on its own to ensure that your big pile of canines isn't just stagnating, and it might instigate a merge you otherwise wouldn't be able to achieve... But then you come across a dog tag that makes the arena extra bouncy; excellent! So now all these dogs are pinging around like absolute maniacs, but it's become much harder to aim anything with precision because they won't stop jostling around. Stop ruddy jostling, dogs! It's unbecoming!

Maybe a few shops later, after nothing has particularly took your eye, you'll come across a card that lets you turn you dogs friendly. When a dog is friendly, it'll aggressively home in on another dog of the same type. So now, you've got dogs barking, flying up in the air, then homing in on their familial target. Perfect, I've managed to breed heat-seeking jumping beans. This is exactly what evolution was made for.

Three great big flipping dogs and they aren't even touching each other. Disgusting behaviour.

As with any good deck-builder, your thought process here is laser focused on how your (long term effect) dog tags will work with your (short term effect) deck, and what sort of mess you've currently got lying around in the kennel. If you have a tonne of merges just waiting to happen, but you can't quite make those dogs meet, then you'll likely knee-jerk a solution together from what's on offer in the shop, and those knee-jerks can either make or break your run, because they either offer the solution to current problems and problems not yet discovered, or they spread your abilities so thin that you're a dog of all trades, yet master of none. There's a hell of a lot of content here for those who enjoy the core concept. While each new deck is unlocked simply by merging your way up to the highest dog available, you can continue into endless mode from there, or you can start all over again with that new deck, one that generally always gives you a positive and a negative that you have to puzzle your way around, trying to either negate those negatives, or turn them into positives you didn't even realise would work until you stumble across a solution. Also the dogs are really cute and they make stupid noises.

Look at that big boy. It's making the whippet terrified.

The joy of Dogpile is that is turns this genre of two things becoming another thing into something that actually has a point. It turns mindlessness into a thought process, and it throws you a bone of random chance to ensure that nothing ever really feels like an issue. To some, that RNG will be something that makes them switch their brain off in a way that isn't satisfying, and to those people I say: Fair enough, but I am going to merge these dogs like my life depends on it. If you win, you win. If you lose, never mind, try again or go and finish washing those pots. Regardless, Dogpile will be waiting for you to come back and force dogs to smash together in new and interesting ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WlJi0NTacg

Score: 6.8/10

Recommended if you like: Merging Fruit | Balatro | Ballionaire Not Recommended For: People who hate RNG | People who whinge about RNG | Your grandma